photo by: Shawn Valverde/Journal-World

Tents at homeless camps are pictured in North Lawrence behind Johnny’s Tavern on Monday, March 11, 2024.

The City of Lawrence will be taking some cues from nearby Topeka as city leaders consider their next steps in shuttering unsanctioned homeless camps.

Misty Bosch-Hastings, the director of the City of Lawrence’s Homeless Solutions Division, spoke with the Journal-World about the city’s plan for shutting down such campsites, noting that doing so won’t be a process that happens immediately.

“As far as timeline, I think it’s going to be done in phases,” Bosch-Hastings told the Journal-World. “Every camp’s going to have to be done in phases, and the reason is you just can’t go in there and say, ‘OK, where are you going?’ It’s a process.”

That process is one that Bosch-Hastings is especially familiar with thanks to her prior work in Topeka. While working in that community as an employee with the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, Bosch-Hastings was part of a homeless task force that in early 2020 helped relocate the residents of a so-called “tent city” near the railroad. Local reporting from the time noted that about 45 people were living in Topeka’s tent city before it was shut down, but Bosch-Hastings said at its peak it had upward of 120 residents.

In that case, Bosch-Hastings said she went looking for funding to support a six-month housing voucher program. Once that funding was secured, the task force was able to get all of the camp’s residents moved out within 60 days, most of them into some type of housing.

Bosch-Hastings said that’s a model she’s using as an example, though this time around is different in that Lawrence doesn’t have all the housing readily available to accommodate everyone who’s currently camping.

Bosch-Hastings said she’s been trying to think outside the box in navigating that issue, including ideas like initiating a “warm handoff” with neighboring communities that may have more inventory available to house people like veterans while Lawrence agencies continue to provide them with case management services.

Starting a similar task force here in Lawrence is another strategy Bosch-Hastings plans to model, which she previously described to the Journal-World as a key part of the equation in addressing homelessness at its source. She said the first task the Lawrence group would undertake would be closing encampments and getting people sheltered.

“We just walked alongside every person and figured out what was the best plan for them to exit homelessness,” Bosch-Hastings said of the Topeka task force. “That’s why having all the different voices at the table is really going to be meaningful (here), too, because I alone or my two staff members alone cannot walk alongside everybody from start to finish.”

Work has been in progress to phase out camping, sanctioned or otherwise, at the North Lawrence site since late last year, Bosch-Hastings said.

Bosch-Hastings and other city leaders have for some time maintained that work to actively close camps won’t actually begin until additional sheltering options like The Village — the community of 64-square-foot Pallet cabins for people experiencing homelessness at 256 N. Michigan St. — are operational. Most recently, staff with the Lawrence Community Shelter, which will operate the community, has been interviewing potential residents. But as of Monday, LCS hasn’t announced when those residents will be moving into the community.

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A city spokesperson, Cori Wallace, also answered some of the Journal-World’s questions about unsanctioned camping last week and said that the city is working with a number of organizations, advocates and professionals to connect with members of the unhoused community and assist them in developing a next steps plan.

Wallace said the ongoing plan includes outreach efforts, connections to next steps, exploration of options and, finally, a moving process assisted by various professionals and city staff.

In terms of what those next steps for current campers could be, Wallace said one option on the table could include a place at The Village, which is intended to be a high-barrier sheltering option for specific groups like veterans and the elderly. Wallace said the Lawrence Community Shelter’s developing programs will be another option that would be available to a wider range of people.

photo by: Shawn Valverde/Journal-World

Tents of an unsanctioned homeless camp dot the trees behind the Amtrak station in Lawrence on Monday, March 11, 2024.

Wallace added that exploring other alternatives to staying in campsites is part of the case management process needed to support phasing out both unsanctioned campsites and operations at Camp New Beginnings, the city-supported camp in North Lawrence. As of Monday, New Beginnings has been open for nearly a year and a half.

Having those alternatives available is what city staff has previously said would be necessary for them to enforce Lawrence’s longtime law prohibiting camping on most public property. City leaders have previously expressed that the ordinance isn’t enforceable based on the 2018 ruling of a federal appellate court that found the city of Boise, Idaho, couldn’t prohibit public camping if there weren’t available shelter beds in the community.

“The city ordinances support our next steps as a community,” Wallace told the Journal-World. “Because we have expanded sheltering options that can address the needs of the community, we can draw down camping in the (central business district) and outset camping locations when we begin assisting in moving campers from unsustainable (and) unsafe locations.”

The city is currently facing a lawsuit from a group of Lawrence businesses including Johnny’s Tavern, which is located directly in front of the city’s support site in North Lawrence. The 24 plaintiffs in the suit are asking a judge to declare Camp New Beginnings and an unsanctioned camp behind the Amtrak Depot in East Lawrence public nuisances. That lawsuit is still working its way through the legal process, most recently at a case management conference last week.