Lawrence has a housing crisis. Affordable housing has evaporated over the past decade, further emphasizing cracks in the local care economy.

The city’s lagging attempts at progressive houseless outreach have consumed the patience and resources allotted to them. This is made even more critical by the uncertainty of surviving the Kansas winter without shelter, and lack of safety in the camps that has culminated in six deaths within this community since March of last year.

Now members of the business community have decided to step in to solve Lawrence’s “vagrancy” crisis, claiming the city has failed. In an email sent to Journal-World, the fledgling nonprofit describes itself as 22 members of Lawrence’s entrepreneurial class, and named themselves “Lawrence Cares.”

Lawrence Cares firstly points to the need to provide substance abuse support to the unhoused population, with “openness and without judgment,” — without any mention of the other systemic drivers of houselessness.

In absence of other ideas of how houseless individuals result as such — it feels pointed as if to say that the illness is distinctive to the houseless person, and is ubiquitous among the community. People can be unhoused due to job loss, mental illnesses including PTSD, racial inequities, differences in gender/sexuality, domestic violence and many other factors.

Their main idea, the Homeward Bound Project, is described as “a centralized navigation center for people to access social service agencies and evaluating options to return unhoused people who aren’t originally from Douglas County to their home communities.”

With the mantra “communities should take care of their own,” the nonprofit will fund the deportation of houseless individuals, apparently to lessen the load on Lawrence. One wonders what factors distinguish a Lawrencian, among a population that will struggle to provide proof of residency or any documentation.

This project operates on the assumption that houseless people do not have roots, family, friends and communities that keep them here. And if there are those who may not, will all “outsiders” be denied local resources, even while the death count rises?

The Journal-World article provides context for this project by linking a post about a woman in crisis who was driven into Lawrence by Anderson County police to receive services at Lawrence Community Shelter. When she was later arrested by Lawrence police after allegedly being naked in the middle of Vermont Street, Police Chief Rich Lockhart called this “passing the buck” and further warned of “predators” coming to the city on their own because they heard of Lawrence’s services for the houseless.

“They are a different breed of person,” Lockhart said. “If you are seeing some unfamiliar people, be a little cautious.”

This moralistic commentary, like Lawrence Cares’ statements regarding “vagrants,” is exactly what breeds anti-houseless rhetoric and criminalizes individuals on claims of otherness. These words reinforce the historical slowness of progressing U.S. communities to being true to equity for every person on this land, regardless of circumstance.

Lawrence Cares’ email notes a collaboration with local police, saying the nonprofit will coordinate with and advocate for its policies and enforcement.

It seems that Lawrence Cares, in partnership with LPD, will enact a plan to severely traumatize a community that already experiences this on the daily, local scale.

A group capable of supporting unhoused people financially, pushing for lower rent and employing folks with a living wage could be powerfully impactful. Released from constant scarcity, they would be safe to pursue long-term healing.

But Lawrence Cares’ statement makes it clear that their only worry is property value.

While they commiserate with folks operating under the same false assumption that the disappearance of these people would benefit them as business owners — in reality, the excommunication of community members by Lawrence Cares would sink their profits, once citizens of this community discover what has been done to their neighbors.

Does Lawrence Cares have an interest in the livelihoods of persons outside their customer base or the climbing of their profits? Can Lawrence take care of anyone?

— Lyss Bezner is a local activist and artist affiliated with the Housing Coalition, Trans Lawrence Coalition and the Solidarity Library. They serve on the ECM Board of Directors and work within the Solidarity Library to organize community growth opportunities relating to their research on race, class and gender studies in the U.S.