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Edited on Sat Jan-14-06 02:19 PM by Mabus
I think the overall problem is that there isn't enough funding and there aren't enough facilities to accomodate the ones we have. The developers want to clean up downtown without helping to resolve the homeless problem.
Here are a few of the things that I know have happened in recent memory. This is from my imperfect memory (but I'm no James Frey), from talking to the homeless when I did volunteer work at one of the shelters and from my own observations. Some of it you can verify by checking the LJ World archives.
Last year the developers were wanting to shut down the Salvation Army shelter. Why? There was a restaurant that was wanting to sell alcohol but couldn't becuase the church was located across the street. More importanlty, the Salvation Army shelter is also near (across the street)the location of where the developers are pushing to build the new library. BTW, there are a lot of us who want the library to stay where it is and expanded. The developers pumped a lot of money into the city commission race and pushed the idea of building a new library.
We've had several homeless that have died under suspicious circumstances over the past few years. A number of others have been beaten or roughed up, sometimes by each other.
The Drop-In Center is catching a lot of heat from the neighbors. The Center is across the street from the church that provides hot food for the homeless. The neighbors are complaining that the homeless are too loud.
At an area near the Kaw River (between 6th & Kentucky and Burcham Park) was a place that the homeless set up tents. It was bulldozed and the occupants were not given time to collect what few belongs they had before the bulldozer came through.
Some of the homeless that I've talked to have complained that they get run out of parks in the evenings although others (mostly college & high school) kids aren't. I know they let people drink after baseball games in the parking lots, the homeless aren't allowed to do the same. Baseball players are also allowed to sit around the shelters and drink, the homeless aren't allowed to do the same. Even the homeless that aren't drinking in public (and this is most of them) don't seem to be welcome to congregate in our local parks.
A number of downtown businesses no longer allow public use of their bathrooms. The parks with bathroom facilities lock them down after 11:30 p.m. and during the winter most of them aren't even opened during the daytime.
A few months ago there were a number of fires in downtown alleyways. It was hypothesized that it was a homeless person trying to stay warm by burning trash. Although there was (I think) at least one where the fire seemed a little more arson-related than warmth related.
I've talked to a few of the neighborhood homeless and a few of them have said that there are a few cops (not all, a very few - four or five at most) who like to harass them. The cops do this by pulling up where a few people are camped out and honk the horns, sound the siren or turn the spot light on them. The homeless aren't asked to the leave the area. Rather the people I've talked to feel like the cops are just trying to keep them from getting sleep. You know, just messing with them.
You have to understand that the downtown area is set-up to cater to out-of-towners and the college crowd. The homeless make Lawrence look bad, so rather than helping to provide/fund facilities that would help or allievate the homeless problem a number of developers are behind a push to get rid of them and/or drive them out of downtown. I think you can also count the publisher of the Journal-World as one of those developers. They've got a financial stake in developing the downtown area. They haven't been kind to the homeless in the paper.
I do what little I can. I've given some of the neighborhood homeless shelter, food, clothes, small jobs and encouragement. There was a couple we helped out a few years ago that I still hear from every once in a while. They worked their asses off and haved landed on their feet.
There are so many that are mentally ill and have no place to go. It's so sad. I remember during the Reagan budget cutting era that there were a lot of mentally ill people that ended up in Lawrence when they started shutting down facilities. During hard times a lot of people come to Lawrence because they think of it as friendly or have heard good things about it.
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