‘Nowhere’ for homeless people to go: MO banned outdoor sleeping, KS may follow suit

In the eight weeks since it became illegal for people without housing in Missouri to sleep on state-owned land, it’s become more difficult for outreach workers to find them.

It’s not because there are fewer people suffering, said Sarah Owsley, with Empower Missouri, which calls itself the oldest and largest anti-poverty nonprofit in the state. It’s because the law seems to be sending some people experiencing homelessness into more secluded corners of cities, like densely wooded areas, and further from social service providers who help administer food, medical care and look out for their overall well-being.

As advocates adjust to Missouri’s law, Kansas lawmakers are already considering following Missouri’s lead with a nearly identical bill working its way through the statehouse.

“These types of policies make it more difficult to be homeless rather than make it more difficult to become homeless, which is what we really need to do,” said Owsley, who testified against Missouri’s version of the bill last year and has been tracking its effects since.

In its current form Kansas’ bill goes a step further than Missouri, banning camping on local lands as well as state lands. Violators could be charged with a class C misdemeanor and fined up to $1. Like in Missouri, the bill allows the state attorney general to sue local governments that do not enforce the ban.

Enforcement, the bill says, can include actions to provide service other than criminal charges.

Any city or county with a higher per capita average of homelessness than the state that does not comply with the bill would lose funding to handle homelessness.

Both bills are modeled off of a policy pushed nationwide by the Cicero Institute, a conservative think tank based in Austin, Texas.

Advocates at the institute say the policy is an innovative approach to managing the country’s homelessness problem, prioritizing getting individuals off the street and into services. But local service organizations and governments are concerned it assigns a one size fits all approach to cities across the state and point to Missouri as an example of the pitfalls.

“To add on this legislation on the Kansas side is kind of a huge blow,” said Rob Santel, director of programs for Cross-Lines Community Outreach, a local group that provides direct assistance to individuals in poverty.

Because of the pieces of the law stripping funding from communities with higher homelessness rates, Santel said the impact will be largest on communities of color in Kansas’ bigger cities.

“There is nowhere for them to go,” Santel said. “We don’t have a shelter infrastructure already to meet the needs of the current population that we have.”

New Missouri law bans outside sleeping. KC leaders say it criminalizes homelessness

Putting the onus on cities

An estimated 1,800 people are living unhoused in Kansas City, Missouri, alone, according to a recent estimate by the Greater Kansas City Coalition to End Homelessness. Of those, more than 400 are living unsheltered, typically meaning in an encampment or on the streets, rather than in a homeless shelter, many of which lack space for women and children in particular.

Last year, United Community Services of Johnson County reported at least 212 people were living unhoused, with about 45 people living on the streets. Wyandotte County reported 201 people living unhoused with 120 living on the streets, according to the latest point-in-time count.

But in the two months since the law went into effect in Missouri, no one has received a warning or been cited for sleeping on state-owned land in Kansas City, Capt. Corey Carlisle, a spokesman for the Kansas City Police Department, said Monday. Instead, Carlisle said, KCPD’s Community Engagement Division is working with community partners to offer resources like food, clothing and mental health and substance abuse referrals to those experiencing homelessness.

This stands in stark contrast to the rollout of a similar law in Austin, Texas, where in the first six months of 2021, Austin police issued at least 500 warnings and 130 citations, according to the Texas Tribune.

The bill is scheduled for a hearing Thursday but the details of it could change as it progresses through the Kansas Legislature.

Rep. Brian Bergkamp, a Wichita Republican who introduced the bill on behalf of the Cicero Institute, said he hoped the bill would be a “starting point” for discussions of solutions to homelessness in Kansas.

“Unfortunately there’s no magical answer, it’s something that takes a mix of many policies,” he said.

Spencer Duncan, a lobbyist for the Kansas League of Municipalities and member of the Topeka City Council, said city homelessness policy is a constant balance between pressure to clear out camps and the obligation to respect the rights of homeless citizens.

He said local governments already don’t have enough funding to manage their homeless populations and that will only get worse with the threat of lawsuits.

“Nobody has enough money right now to deal with the problem which is why we have the problem,” he said. “The inference I don’t appreciate is that somehow cities are responsible for their homelessness problem.”

The bill is likely to impact cities across Kansas differently. In Lawrence, it may force the city to shut down an encampment on local land on the North side of town.

In written testimony Lawrence’s city manager Craig Owens said the bill would preempt the city from using public land for temporary shelters.

“This would be a most unhelpful curtailment of local authorities’ freedom of action when developing strategies to provide solutions to homelessness,” Owens wrote.

In Wichita, Chase Billingham, a sociology professor at Wichita State University who studies homelessness, said the city already strictly enforces its local anti-camping ordinances and policies may not change.

An approach other than ‘housing first’

The Cicero institute is advocating for bills limiting camping nationwide based on its conclusion that the prominent “housing-first” approach to homelessness is a failed strategy and that homeless individuals are dying on the streets.

“The idea is not a bunch of fines, it’s not to throw them in jail. It’s to help them find a better situation,” said Bryan Sunderland, director of advocacy at the Cicero Institute.

To reduce “street homelessness,” the think tank recommends cutting funding to local homelessness prevention policies in cities that have high homelessness rates and funneling resources toward homeless outreach teams, shelter alternatives and treatment programs.

Sunderland argued that resources should be allocated toward mental health and addiction treatment programs. If camping is banned, he said, homeless individuals will find their way back toward their families or into shelters that provide treatment. Cities, he said, could set up sanctioned camping sites for individuals who are not willing to seek out shelters.

Last year, an attempt to build a city-sanctioned pallet shelter in Kansas City, which would also serve as an emergency shelter, was again put on hold after community members opposed the idea of housing homeless individuals near their homes.And it’s unclear whether the current language in the Kansas bill would allow city-sanctioned camps.

But the Kansas bill does not currently guarantee increased funding toward services. Instead, Sunderland said Cicero urges lawmakers to consider ways to repurpose existing funds toward treatment programs.