KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A letter sent Thursday from the Johnson County Board of County Commissioners to the Lenexa City Council urges the council to approve a Homeless Services Center at their council meeting on Sept. 17.
"Thank you for the time and attention you’ve already dedicated to the Special Use Permit Application from reStart for operations of the Homeless Services Center," the letter states. "As you know, over the last 15 months, the County has worked in collaboration with City of Lenexa leadership and staff to develop a proposal for the HSC and potentially fill a critical gap for unhoused adults in our continuum of housing services. The facility proposed would offer intensive supportive services, shelter and transitional housing with the goal of exiting folks out of homelessness."
Supporters and opponents of the proposed shelter at the La Quinta Inn motel near 95th Street and Interstate packed a meeting last month at Lenexa City Hall.
The Lenexa Planning Commission voted 9-0 to recommend the city deny a special use permit to build the shelter at the motel.
KSHB 41's Rachel Henderson covered the meeting and revealed some of the reasons the planning commission recommended the council reject the proposal:
- The proposed use is inconsistent with the character of the neighborhood, which has been identified by the city as a key redevelopment corridor.
- The proposed use, due to its proximity to the only other homeless shelter for single adults in Johnson County, will create a concentration of negative external impacts in this area of the community which will detrimentally affect nearby properties.
- The city’s current law enforcement resources are inadequate to serve the proposed use and the additional cost to the City to add the necessary staff places an unreasonable financial burden on the City, which is exacerbated by the loss of tax revenue caused by the conversion of the subject property to a tax-exempt use.
- That despite the applicant’s best intentions, the extremely abbreviated timeline under which this project has been conceived and developed has resulted in many of the required elements of a binding Management Plan for the shelter use being unfinalized and/or inadequate, thereby creating substantial uncertainty as to important details about the proposed use, its funding, and ultimately, the overall viability of the shelter operation.
Henderson also spoke at the meeting with Barbara McEver, the co-founder of Project 1020, the city's only homeless shelter for adults in Johnson County.
The shelter operates only as a place to get out of frigid temperatures from December to April.
"There’s such a great need. And people need their basic needs met," McEver told Henderson at the meeting. "These are people. They are people, and they could be someone’s son, daughter, mother, father, sister."
The letter from the Johnson County Board of County Commissioners states the commission believes the project is consistent with the character of the surrounding area, will not negatively impact property values in the area, and will have a significant positive effect on public health.
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