A bill supported by Sedgwick County and the city of Wichita is requesting $40 million from the state for homeless shelter infrastructure, and it also requires localities to enforce ordinances on camping and vagrancy. The bill is born out of a months-long effort in Sedgwick County and Wichita to address homelessness. Last December, the city and county signed a letter to the governor seeking $50 million in a state grant program to “address local homelessness infrastructure.” Wichita needs at least $20 million of those dollars to help build a new one-stop shop for people experiencing homelessness, with shelter and affordable housing units. The governor’s budget, released in January, included $40 million in grants for local governments to address and prevent housing insecurity. The county helped write a new bill to request that the money focus solely on homeless shelter infrastructure. The bill also adds language requiring governments that receive the dollars to “enforce local ordinances regarding camping and vagrancy,” which has drawn some pushback from service providers and advocates in Wichita. “It could lead to unnecessary criminalization of people experiencing homelessness who have no alternative but to camp,” wrote Sally Stang, as the chair of the Coalition to End Homelessness in Wichita and Sedgwick County, in testimony on the bill.
Source: KLC Journal
