FORT SCOTT — The Homeless Alliance, the citizens’ coalition on homelessness that City Commissioner Matthew Wells has been organizing since July, held its first meeting Wednesday evening at City Hall, and by the end of about 80 minutes had a plan on the table, a volunteer to lead a nonprofit, a point of contact for the people camping at Second Street Park, and a second meeting set for Sept. 23.
Wells presided. Commissioner Tracy Dancer sat beside him, and about a dozen people who had signed up with City Manager Brad Matkin took seats at the table: church representatives, social workers, nonprofit operators and residents who had been homeless. Two people now living at the Second Street Park encampment came with one of them, and one of the two spoke.
“I am of the firm belief that simple finances don’t fix a problem like this. Simple mental health doesn’t fix a problem like this,” Wells said. It has to be a combination of spiritual, mental and financial healing, he said, and the alliance needs the city, churches, nonprofits, schools and health care providers all in. “If we don’t have a buy-in from all three areas, then I personally don’t believe there will be any success moving forward” (video, 23:32).
A seven-step plan, “not the plan”
The packet Wells handed out was the plan he wrote after the city commission’s work session on homelessness, held May 5, drawn from what he said had worked in other Kansas and Missouri towns. “My plan is not the plan. It is not the only way to get this accomplished,” he said. “But I felt like we needed something as a guideline” (video, 28:26).
Its steps, in his order: form the coalition; adopt “clear and compassionate public space policies” modeled on Salina; establish a navigation hub with a case manager, modeled on Wichita; coordinate behavioral health and law enforcement with a co-responder model like Johnson County’s; consider a very small low-barrier shelter for winter; a work-for-housing program of the kind used in Kansas City and Tulsa; and transitional housing in existing buildings, as the Path of EASE Association already does in Fort Scott (video, 30:36). He said a county commissioner had contacted him that day about joining the alliance.
Wells said the city cannot apply for most of the grants in the plan, so the alliance needs a nonprofit to take the lead. Honey Bidwell offered to head it (video, 46:52). Jenni Simhiser, whose Path of EASE Association runs a recovery house for women and children, cautioned that some larger grants require a nonprofit to have existed for some time, so a new one needs a fiscal agent “that will umbrella you when you’re new” (video, 47:57). Wells said Compassionate Ministries had offered to help and the alliance may organize under it for now.
“Are they willing?”
The first question from the floor came from a woman in the audience who said she had helped one homeless person in town, “and it took great lengths to do that.” She asked whether the people the plan is meant for are willing to go through it, and what happens with those who are not (video, 50:12). Wells said he had not yet spoken with any of them personally. She also said Kansas Works once had case managers in Fort Scott helping people get Social Security cards, birth certificates, benefits and mental health care, and urged the alliance to avoid duplicating what already exists.
Lisa Robertson, a social worker, said those services were part of the COVID-era COPE program run through HBCAT, which ended when its grant did, and that she could bring what that program learned to the alliance. “You don’t just take someone off the streets and, oh, put them in housing and it’s going to work,” she said (video, 52:19).
Michael Barnard said any program has to be merit-based. “I was one of these people,” he said. “I went through 20 years of addiction and homelessness. Got in trouble a handful of times. Jails, prisons, rehabs. Lived in shelters, worked in shelters.” He spent five years in the Oxford House recovery program, he said, and warned that an emergency shelter “will triple instantly” in winter (video, 56:06). John Brown said his son went through Watered Gardens, a merit-based program in Joplin with steps from a night shelter to supervised living. “It took my son 18 months,” he said (video, 57:47).
What the camp says it needs
Bidwell, who said she grew up homeless and has been homeless in Fort Scott, told the group she had spent the last couple of days with the people camping at Second Street Park and had brought two of them to the meeting. Not everyone there wants housing, she said, and much of the discussion was coming from a point of view that is not that of the people it is about. “Food is not the issue,” she said. “They’re just people” (video, 59:12).
Wells asked Bidwell to be the alliance’s point of contact for the camp; she said she had had coffee with the campers that morning. Too many people are trying to help without a system, she said, and much of what is being dropped off is not what the camp needs: more fruit than anyone can eat in the heat, when what helps is ice (video, 62:41). Wells proposed one place where people who want to donate know to drop things off, with Bidwell and others taking what is needed down to the camp. Near the end of the meeting he said the alliance would set up a system so supplies get to Bidwell, stored at Compassionate Ministries or another location (video, 89:34).
A woman who said she is living at the encampment temporarily, until she can get out of town, asked for one thing: somewhere in Fort Scott to buy block ice or dry ice, which would let the camp keep food without daily deliveries of bagged ice. “There’s no place around that has that,” she said (video, 64:33).
“Not the city”
Peggy Stark, who said she works as a mental health social worker in Missouri, asked who would employ the case manager in the plan. “What we’re putting together today is not the city. This is a citizens’ alliance of hopefully like-minded people who want to help address this issue,” Wells said, adding that liability keeps the city from doing much of the work itself (video, 69:39). Stark asked whether police and first responders would get crisis-intervention training; Wells said that was step four of the plan and asked her to help with it.
Simhiser said she is opening the former Keyhole building as a mental health recovery resource center with peer support groups. Commissioner Julie Buchta said the town needs a thrift store, both for people in need and as a place to do community service.
Next steps
Wells listed his: contact the Southeast Kansas Regional Planning Commission; reach the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas outreach worker in Pittsburg who helps with IDs and birth certificates; set up the donation drop-off; form the nonprofit; look into law enforcement training and a possible case manager space at the Keyhole building; and explore a thrift store location (video, 89:01). Bidwell will set up a Facebook page, Homeless Alliance of Fort Scott. Barnard offered to organize food fundraisers and was asked to bring ideas to the next meeting.
The alliance will meet again Wednesday, Sept. 23, at 5:30 p.m. Wells said the group would check whether the middle school or another location is available and otherwise meet at City Hall again, with everyone who signed up to be notified (video, 95:26).
