Hope Faith homeless shelter $7M grant rejected for now
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Hope Faith Homeless Day Center had asked for more than $7 million to create the city’s first 24/7 low-barrier shelter. Wednesday though, all the proposals for the shelter project were rejected, and the process will basically start over for another 30 days.
Hope Faith CEO Doug Langner went to the Finance, Governance, and Public Safety Committee meeting Wednesday. He made a quick speech to his supporters outside the council chambers, frustrated that the resolution just for his entity isn’t moving forward right now.
Many of his listeners use the facility he’s in charge of.
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“We’re going to fight. God will watch over us, watch over you, and we’re going to keep going,” he said, “So, thank you for being here. God bless you.”
The $7.1 million he’s looking for is federal grant money. The ordinance giving that money to his entity was created in January of this year. In the last three months though, it’s hit a roadblock.
“Locating one shelter in one part of the city is not a solution,” Columbus Park resident Jim Ferraro said to the committee Wednesday.
Columbus Park is just north of where the center currently is in the Paseo West neighborhood, at Admiral and Virginia. Ferraro said there are probably other shelters in our area who could do as good of a job as Hope Faith.
“I don’t know. I haven’t surveyed the vast number of shelters out there, the number of services they provide,” he said in an interview with FOX4 after speaking to the committee.
“But my comments were, this one-size fits all is simply not going to work. We need to look at other opportunities, and there needs to be transparency, and there needs to be collaboration city wide and not just concentrated in one area of the city. I think if you look at geographically a large number of people assisting the unhoused population happen to be located on the northern part of downtown. Northeast, if you look at where City Union Mission is, it’s on the northern part of downtown.”
Langner, on the other hand, says his entity wants to become a low-barrier shelter, meaning it wants to get people off the streets and welcome them as they are.
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“I think that they’re trying to create something that isn’t there, of a bunch of providers that lined up,” Langner said to reporters after talking to his supporters. “Had there been, they already applied, and if there are others, we’re always willing to talk to them.”
The resolution that passed out of committee Wednesday calls for a reissuing of a similar Request for Proposal (RFP) that’ll remain open for 30 days.
Mayor Quinton Lucas, who sponsored the original ordinance that would have given Hope Faith the $7 million and also was a part of the resolution to hold off on awarding them the money now, says Langner’s entity could still be awarded all the money. It depends on who submits proposals.
