As the Lawrence Community Shelter looks for a new location to expand, a new report is showing more signs that the shelter is quickly outgrowing its downtown location.

The annual report for the shelter shows that 632 different individuals used the shelter in 2008. That’s up about 7 percent from 2007, and up about 30 percent from 2005.

The numbers are adding fuel to the efforts to find a new location for the shelter, which is currently at 10th and Kentucky streets.

“My hope is that in the next 90 days or so, we will receive a recommendation from the shelter on a place where they would like to move,” Mayor Rob Chestnut said on Wednesday. “Their current location is just a challenging situation.”

The shelter’s report also highlights that the number of police calls to the shelter decreased by 28 percent in 2008, despite the larger number of people using the facility. But the statistics also show that the location is still a frequent destination for police officers.

In 2008, there were 105 nonmedical calls for service at the shelter. That’s down from 145 calls in 2007. Unlike in past years, the report doesn’t detail the type of disturbances police were called to the shelter to investigate.

Loring Henderson, executive director of the shelter, said a part-time security officer was added to the staff of the shelter in 2008. He said he believed that played a role in reducing the police call numbers. He also said the shelter installed security cameras near the end of the year, which might help push numbers down some in 2009.

City commissioners required the hiring of the security officer as a condition of giving the shelter a permit to operate downtown. Chestnut said the numbers were a move in the right direction, but thought they could improve more at a new site.

“There’s still a lot of calls there,” Chestnut said. “There’s no getting around that. You would hope that a new location would have more buffering around it, which would help.”

The shelter’s current use permit to operate at 10th and Kentucky expires in April 2010. Chestnut said he would like for the shelter to have a new location ready to open by that time.

Henderson said he’s currently examining a particular site, which he declined to identify. He said he previously has been close to deals on two other sites before obstacles emerged.

“Usually the issues involve neighborhood support and costs,” Henderson said.

In other news from the report:

• The shelter for the first time provided a breakdown of where individuals served by the shelter previously were housed. The shelter has long faced accusations that it is a magnet for the homeless from other communities. The shelter has said that’s not the case. The new numbers show the majority — about 75 percent — of people served are from Douglas County, but the report also shows more than 100 people per year come from outside the county.

In particular, the report says 425 people gave their previous address as Lawrence, 56 listed it as Eudora, and 151 listed it as somewhere outside of Douglas County.

• The shelter helped 37 people move into permanent housing during the year. Another 38 people were approved for housing but are awaiting a housing unit to become available.

• On the job front, the shelter helped 46 people find a permanent job during the year, while another 21 found temporary jobs.

• The number of ambulance calls to the shelter decreased in 2008. The shelter had 45 health-related calls for the year, down from 60 in 2007.