The current debate raging over a proposed county homeless shelter at a repurposed Lenexa hotel has echoes of a legal battle the city had over a previous homeless shelter.
On Monday night, a Lenexa Planning Commission meeting centered around a Special Use Permit to turn the site of a La Quinta Inn and former Denny’s into a county homeless shelter featured frequent references to a previous controversy over Project 1020, the only other homeless shelter in the city serving single adults.
“I love our city and county, but I think we’ve turned a blind eye to our homeless for way too long,” Greg Hack, a Lenexa resident and board member of Shawnee Mission Unitarian Universalist Church, which houses Project 1020, said during the meeting. “I’m sure you all remember it required a lawsuit by one small, brave church to get the city to even allow Project 1020 (to happen).”
The federal lawsuit, filed by the church in 2019 against the city, kept Project 1020 in operation and ultimately led to the city instituting new zoning rules for homeless shelters. The shelter still operates out of the church on Pflumm Road in Old Town Lenexa during the winter months.
Monday’s much-watched meeting about the new shelter resulted in the commission unanimously voting 9-0 to recommend the denial of the special use permit. That recommendation was based on several reasons articulated by city staff, including worries that the shelter did not fit the character of the surrounding area, would negatively impact nearby residences and businesses and potentially be a drain on city resources.
The lawsuit brought new rules for homelessness in Lenexa
In 2019, Project 1020 moved from Olathe to Lenexa into the Shawnee Mission Unitarian Universalist Church on Pflumm Road, a few blocks away from the La Quinta hotel now being proposed as the site of the new homeless shelter and services center.
When the city denied the church’s initial request to house guests, the church filed its lawsuit.
Because the church is in an area of the city zoned for residential uses, the city said at the time it wanted to work with the church to find an alternative location for the shelter.
But in its lawsuit, the church argued that the city didn’t have any zoning districts that allowed for homeless shelters, leaving it up to the discretion of city staff to grant or deny a request to operate a shelter.
In the end, the city settled the case with the church, allowing Project 1020 to stay open.
In 2021, the city adopted Lenexa’s first-ever regulations for homeless shelters, allowing religious institutions to host up to 30 guests at a time.
At the meeting Monday, both city staff and residents were quick to note that Project 1020 and the new proposed county homeless shelter — which would be run by the Kansas City, Missouri-based nonprofit reStart — are distinct operations.
Project 1020 operates annually for four months, from Dec. 1 to April 1, to help provide unhoused people with temporary shelter during the coldest time of the year. City rules limit Project 1020’s capacity to 30 people, and it is a congregate space, meaning guests sleep in a communal area and do not have individual rooms.
The proposed county shelter at the La Quinta Inn and Suites off I-35 would be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and would have a capacity for up to 75 people. It would give 50 single adults their own private rooms for up to three months. An additional 25 studio apartments would be set aside for those needing longer stays of up to 24 months.
At Monday’s meeting, Stephanie Boyer, reStart’s Chief Executive Officer, said Project 1020 offers people a place to stay for the night, while the county homeless shelter would give them a chance to reset their lives.
“The [new] Homeless Services Center will really allow an opportunity for folks … to engage in the services and things that they need, and really be able to stabilize, which will reduce overall calls and interventions,” she said.
The city recognizes Project 1020’s work
During the city staff’s presentation Monday about the proposed county homeless shelter, both City Manager Beccy Yocham and Community Development Director Scott McCullough highlighted the work Project 1020 does.
“(City) staff applauds the work that Project 1020 and reStart do for the unhoused, and we understand the need to address homelessness in the county,” McCullough said.
Both Yocham and McCullough noted that the county homeless shelter and Project 1020 would be located less than a mile away from each other, divided by Interstate 35. They said that proximity could compound already-existing problems created by serving unhoused people.
“This land use produces certain impacts by its nature, that can harm other uses in the area. These include loitering, panhandling, encampments and unsanitary conditions,” McCullough said. “These impacts will be magnified if the 50-unit shelter is added to the existing 30-occupant winter shelter. Not all the impacts are criminal, to be sure, but they can be disruptive to residents, business owners and patrons of surrounding businesses.”
Barb McEver, Project 1020’s founder, in an interview this week with the Post disagreed with that characterization, arguing that I-35 is too dangerous of a barrier for homeless people to cross.
“I don’t know what they’re saying, if they think that they’re going to cross over (the highway), where there’s going to be a big party in the middle of I-35?” she said. “I don’t know exactly what that has to do with anything.”
Because city administrators is prohibiting staff from commenting on the homeless shelter, the city did not grant any follow-up interviews for this story.
Citizens, officials push back against city
During the public comment section of Monday’s meeting, several Lenexa residents pushed back against the city and its characterization of Project 1020 and the impacts the presence of unhoused people can have.
“There is no documentation to support the staff’s assertion regarding the excessive utilization of police and other emergency resources,” Evie Craig said. “I’ve witnessed quite the contrary in my four years of volunteering at Project 1020.”
Addressing the city’s listed negative external impacts with unhoused people, Jim Schmidt, Project 1020’s vice president, said that if they want to avoid those perceived issues, the shelter is needed more than ever.
“I’ve devoted a great portion of my life’s energy to Project 1020. We have saved countless lives through this work, and I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished, often in the face of staunch opposition,” he said. “If you want to know how to solve (problems with homeless people), open the Homeless Services Center.”
Still, the planning commission ultimately voted unanimously to recommend denying the special use permit. The Lenexa City Council will now take up the issue at a meeting next month.
In response to Monday’s vote, Johnson County Chair Mike Kelly — who is one of the primary drivers of the project at the county level — said in a statement that the county is “weighing all its options” and still sees a dire need to address homelessness in Johnson County.
“There has never been this amount of community consensus on the problem of homelessness in Johnson County and the need to address it now, while it is at a manageable level,” he stated. “I appreciate that the majority of public opinion, as expressed by Lenexa residents, cities, the faith community, and social service providers has been supportive of this innovative approach to fill a much-needed gap in serving unhoused adults.”
Advocates are disappointed by the vote
During the meeting, Yocham and McCullough both said they wanted to be clear that homelessness is an issue in Johnson County and they don’t view unhoused people as criminals.
“Please understand that this is not an indictment of the unhoused in our area, nor an allegation that they’re all criminals,” Yocham said during the meeting. “We fully recognize that it is not a crime to be homeless.”
Ali Haynes, senior pastor at Indian Heights United Methodist Church in Overland Park and co-vice president of the interfaith Good Faith Network — which has been advocating for solutions to homelessness in Johnson County — said she thought the characterization of unhoused people by the city was reductive and antiquated.
“They actually said a lot about the character of the people that are unhoused and defining their character with the insinuation that it’s negative, it just kind of goes back to that ‘us versus them’ mentality that the county and city has had for a really long time,” she said.
McEver from Project 1020 agreed, noting the rising rate of recorded homelessness in Johnson County. In the latest United Community Services point-in-time snapshot, 250 people were without homes on the survey night, a 6% increase from January 2023 and a 44% spike from January 2015.
“When we’ve got all these people that are out there homeless, it’s an impact regardless,” McEver said. “I think it would be better to have people someplace safe where they have the opportunity to receive the different types of services of care that they might need or they might want.”
Relationship between Project 1020 and city evolves
Still, since the lawsuit was settled, McEver said communication between the shelter and the city has been smooth.
“I have a great relationship with the Lenexa Police Department,” she said. “We meet every year before the shelter opens, and discuss things and different ways to handle things and what we each expect of the other.”
She also gives Lenexa credit for being a progressive city when it comes to addressing homelessness.
“I applaud the city of Lenexa for being actually the only city (in Johnson County) that’s been willing to step up at all,” she said.
Ahead of its annual opening later this year, McEver said Project 1020 has approached the city with a request to raise its capacity from 30 to 50 people.
“Fifty is not enough, but 50 gets 20 more people into a safe place,” she said.
There’s still work to be done between city and shelter
During Lenexa City Council’s vote in 2021 to establish rules for homeless shelters in the city, there was a sense expressed by some councilmembers that Lenexa felt alone when it came to addressing homelessness in Johnson County.
“Lenexa is going to do our part in this, but everybody else has to pick up some of the load, too. We are not going to answer the homeless shelter problem for the entirety of Johnson County,” said then-Councilmember Julie Sayers at the meeting in 2021. Sayers is now Lenexa’s mayor.
Councilmember Dan Roh, who voted for the new rules, agreed with Sayers’s sentiment on the night the new codes for homeless shelters were adopted in 2021.
“I’m very much comfortable with where we’re at because I think this is a journey. I don’t think we’re making a decision tonight that is end-all. I think the journey that we’re on is one where we do need to have others to participate over time,” he said.
For the new proposed Homeless Services Center, Lenexa would not be entirely alone, at least in terms of funding its operations. ReStart has asked the county and cities to kick in per-capita funding to help pay for the shelter’s operational costs, at least in its early years.
So far, 10 cities — including Leawood, Fairway, Mission and Merriam — have approved their share of funding, with others set to consider the matter in the coming weeks.
Some of the largest cities in the county with the largest per-capita requests for funding — including Olathe and Overland Park — have yet to vote on the matter.
Following Monday’s meeting, advocates acknowledged the burden that has fallen on Lenexa in dealing with back-to-back debates over two of the only proposed shelters for unhoused people in the Kansas City metro’s most affluent county.
“I don’t really know the reasoning behind Lenexa kind of stepping up in this way. I mean, it’s great to see that they’re trying to address it,” Haynes with the Good Faith Network said. “But they need to do more, and this homeless service center would be the next right step in reaching that goal.”
McEver said there’s still more work to be done educating residents and city staff about homelessness and the need for those without shelter to have a place to go.
“It’s sad that it kind of has to fall on one city. I do feel for (city staff),” she said. “But I’d love for them to say, ‘We’re going to join together as a city and as a community and we are going to make this a positive thing, rather than negative.’ Lenexa seems to be forward-thinking and I wish they would continue that.”
The Lenexa City Council is tentatively set to take up the special use permit request at its meeting on Sept. 17.
Go deeper: As Johnson County debates shelter, Project 1020 plans for ‘same time next year’
