Wichita’s City Council unanimously allocated $685,000 to HumanKind Ministries to operate a new emergency winter shelter near 21st and Grove, despite objections from community members.
The city announced the 250-bed shelter last week, after a months-long search for a building to serve unhoused people during the winter. It will be located in the former Fundamental Learning Center, which is next to a preschool and the Boys and Girls Club.
“This shelter being there … it’s not my preferred location,” said council member Brandon Johnson, whose district includes the shelter.
“But we have to do something to take care of our unhoused community. This facility just so happens to be the best one we have.”
About a dozen people spoke in opposition to the shelter. Residents said they hadn’t been informed of the shelter’s location prior to the public announcement of it last week.
Plus, several felt their community, a historically Black neighborhood, is already dealing with an excess of challenges – groundwater contamination, large utility poles and vacant public housing units.
“There’s an increasingly visible blind eye that has been turned to the needs of District 1,” said resident A.J. Bohannon. “We have to beg for a pool, we’re still experiencing a food desert and crime is a steady dark cloud that we deal with on a daily basis. The solution for that is not a homeless shelter.”
One of the biggest concerns was the shelter’s proximity to child care facilities.
“I encourage you to use a different location,” said Cornelia Stevens, the executive director of TOP Early Learning Center, which is next door to the shelter. “I do question the logic in putting a center of this nature, a homeless center, next to a child care center.”
But there isn’t another option for an emergency shelter, said Sally Stang, the city’s director of Housing and Community Services. The city learned in late summer that the former downtown emergency shelter couldn't fit enough people this year. Since then, elected officials have scrambled to secure another building in time for winter.
Stang said the city considered eight other buildings, but none except for this one met all the necessary requirements like sufficient capacity or the correct zoning.
“We do recognize the site on 21st Street is not ideal,” Stang said. “It’s not ideal for the neighborhood. It’s not ideal for the unhoused population.
“But at this point, we haven’t identified another location. And we have to come up with a solution for our unhoused Wichitans. These are our brothers, our mothers, our fathers … our children.”
Stevens said TOPS will work to increase security measures as a result. The shelter is also looking to add cameras to the building and increase the number of security guards from one to two.
Sedgwick County Commissioner Sarah Lopez said in a phone interview that she is also working with Wichita Public Schools to add a bus route for kids who would have otherwise had to walk to school past the shelter.
LaTasha St. Arnault, president/CEO of HumanKind Ministries, added that the unhoused people the nonprofit serves typically don’t commit violent crimes.
“Outside of just a few raised voices or agitation … we rarely have criminal incidences,” St. Arnault said. “Research shows and we would argue that most unhoused people and homeless individual men and women, they are the victims of criminal activity.
“So, these are vulnerable humans and rarely are they participating in it, with the exception of substance use issues.”
Johnson said the city asked Sedgwick County for $200,000 to help pay for the shelter. The Sedgwick County Commission will discuss emergency winter shelter at its meeting Wednesday.
The shelter doesn’t have an opening date. City officials have estimated it will open at the end of November or beginning of December. Past winter shelters opened on Nov. 1.
