Bill promises money to address homelessness in Kansas with 'strings attached'

TOPEKA (KSNT) - A bill in front of Kansas lawmakers would earmark money to help local governments tackle homelessness issues, but there are some "strings attached," according to state leaders.

"Yeah, there's several policies," said Rep. Francis Awerkamp, Chair of the House Committee on Welfare Reform." I'm sure we'll have a lot of people coming in to testify, a lot of the cities, and they'll be able to explain the effects of those strings attached to the funding."

The state's House Committee on Welfare Reform will hold a hearing on HB 2723 on Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. It would create a grant fund that would be administered by Kansas Department for
Aging and Disability Services (KDADS) to create homeless shelter infrastructure and a program
to administer the funding and contracts. Funding awarded to a local government would be matched by the local government receiving the funding based on a dollar-for-dollar match received.

However, Awerkamp mentioned other policies included in the bill, while joining Topeka political show, "Inside Kansas Politics."

"There's a lot of policy parts of that bill as far of requirements for those cities and counties to enforce their laws. There's clawbacks," he said.

Awerkamp was joined by Devon Kurtz, Public Safety Policy Director for Austin-based research group "Cicero Institute." The group has pushed for enforcement of public camping bans in several states.

Just across the state line, the Missouri Supreme Court struck down its ban on a technicality last year.

Kurtz responded to pushback regarding the policies. Some opponents argue that public camping ban policies don't address the issue, but rather hide it.

"I think that there's a misunderstanding of that kind of legislation, even the use of 'criminalizing it,'" Kurtz said. "It's not about adding something to the criminal statutes. It's about empowering law enforcement to intervene when an individual is in crisis."

Representatives for local organizations UCS JoCo and MESI, Inc. also joined to give the perspective of what's going on from the ground in Kansas. They argued for more support for housing.

Christina Ashie-Guidry, Director of Policy and Planning for UCS JoCo, weighed in on whether a compromise could be reached on the bill coming up for a hearing.

"I think we would love to see the $40 million for infrastructure go to housing services and I think there's a lot of ways that we can work on that...," Ashie-Guidry said.

Ashie-Guidry said there are also other actions lawmakers can also take to address housing issues in the state.

"We really have to talk about maintaining housing. We have homes that need to be maintained, need to be improved. We have an awful lot of retirees who are living in this aging housing and would love to age-in-place, but they don't have the money or the physical ability to maintain that themselves,"

Ashie-Guidry said the state housing trust fund helps with this issue, but it doesn't get any state dollars; she said it only gets federal funds. She said they're proposing that the state would create a revenue source from the state to go to the state housing trust fund to help maintain the homes, so that affordable housing remains affordable.

"When we're talking about acting upstream to stem the tide, there are so many things we can do," she said. "Really anything that's targeting our vulnerable Kansans who are most likely to lose housing."

To watch the full interview on Inside Kansas Politics, click here.