photo by: Mike Yoder

Lawrence Community Shelter, 3655 E. 25th St.

After more than three years of limited capacity, the Lawrence Community Shelter will soon be expanding to serve 125 people.

The LCS was for many years the community’s primary provider of emergency shelter, but it significantly reduced its capacity in the summer of 2019 due to budget issues, and amid the COVID-19 pandemic and staffing issues it has continued to operate at a capacity of 50 or fewer people at its building in eastern Lawrence. Past shelter leaders also cited the shelter’s housing first approach, which focuses on quickly housing people, as a reason for the lower capacity.

The City of Lawrence announced the expansion Thursday on its Facebook page. The post states that some of the city’s Municipal Services & Operations and Parks & Recreation employees spent the day with the city’s partners from the LCS “making improvements” that will enable LCS to provide additional overnight shelter beds. Photos included with the post depict additional beds being set up at the shelter, but the post does not further specify how the shelter will be able to increase its capacity.

LCS has the capacity to house 125 people generally and 140 during cold weather, and before the budget issues in 2019 would routinely meet that capacity (at some point, the shelter disassembled some of its beds). Melanie Valdez, LCS interim executive director, told city leaders in October 2022 that increasing capacity at the shelter would take more money and more staffing.

In February, the city reported that it had recently begun discussions to build a much stronger connection between the city and LCS and “formally explore options to leverage the assets and capacity of each organization to the greatest extent.” Plans called for city leadership and staff from the two organizations to work to analyze and develop a plan to expand and improve services to more people over the next six months. The report went on to state that recent discussion with LCS and other key community partners included the city assuming “a much tighter relationship (including potentially full merger)” with LCS.

The city’s Facebook post states that LCS’ capacity will be increased to 125 beginning March 13, which is the day after the city’s winter emergency shelter at the Community Building in downtown Lawrence is set to close for the season. The post does not indicate any change in relationship between the city and the LCS, but it does reference collaboration between the two organizations.

“Thanks to the Lawrence Community Shelter for their collaboration and efforts to make these additional shelter beds a reality!” the post states.

The LCS also made an announcement about the change on its Facebook page, stating that as previously announced, the shelter was working in partnerships with the city, adding that it looked forward to all future plans that the city and Douglas County have to address homelessness.

“Thanks to a lot of hard work from the city workers and our staff here at LCS, we are making a lot of changes to increase our capacity (to) offer emergency shelter services to the most vulnerable in our community,” the post states.