By Andrew Gaug, Johnson County Post
After a more than six-hour council meeting that stretched past midnight, a majority of Lenexa City Council rejected the plan to buy a former La Quinta Inn and turn it into a homeless services center. Advocates said it was a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity to address the county’s homelessness crisis.
After almost a year of discussions at both the county and city level, the Lenexa City Council voted on Tuesday to deny a special use permit for a proposed Johnson County homeless shelter off Interstate 35.
A more than six-hour council meeting that stretched past midnight ended with a majority of the governing body agreeing that plans for the shelter, also known as the Homeless Services Center, were too flawed to approve a permit needed for it to operate.
“I think it creates more of a downside than upside,” Councilmember Chris Herron said.
The 5-2 vote followed the recommendation of city staff to deny the permit, as well as the planning commission’s recommendation for denial last month.
Councilmembers Melanie Arroyo and Courtney Eiterich cast the two votes in favor of approving the permit. Councilmember Joe Karlin was absent.
COVID relief money would have provided funding
In late 2023, Johnson County commissioners approved a plan to use $6 million of federal coronavirus relief funds to buy the 2.6-acre property at Interstate 35 and 95th Street where there is currently at La Quinta Inn and Suites and an adjacent former Denny’s restaurant.
Additional costs for due diligence and repairs raised the price tag to an estimated $10.5 million, all of it paid for with federal funds.
The county’s plan was to turn the hotel into a living space for unhoused people so they could get the services they need to be able to get back into the workforce, but a necessary step was for the city of Lenexa to approve a special use permit to allow the site to be used for the purposes of the shelter.
ReStart Inc., a Kansas City, Missouri-based nonprofit whose mission is to end homelessness, was tapped to operate the shelter and eventually, would have taken ownership of the property.
As proposed, the shelter would have provided 50 units for single adults who are unhoused on a referral basis for stays that would range from 30 to 90 days.
Another 25 units were proposed for transitional, potentially longer-term housing needs of up to 24 months, for which the clients would pay rent based on income.
A variety of services, including case management, mental health and job support services, would have been provided on-site.
A ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity to address homelessness
Supporters, including representatives from The Good Faith Network, an interfaith group of 30 congregations, viewed the federal money as a rare chance to address homelessness without using city tax money.
“This was a windfall,” Pastor Tim Suttle, a founder of the Good Faith Network and lead pastor at Restoration Church in Olathe, said in an interview with the Johnson County Post prior to the meeting, in reference to the coronavirus relief funds, which must be allocated by the end of this year.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of situation where we have some money to throw into this as a county that isn’t going to come directly from Johnson County property taxes,” he said.
Along with that, the project had 10 cities, including Leawood, Fairway, Mission and Merriam, that approved annual shares of funding to help the shelter pay for initial operating costs. It would have also relied on private donations and grants to meet expenses.
City staff recommended denying the permit
Last month, city staff recommended the project be denied for several reasons.
The new shelter plus the already existing Project 1020, which operates during the winter months out of the Shawnee Mission Unitarian Universalist Church a few blocks away from the La Quinta hotel, could concentrate negative impacts on that area and cause it to become a “homeless services hub” for the entire county, staff said in their report to the planning commission.
A police department assessment concluded that the new shelter would strain its resources, requiring almost $600,000 annually to hire two additional full-time officers and a co-responder.
Staff also argued that the shelter was likely to attract loitering, panhandling and unsanitary conditions that, while not criminal, could contribute to blight and prompt calls for service. The center could attract unscheduled drop-offs, even though it is slated to take clients by referral only, leaving those dropped off with few options but to linger in the neighborhood.
Several elements of the shelter’s plan, particularly the financing, remained in flux because of the abbreviated timeline, staff pointed out.
Finally, the use as a shelter would be inconsistent with a key redevelopment area along Quivira Road, staff said. The site is within a tax increment financing district set up to combat blight and has already attracted new businesses.
Supporters lobbied city council before the meeting
During the past week, Johnson County commissioners and religious leaders lobbied the council to approve the permit.
On Thursday, the county commission voted 4-2 to send a one-and-a-half page letter to Lenexa Mayor Julie Sayers and the Lenexa City Council urging them to approve the permit and pledging they would back the city up if problems arise.
Before the council meeting, religious leaders from the Good Faith Network held a prayer vigil outside of Lenexa City Hall to show their support for the proposed shelter.
For supporters of the project, the past couple of months have been stressful and exhausting, as they said they tried to correct what they saw as disinformation and offensive characterizations of the homeless, as well as local officials who supported the project.
“The resistance to this project at this point has been shameful. I mean, it’s healthy to disagree, but the way these folks are going about it, if you’ve seen it, it’s openly racist,” Suttle said. “This (is) 1930s-era, Nazi propaganda kind of stuff, drawings to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment and misleading people and stoking fear. It’s shameful.”
During the council’s closing statements, almost every councilmember noted offensive messages and cartoons they had received.
“The political cartoons that are out there about elected officials who give up their time and their energy to spend on this hours and hours and hours is also really embarrassing,” Eiterich said. “We have children. We have people in our lives that see that, and it is so wrong in so many ways.”
Public comments largely in support of the shelter
For more than three hours Tuesday, the council listened to public comments from Lenexa residents, as well as people from around Johnson County and the greater Kansas City area.
A majority of the opinions expressed were in support of the shelter, coming from members of The Good Faith Network, as well as advocates for unhoused people and former and current homeless shelter staff from around Kansas City.
Speakers repeatedly mentioned the unprecedented and time-limited nature of the federal funding, as well as their desire for Lenexa to be a progressive city.
“When your citizens ask you, ‘What are you doing about homelessness?’ What’s your answer going to be?,” Barbara Isaacson, a Lenexa resident, said. “Because in the past, the county’s answer has been to criminalize or hospitalize the homeless. Providing a year-round [shelter] with intensive supportive services is a proven solution. Please don’t waste this opportunity.”
Opponents worried about attracting more homeless people
Those opposed to the shelter who spoke Tuesday worried that it would bring more homeless people to the area and if the shelter was full, they would end up back on the street.
“(ReStart) supports a way to end homelessness, and yet, for Lenexa, this property will attract and increase homelessness concentrated in an area already,” Theresa Murphy, a Lenexa resident. said. “Lenexa is being asked to bear the brunt of this project, environmentally, monetarily and economically.”
Several people also mentioned that while Johnson County commissioners approved this project, they didn’t attend the council or planning commission meetings.
“Since this is so important, why is [Chair] Mike Kelly and Commissioner Jeff Meyers not here tonight in support (of it)?” Mike Feller, a Lenexa resident said.
City Council questioned reStart CEO
After public comments finished, the council grilled Stephanie Boyer, reStart‘s Chief Executive Officer, about what they say as inconsistencies with the submitted project, possible security issues and funding gaps.
Councilmember Chelsea Williamson brought up reStart Inc.’s past financial struggles, which Boyer rebutted was happening shortly before she was hired and she helped correct.
Herron took issue with the additional taxpayer funds city staff could be needed to hire three officers.
Councilmember Courtney Eiterich, who ultimately voted for the project, even expressed doubt about the plan to fund the shelter’s annual expenses with the help of local cities’ per-capita contributions, especially since three of Johnson County’s biggest cities — Overland Park, Olathe and Shawnee — had not yet to commit to chipping in money.
“We have to go into this trying to make good decisions for our public dollars, but also not put ourselves in a situation where Lenexa and its taxpayers are picking up the bill for anything that might happen,” Eiterich said.
A majority of council supported denying the permitWhile each council member prefaced their vote by thanking the audience and acknowledging a need for providing shelter to the homeless, most expressed skepticism with the plan.
It didn’t make sense to replace a hotel that’s currently operating with a shelter that won’t contribute to the city’s tax base, Councilmember Craig Denny said.
“(La Quinta Inn is) on the tax rolls. They pay property taxes, and they’re the fifth highest generator of our transient guest tax,” he said. “I think it puts an additional, unwarranted burden on the city.”
Divided between the desire to address homelessness and the submitted plan, Williamson said she wasn’t sold on the shelter.
“I feel like this is more of a just a diversion Band-Aid that just shelters them for a few months,” she said. “I just don’t feel like we’re going to offer enough to really help them. I want more.”
For Councilmember Mark Charlton, the project brought up too many questions and not enough answers.
“I’m just concerned about the impacts, economically, and who knows? I don’t think any of us have any of the answers. So at this point, I can’t support the [permit],” he said.
Two councilmembers expressed their support
Councilmember Melanie Arroyo expressed disappointment in the way homeless people had been characterized during debate over the shelter, not only in e-mails and political cartoons, but by city staff.
“(An) issue that the city unfortunately overlooked is that unhoused individuals with weak health die in the streets or county every year because of lack of services, lack of stable housing,” she said. “Approving the application for the shelter will save lives and therefore, denying it would actually hurt people’s health.”
While Eiterich viewed the plan as flawed and in need of fixes, she also said something needs to happen now to address homelessness.
“If we don’t do it now, when is it going to happen? And so I will support this tonight,” she said. “I believe that while there are flaws and holes in this particular plan, I think that something needs to be done, and I don’t want to be on the wrong side of it.”
Ultimately, Councilmembers Charlton, Denny, Herron, Bill Nicks and Williamson voted against the permit. Arroyo and Eiterich voted for it. Councilmember Joe Karlin was absent.
What happens next
With the rejection of the permit, all of the parties involved will have to go back to the drawing board.
ReStart Inc. says it will examine the legal ramifications for the council’s vote to reject the permit, saying the move possibly violates the federal Fair Housing Act and federal statute because it is discriminatory against those experiencing homelessness.
In a letter sent to the city before Tuesday’s vote, reStart officials said there appeared to have been solid support from city officials during the run-up to the city’s planning commission meeting in August and that the staff recommendation to deny the permit was “inappropriate and unfair.”
During Tuesday’s meeting, the council convened behind closed doors for a 45-minute executive session to discuss reStart’s letter. Later, during the meeting, City Manager Beccy Yocham responded to some of the letter’s claims.
“Throughout the process, we gave feedback, we made suggestions, we asked questions … But one thing we did not ever do during the pre-application process was to indicate staff support of this application,” she said.
Still, Boyer, reStarat’s CEO, said the company will look to make sure everything was done by the rules.
“We wouldn’t be doing our jobs as advocates of this work if we don’t look to dig deeper into it to see. I don’t know what we’ll uncover, but we’ll see,” she said.
What will happen to the federal money remains to be seen.
Per federal rules, the COVID-19 relief funds left to the county must be obligated by Dec. 31 of this year and spent by the end of 2026.
That leaves a small window of time for homeless shelter advocates to find a new project that could fund, but they say they will try.
“We still have some time here,” Boyer said. “We’ve been thinking in our mind some plans B, C, D, E, F and G. I think there will still be some opportunities to allocate that, at least to some sort of housing response to the exact people that this center would have targeted. So we look forward to continuing to engage in those conversations.”
Closing out the meeting, Mayor Julie Sayers said the city hopes this discussion will open up a larger dialogue across Johnson County to help find suitable places to house people without homes.
“We welcome the opportunity to share what we have learned over the past five years and apply that knowledge as a participant in a countywide collaborative approach to finding appropriate solutions,” she said. “Until then, we will be at the table any time a discussion is taking place about a broader countywide solution.”
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