East Lawrence residents and Salvation Army leaders began to come to a compromise Monday that would allow a new homeless shelter to be built near 19th Street and Haskell Avenue.

Salvation Army leaders – at a special neighborhood meeting convened by Mayor Mike Amyx – worked hard to assure residents of the area that a new 66-bed shelter would be significantly different from the organization’s current facility near 10th and New Hampshire streets.

“Everybody will have an agreement that they’ll have to sign with us to stay at the facility,” said Wesley Dalberg, the Lawrence administrator for The Salvation Army. “It is not a warehousing situation like we provide now.”

Part of the agreement will be that all shelter residents will have to meet with a case manager at least once per week to work on ways to end their homelessness, and will be required to actively attend classes, seek a job or receive appropriate treatments.

Potential compromise

But a key part of the potential compromise is that Salvation Army leaders tentatively agreed to put several promises in writing and have them attached to a city-approved site plan. Among the promises would be that The Salvation Army:

l would never seek to house prison parolees in the facility;

l would create a new advisory council that would have strong representation from the neighborhood;

l would always keep the property neat, clean and well-groomed;

l would never knowingly allow the facility to become a “hang-out” of any group or individual, and will not knowingly allow any illegal activities to take place on or around the building.

The two groups agreed to get together within the next month to go over specific language spelling out the promises that would be attached to the city site plan. City commissioners are expected to act on the new site plan before the end of May.

“This is a good place for us to start,” Amyx said of the potential for a compromise.

Commissioners nearly two years ago approved plans for the shelter and a Salvation Army service center to be located the intersection of Haskell Avenue and Lynn Street. But the Salvation Army has not yet raised the needed $3.5 million to start construction, and their approval is set to expire in late May.

Having written promises as part of an official city document was a major point that neighborhood residents said they wanted before the shelter was approved again.

Neighbors’ concerns

“We don’t want to replicate the scene at New Hampshire Street,” said Michael Almon, a Brook Creek Neighborhood Assn. member. “We don’t want people who are inebriated being turned away when it is 25 degrees at night and wandering through the neighborhood. We just want to be sure that the neighborhood in the future can know that certain issues will be off the table.”

Salvation Army leaders immediately agreed to remove the possibility of ever using the site to contract with the Kansas Department of Corrections to house prison parolees. A previous Salvation Army administrator had said last year that he was considering such a program for the facility. But regional leaders of The Salvation Army backed off that statement almost immediately. On Monday night, The Salvation Army said there were no plans to use the facility for a parolee program.

“That was just an unfortunate statement that was made at that time,” said Dick Zinn, a local attorney who is a member of The Salvation Army’s board. “The advisory board had never talked about that. We can unequivocally say this facility won’t be used for that purpose.”

Other questions

But questions still do remain about other uses. Salvation Army leaders said they were still considering using the site for a three-day-per-week open lunch program that would serve anyone in the community. The current facility has such a program that feeds a number of homeless people.

East Lawrence residents have expressed concern that problems may arise if a large number of downtown homeless people regularly walk between downtown and the new site to receive meals.

Salvation Army leaders, though, said the lunch program at the new shelter may attract a different clientele. Rebecca Simmons, the divisional social services director for The Salvation Army, said she anticipated the new meal program would attract more low-income families from the area than it would homeless people.

Dalberg said a greater emphasis on families would be a major theme for the new shelter. The new shelter will have four family units with a total of 16 beds that will be used exclusively for people who are homeless and have children. He said that some of the other 50 beds in the facility may be converted into family space as well.

“We think there really is a great need for that type of space in Lawrence,” Dalberg said.