photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

Douglas County commissioners meet with staff and partners of the 'A Place for Everyone' plan on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026.

This year will mark two years since the city and county adopted their joint strategic plan to end chronic homelessness – and although staff reported significant progress, there’s still a long way to go.

The five-year plan, known as ‘A Place for Everyone,’ was approved by both the City of Lawrence and Douglas County in 2024, as the Journal-World reported. By 2028, the plan aims to achieve functional zero homelessness through policy, system and environmental changes, ensuring all county residents have access to safe, accessible, attainable, and affordable housing, with homelessness becoming rare and brief.

The County Commission’s meeting agenda said the estimated five-year cost to fully implement the plan is approximately $267.8 million. While portions of the plan’s costs are already reflected in existing budgets across the city, county and partner organizations, there is currently no dedicated funding source identified to fully implement ‘A Place for Everyone.’

At a work session on Wednesday, commissioners were briefed on the accomplishments, efforts currently underway, challenges and changing circumstances related to the plan. The plan is split up into six different focus areas – lived experience, affordable housing, supportive housing, systems, emergency services and shelter, and community engagement.

Examples of initiatives that have supported the focus areas in the plan include Douglas County contributing one-time capital project funding for developments such as Delmar Place, as well as ongoing program support, including the Flexible Housing Pool supportive housing voucher program. The city has provided funding for both construction and operations of transitional housing projects, such as The Village and Pallet housing operated by the Lawrence Community Shelter. The city also supports additional initiatives each year through the Affordable Housing Trust Fund Grant in collaboration with public and private affordable housing developers.

Here is how staff and community partners are tackling efforts in each focus area of the ‘A Place for Everyone’ plan as well as initiatives staff are planning to focus on in 2026:

• Affordable housing

Some of the key strategies that have been completed in this area include making recommendations for land development code that reduce barriers to affordable housing development; enforcing the City of Lawrence’s source-of-income nondiscrimination ordinance; and creating a planned strategy for researching and acquiring funding sources to bring more affordable housing projects.

Erika Zimmerman, executive director of Lawrence Habitat for Humanity, said staff are making efforts towards a 10-year community affordable housing plan.

“When we started working and putting together the (‘A Place for Everyone’ plan), there was recognition from everyone that while this is a great plan in the short term, we needed something more of a long term, and that’s where this plan strategy came from,” Zimmerman said.

She added that work is underway toward that framework, but staff are also waiting until the city’s new housing affordability study is completed. This study is intended to take a more in-depth look at the city’s housing needs to update the 2018 housing market analysis, and it would provide a fresh perspective of the housing market after the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Supportive housing

Jill Jolicoeur, assistant county administrator, said from 2023-2026, there have been 221 supportive housing units that received committed funding, and 17 of those units are in 2026. This represents 60% of the total need that was identified in a 2022 supportive housing needs assessment of Douglas County.

In addition, there are collaborative efforts currently underway to provide expanded supportive housing capital investments and services for unhoused women and children.

“We don’t have a family shelter, we don’t have enough supportive housing services for women and children,” Jolicoeur said. She added that examples of addressing this concern in the community has been the Cardinal Housing Network, which has actively been working on two housing developments for women in recovery and their children, as the Journal-World reported. The homes will be divided up into several apartment spaces where women and their families can stay for up to two years.

• Emergency services and shelter

As a part of the work in this focus area, the Lawrence Community Shelter opened Pallet24 last summer, which is behind the existing shelter and offers 48 beds. Efforts like this have also helped stabilize winter weather operations. In 2025, there were zero weather-related deaths for the first time in over two decades.

Last year’s point-in-time count – providing a snapshot of the number of both unsheltered and sheltered unhoused individuals in a community on a single night in January – found that Douglas County reduced its unsheltered homelessness by 63% in one year.

A strategy that has not progressed, but remains a goal of the plan, is to explore options in providing specific emergency shelter services to women and children. It has been difficult due to insufficient funding for a dedicated women and family shelter.

• Lived experience

This is a new focus area of the plan, which was previously called “equity and inclusion,” Jolicoeur said. She said the change was to reflect how it is shared between the city, the county and other community partners.

The main objective for this area of the plan is to establish a Lived Experience Advisory Board by 2027 that provides feedback and diverse perspectives from individuals with lived experience of past or present homelessness and housing insecurity.

To achieve this, partners will be working to recruit up to 12 members with a diversity of lived experiences of homelessness; establish bylaws along with commitment expectation; and establish feedback areas and methods for policies, programs and services in Douglas County.

• Systems

The county launched a dashboard that is updated monthly in May 2025 providing real-time data on homelessness, tracking individuals who have accessed homelessness services, such as emergency shelters, transitional housing, safe havens and street outreach, within the past 90 days.

In addition, Douglas County was recognized for meeting a standard of tracking people experiencing homelessness on a “by-name” basis. 105 Inside: Built for Zero, a nonprofit initiative, announced that Douglas County has become the 88th community in the country to keep a real-time, person-specific list of everyone experiencing homelessness, including those sheltered and unsheltered. In addition, the county is the second community to achieve this “by-name data standard” in the state of Kansas.

• Community engagement

One of the strategies was to send out a survey to evaluate how informed the community is about ‘A Place for Everyone.’ As the Journal-World reported, in the fall of 2024, the market research firm ETC Institute conducted a community survey across Douglas County, and found that in total, 411 surveys were submitted by county residents. According to the report on the survey, 45% of respondents described themselves as “very informed” or “informed” about the plan.

Staff are also planning to participate in community meetings every year to share progress on the plan.

CHALLENGES

Some challenges in implementing the work of the plan have been developing a five-year supportive housing capital improvement plan with an operating budget, which would primarily be used to fund one-time funding for these housing projects. Jolicoeur said it’s been difficult to move this strategy forward because there has been a lot of uncertainty at the federal level in regards to funding, and it has also been difficult to acquire property for future development.

Jolicoeur said there are equity issues for women, and staff want to explore additional opportunities. She said there is the organization, Artists Helping the Homeless, that exclusively serves men exiting the Douglas County Correctional Facility, but there isn’t a parallel program for women.

IN OTHER BUSINESS, COMISSIONERS:

• Deferred action on a contract with UnitedHealthcare to provide administrative services for Douglas County’s self-funded employee health care plan, which would become effective June 1, 2026. Commissioners did not take action because they wanted more information from staff.

Douglas County uses a self-funded health plan, paying medical claims directly while contracting with outside vendors for plan administration and stop-loss coverage. Under this structure, the county can either use a third-party administrator or contract directly with an insurance company to manage claims and provider networks.

Since about 2001, the county has used Luminare as its third-party administrator. After a 2025 market review by consulting firm Willis Towers Watson, UnitedHealthcare’s direct contract proposal was identified as the best value, offering stronger network discounts and an estimated $434,000 in savings, along with plans to shift oral surgery benefits to Delta Dental to expand local provider access.

• Authorized the emergency communications director to enter into a contract with Motorola for 10 APX radio consoles – replacing eight existing consoles and adding two new ones – along with APX6000 over-the-air rekeying capability and related system commissioning to support the upgraded radio system and the move to the new Public Safety Building. The total project cost is $1,306,992.

The radio consoles are the workstations dispatchers use to manage emergency communications. The consoles are expected to support future expansion, daily operations and increased demand related to the FIFA 2026 World Cup. Since moving an operating radio system is challenging, the new system will be set up in the Public Safety Building while the current system continues operating.

• Approved a conditional use permit for the storage of landscaping equipment associated with a property owner’s construction business, Rightway Solutions LLC, at 1805 East 200 Road. The equipment storage use was approved as a conditional use permit in 2023 and has not expired; however, commissioners are considering a new permit on Wednesday to modify the site layout. The proposed change relocates the equipment storage area from the north-central portion of the property to the far west side.

• Held an executive session to consult with the county counselor on a personnel matter related to non-elected personnel.