Officials and residents in Wichita, Kansas, are looking to explore a “multi-agency campus” or “one-stop-shop” approach to homeless services.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Haven for Hope in San Antonio operates such a campus, offering a multitude of social services on the same site where it maintains transitional housing. The group’s operating model has been credited with reducing unsheltered homelessness in San Antonio’s downtown area by 77%.
The City of Dallas has not yet experimented with the “one-stop-shop” model employed by Haven for Hope despite the strategy polling favorably among residents. Some local stakeholders are looking to bring the model to Dallas, but it remains to be seen whether City officials will embrace the approach.
Meanwhile, some 75% of Dallas residents believe homelessness, vagrancy, and panhandling continue to be “major” problems throughout the city.
Here’s some of what The Journal | A Civic Issues Magazine, a publication by the Kansas Leadership Center, reported on the “one-stop-shop” approach and the different examples of it in the United States:
Residents showed up to public meetings in droves with a myriad of questions when they learned Wichita’s first multi-agency campus and center for homeless resources would likely go into a former elementary school in their neighborhood.
Common questions included: Where is this idea coming from? What will security look like? What does low-barrier shelter mean?
One of the things they were told is that Wichita won’t be the blueprint.
The multiagency center, or MAC, will be new to Wichita, but the concept of it — a dual resource center and shelter — has been tried and tested for years in cities across the country, from Eugene, Oregon to Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Since the June announcement few developments have been announced. The most recent progression is city council voting to enter an option agreement on July 2, meaning that the former elementary school is officially being explored as a potential site for the MAC. The future timeline remains murky, but officials are aiming to have emergency shelter beds ready for the winter season.
In hopes of answering residents’ questions, The Journal connected with similarly-operating navigation centers in three cities — San Antonio, Phoenix and Reno, Nevada — to learn more about how their resource got started and the impact it has made on its community.