photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

The Lawrence Community Shelter, 3655 E. 25th St., is pictured Monday, July 24, 2023.

The City of Lawrence says it isn’t operating a winter emergency shelter in downtown Lawrence this year — instead, that service will be provided at the Lawrence Community Shelter on the eastern edge of the city.

For the past two years, the city has operated a winter emergency shelter in the Community Building, 115 W. 11th St., generally from the beginning of December to early March. But city spokesperson Maureen Brady told the Journal-World Thursday that the city’s homeless outreach staff will this year focus instead on working with community partners to connect people with services and winter weather gear.

Brady said there’s no need for a separate winter emergency shelter since the Lawrence Community Shelter — located 4.5 miles away at 3655 E. 25th St. — is accessible beyond just the winter season.

“As the shelter is open year-round, community members in need can go there any night when they would prefer to have indoor, overnight shelter,” Brady said.

The Lawrence Community Shelter’s current capacity is 125, with about 25 slots allowing people to remain at the shelter 24/7 and receive case management services and the other 100 or so for overnight-only stays. Outside of periods of extreme cold last year when the winter emergency shelter remained open as a warming site during the day, the temporary shelter was only open from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. nightly, meaning people staying there had to go elsewhere during the day, much like the current format at the Lawrence Community Shelter.

The Journal-World reached out to ask about the plan for the winter emergency shelter this year because temperatures below freezing are in the forecast just a few days from now. On Saturday night, the National Weather Service is forecasting a low of 30 in Lawrence, and the low forecast for the following night is 23. Brady said the city would be sharing more information on Friday about some of the steps the homeless outreach team would be taking this weekend in advance of the cold weather.

The possibility of the Lawrence Community Shelter operating as the sole winter emergency shelter option in town this year came up at last week’s Lawrence City Commission meeting. At that meeting, which centered largely on the shelter’s new shared-governance model with the City of Lawrence and Douglas County, one of the topics was an addendum to the shelter’s funding agreement that added $150,000 in city support. Assistant City Manager Brandon McGuire said the city hoped the Lawrence Community Shelter would agree to operate the city’s winter emergency shelter as part of one of many additional requirements laid out in the addendum — that the shelter “will offer operational support to other emergency and temporary sheltering systems within the city.”