Rik Fawcett packs his belongings and gets set to leave the Lawrence Community Shelter Friday, Jan. 2, 2015, to move into an apartment. Fawcett, who considers himself a success story, is one of many homeless residents who come to Lawrence and appreciate the services here. He previously lived in Philadelphia, Tampa, Texas and Chicago, he said.

Sean Sanders, who is homeless, eats Thanksgiving dinner 2014 at LINK. Sanders is one of many homeless residents from out of town who rely on Lawrence's wide net of social services, including free meals from LINK.

Brian Blevins talks to a guest at the Lawrence Community Shelter in this 2012 file photo. Blevins, the shelter's new executive director, was a case manager at the time.

Rik Fawcett wanted to clean up his life. That, and he got kicked out of the Chicago homeless shelter where he’d been staying between stints in jail.

“I had to find someplace to relocate,” he said. “I basically covered my eyes, stuck my finger on a map.”

With a few hundred dollars he got for selling his truck, Fawcett said he bought enough heroin to avoid getting sick from withdrawal and a Greyhound bus pass to Kansas City, Mo. After checking out the inner-city shelter there, he got back on the bus and rode a little farther, to Lawrence.

Fawcett is one of Lawrence’s homeless residents who came here from outside the county or state. In fact, he’s one of many.

For the past three years, more than half the people taken in by the Lawrence Community Shelter self-reported that they had arrived from outside Douglas County, according to the shelter. People who stay on the streets instead of the shelter also count on Lawrence’s charities and community services for meals, clothes and other needs.

Not only does Lawrence have a new homeless shelter and a wide net of community services, emergency shelters in surrounding communities are either non-existent, chronically full or, for various reasons, less appealing.

Those who provide services to the homeless have heard an argument against being so accommodating: If you build it, they will come — and stay.

“That’s a ridiculous idea … it’s based on fear,” Lawrence Community Shelter executive director Brian Blevins said. “Nobody wants to be at the shelter, I promise.”

Blevins and assistant director Brooks Dozier champion Lawrence Community Shelter programs and partnerships aimed at helping guests climb out of homelessness, no matter where they came from.

Programs aim to empower rather than enable, they said. But they acknowledge that takes a long time for some, and others never do engage.

Homeless people got that way because of complex issues, Blevins said.

“They burn bridges, and they try and find different places where they can start over,” Blevins said. “And there’s a lot of different reasons.”

•••

The closest emergency homeless shelters to Lawrence are in Topeka and Kansas City, Mo. They have hundreds of beds, but leaders say they’re out of room.

Besides the Topeka Rescue Mission in Shawnee County, none of Douglas County’s neighboring counties have comparable facilities, and neither does Wyandotte County. There is a Salvation Army family shelter in Johnson County, but it’s not a drop-in operation.

The Topeka Rescue Mission has 286 beds but routinely fills them and puts additional people on cots on the floor, executive director Barry Feaker said.

Kansas City’s largest shelter, City Union Mission, also is beyond capacity, chief development officer Dennis Chapman said.

On Wednesday night, New Year’s Eve, Chapman said he expected City Union Mission to sleep close to 650. They can always make more space for men on the floor, he said, but they’ve had to tell hundreds of families they have no room for them, and that’s been the case for several years.

Still, Feaker and Chapman said they generally don’t refer anyone to Lawrence.

For one, most homeless people have no way to get there, they said. Second, it’s usually better to help connect people with relatives or other resources.

“Those of us who have been in the work a long time realize that dumping on someone else’s town is a no-no,” Feaker said. “We will not send them to another shelter unless there’s an agreement between us and the other shelter that that’s the best for them.”

•••

The lack of nearby shelters places more responsibility on the Lawrence Community Shelter to help the homeless, whether they are from Lawrence or not, Dozier said.

“At the end of the day, the fact that they’re here makes them our responsibility,” Dozier said. “Whether these folks are coming from right in our backyard or not, they deserve a chance at a brighter future.”

Lawrence’s new homeless shelter, which opened in December 2012 at 3655 E. 25th St., has 125 beds, compared to 75 in the old downtown shelter. On cold nights, the shelter is allowed to increase capacity to 140, with overflow on the floor in common areas.

And the shelter does fill up.

It was “maxed out” last week, when overnight temperatures reached the single digits, Blevins said.

Lawrence Community Shelter is mostly privately funded but gets 14 percent of its operating revenue from the city and 8 percent from the county, according to its 2013 annual report.

Leaders say they are grateful for that funding.

They say they don’t turn away the local homeless due to lack of space. That’s partly because in-community homeless are easier to help than transients, although no two people’s situations and needs are ever the same.

Lawrence Community Shelter allows guests to stay up to 90 days. Guests who are participating in the shelter’s programs — case managers connect them with needed services such as those at Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center or housing and job placement programs — to secure permanent housing may stay longer.

Locals are familiar with the shelter, Blevins said.

“Anybody in Douglas County that is facing homelessness, they usually call us before it happens,” Blevins said. “They know we’re here.”

That includes just-released inmates with nowhere to go.

Mike Brouwer, reentry director for the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office and member of the city’s Homeless Issues Advisory Committee, said his office calls ahead when they know a reentry program inmate who needs the shelter is going to be released.

“They have always made sure they have room for reentry people,” Brouwer said.

Between inmates participating in his reentry program and others who are on their own, Brouwer guessed at least three or four a month go straight to the shelter from jail. He’s not sure how many of those are from out-of-county, though he said outsiders account for about 20 percent of the jail’s total population.

Drifters often are different, Blevins said.

“They don’t stay long,” he said. “Transients, by nature, are transient.”

Sometimes they go to the shelter for a night and a shower, but more stay a month or two then drift away again without plugging into the shelter’s services, Blevins said.

•••

Outside the shelter, Lawrence has other help for the homeless — especially downtown.

“If you’re homeless this is the city you want to come to,” said Mark Thompson, who has drifted between cities and was recently in Lawrence.

There’s multiple charities serving free meals every day of the week, the Salvation Army, the Social Service League thrift store, a good bus service and a “cool library” all within a few blocks, Thompson said.

Thompson said he usually slept outside or at friends’ homes. He has stayed at the Lawrence Community Shelter but didn’t like the chaos, he said, although Wichita, Topeka and Kansas City, Mo., shelters were “pretty rough” compared to Lawrence’s.

“Of all the shelters I’ve been in, that one’s probably the nicest,” Thompson said.

Sean Sanders came to Lawrence from Ohio at the beginning of November, chasing a job lead that never panned out.

He doesn’t like the crowd at the shelter, either, he said. So he’s been sleeping outside, using the library’s Internet to look for work and getting meals from LINK, Jubilee Cafe, the Salvation Army and occasionally a downtown restaurant that leaves leftovers in the alley.

Besides those services, he said, the people here are friendly.

“If you walk down the street and say hi to ’em they say hi back to you,” Sanders said. “They acknowledge the fact that I’m a human being.”

Lawrence Interdenominational Nutrition Kitchen, or LINK, serves free lunch four days a week in the basement of First Christian Church at 10th and Kentucky streets.

Homeless diners include people who have lived on the streets of Lawrence for years and others who came here because it was better than other towns, LINK director Greg Moore said.

Moore assumes people hear about Lawrence through word of mouth. A friend even told him he once saw notes about Lawrence posted on a bulletin board at a travel-stop in Western Kansas.

Moore has heard the argument, too, that more services attract more homeless people — and enable them to stay homeless.

“But on the other side, think about it,” Moore said, “We’re doing good. You should help people that need help.”

•••

During his brief visit to the Kansas City, Mo., shelter, Fawcett said he saw illicit drug activity — a fast-track to relapse — inside and in the neighborhood outside.

He’d seen the Lawrence Community Shelter on the Facebook page of a friend who’d stayed there, he said. He looked up the shelter and called. Staff said he could come, even high.

Case managers shepherded him into detox then into shelter programs.

It’s been four years — including a few relapses — since he first arrived at the Lawrence shelter, but if all went as planned Fawcett is not homeless today. He was scheduled to move into his own apartment on Friday.

On New Year’s Day he celebrated nine months of being clean, he said. He said shelter programs helped him get his GED, government income and a plan. He wants to attend Johnson County Community College and eventually work at the shelter.

Fawcett thinks the shelter could use more case managers, more security and more restrictions on intakes. He also thinks the shelter is “enabling” some guests who aren’t making progress.

But he is adamant that Lawrence and the shelter should keep giving outsiders a chance.

“What about the people like me that made it?” Fawcett said, tearing up from emotion.

“I was never able to get my (expletive) together. These people opened my eyes, they saved my life.”