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Roughly 100 people and families could be housed at the hotel.Īnother option is to spend $1 million to install 30 “tiny homes” in collaboration with and near Hope Faith, a homeless assistance provider on Admiral Boulevard and Virginia Avenue. The city would spend $1.3 million to acquire and operate the Days Inn Hotel on Linwood Boulevard and Quincy Avenue.Ī navigation center would be put in place at the hotel to connect residents with social services like job placement and medical treatment. One is to convert a vacant hotel into single-room occupancy housing for people who are homeless or at risk of experiencing homelessness. The task force presented a few of these proposals at Thursday’s meeting. The other strategy will be to create permanent housing options to reduce the number of people experiencing homelessness in the long term. Parks-Shaw said that option is especially important for those who do not want to stay in a shelter. The city will also be working with other partners across the area, including the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, which will provide warming buses, to offer additional services. The task force is also working to identify other community centers or spaces to use when extreme weather or other emergencies exhaust the number of shelter beds available. The city plans to launch an online dashboard that will note bed availability at all the area’s shelters every day. That strategy includes improving collaboration with existing shelters to ensure that all available beds and resources are being used. “Rather than the city focusing on trying to create a new shelter space, we found that we could be more effective if we provide additional support to those agencies who are already providing the service and have the expertise and skill to be able to do that,” Parks-Shaw said. Parks-Shaw said the city will be changing its approach this winter by prioritizing existing shelters. That space, however, is no longer available. “We are hoping to establish a plan that can be utilized in other extreme weather issues as our unhoused folks are just as much at risk in the hot weather as well.”Įarlier this year, freezing temperatures prompted the city to open a temporary warming center at Bartle Hall to provide overnight shelter to Kansas City’s homeless people. “We are working very diligently and with a sense of urgency to establish this plan for cold weather,” Parks-Shaw said. The city’s houseless task force presented both permanent and temporary housing solutions to the Kansas City Council on Thursday as temperatures dropped outside.Ĭouncilwoman Ryana Parks-Shaw, the task force’s chair, said the city needed to establish plans that will stretch beyond this winter for the city’s approximately 3,000 people experiencing homelessness. Kansas City is gearing up to shelter homeless people as winter approaches.