Wednesday, April 18, 2007
The Lawrence Community Shelter can stay in its current building at 10th and Kentucky streets for at least three more years after the city commission extended its permit Tuesday night.
Voting 4-1, the commission gave the shelter a three-year permit instead of a one-year one, which was favored by some neighbors of the shelter who wanted to speed up its search for a new location.
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To say it’s this great relationship with the neighborhood, it’s not true. It’s my neighborhood, and I want to be able to live in my neighborhood with some comfort and some safety.
-Peter Zacharias
Loring Henderson, the shelter’s director, said the shelter would need longer than a year to find a new location, which he hope will be larger and more handicapped-accessible. He said the search was difficult because the city was filled with residential neighborhoods that would oppose a homeless shelter nearby.
“There’s really no ‘other side of the tracks’ in Lawrence,” Henderson said. “Every neighborhood is pretty hot in real estate terms.”
Henderson said the shelter tried to cooperate with the nearby Oread Neighborhood,which lies between campus and downtown, by communicating with property owners and instituting disciplinary rules.
But Peter Zacharias, who owns a house at 10th and Ohio streets, said people in the neighborhood had had homeless people follow them home, accost them and cause them to worry for their safety.
“To say it’s this great relationship with the neighborhood, it’s not true,” Zacharias said. “It’s my neighborhood, and I want to be able to live in my neighborhood with some comfort and some safety.”
Other neighborhood members who spoke at the commission meeting said they’d had problems with trespassing and defecation in yards and had seen people near the shelter using illegal drugs.
Dustin Allen, Topeka junior, spoke at the meeting to support the shelter. He said his time volunteering at the shelter had eliminated misconceptions that most homeless people were dangerous drug users.
“Before I went to the shelter, I was afraid of homelessness,” Allen said. “That changed the day I walked in there two and a half years ago.”
Allen said the shelter provided many valuable services for the homeless.
During 2006, Lawrence Community Shelter helped 21 people find jobs and 27 people move into housing. It served 376 people during the last six months of 2006.
Commissioner Dennis “Boog” Highberger said the shelter and the city would need to work to find a location for the shelter that would meet the needs of the shelter and the surrounding area.
“Even when we find a new location, wherever it goes there are going to be unsatisfied neighbors,” Highberger said. “I think we need to make sure this doesn’t unnecessarily burden any neighborhood.”
Kansan staff writer Matt Erickson can be contacted at merickson@kansan.com.
— Edited by Stacey Couch
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