Activists who contend Johnson County officials need to do more to find housing for those living on the streets rallied outside a homeless shelter in Lenexa on Thursday.
The protest organized by the Good Faith Network channeled frustration that the county hasn’t marshaled a comprehensive plan to help people without housing.
“This is happening in Johnson County, my friends, one of the richest counties in America,” Tim Suttle, who helps run the Good Faith Networks campaign against homelessness, said outside the Project 1020 cold weather shelter.
Suttle, a pastor at Redemption Church in Olathe, said the county makes it too hard to help the homeless.
“Every time we’d try to open a new cold weather shelter or take care of homeless people, we kept getting shut down by city governments or county governments.” Suttle said. “It’s a lot of red tape, regulations, permits, stuff like that.”
The Project 1020 shelter, one of the few in the county, can only offer 30 beds at a time. Shelter volunteers say the demand is much bigger than that.
They blame local government restrictions, in part, for the deaths of at least six residents once served by the shelter in the past two years.
“We must start holding our county officials accountable for the lack of support systems for people experiencing homelessness in our county,” said Jeff Smith, a Project 1020 case manager.
The rally concluded with a call to every Johnson County commissioner to meet with GFM representatives to discuss the creation of such a county-wide initiative to combat homelessness.
County commissioners responded to the organizers' criticisms in a Dec. 2 press release saying they planned to fill a new Housing Coordinator position by the start of 2023.
Additionally, county officials said the Board of County Commissioners has allocated $60,000 for a feasibility study for a community shelter in the county.
