To the editor:

Federal grant money is the main source of money to finance the services for those in poverty. The community needs a significant population to be eligible for this money. In this area, Lawrence is the community with the population size to do this grant writing, and it should provide services for rural communities around it. This is how it is done in comparable communities. It is common practice for the people experiencing homelessness in a less-populated county to come to a more populated county to get services, and this populated county simply includes the numbers in their grant writing and gets more money.

Therefore, we need more facts from Mike Wildgen’s statement in Friday’s Journal-World article concerning Lawrence’s attractive homeless services. Wildgen received secondhand information that a homeless person was driven to Lawrence by the sheriff’s department from an adjacent county because we have better services here.

I invite any community members, including Wildgen, to come sit in the Community Drop-In Center, Lawrence Open Shelter or the Salvation Army’s gymnasium. I have done it. You would not be talking about our attractive services if you did it. The services are below average for comparable communities. We could be doing more for our rural poor also, but we are not. I urge our political leaders to stop ignoring our poverty.

Janeine Cardin,

Lawrence