Kansas City is one of the few cities to use a new mobile app to know and count their homeless | KCUR 89.3

When gale winds lashed the subway for a few brief hours in mid-December, they tore down many of the 40 or so tents that were guyed at a grassy campsite on the 10th and Harrison in Kansas City, Missouri. There a camp of homeless people overlooks the downtown skyline.

“Tents were destroyed,” said a man who only identified himself as a Solo. He said he was a member of the Homeless Union, which was founded by activists in January to campaign for reform.

“People make fun of ‘garbage collectors’,” he said, “but last night the things they collected helped people who had nothing. People used the last thing they had to help others. “

Solo and the others here identify this camp as a neighborhood. He said they take care of each other, just like neighbors in other communities. They represent the hundreds of people who say they choose to avoid homeless shelters in favor of self-sufficiency.

But their commitment to this lifestyle makes it difficult to provide adequate levels of services to unprotected members of the community.

The federal government requires municipalities to spend 24 hours each year in late January conducting a survey of people who are homeless, regardless of whether they are protected or unprotected. The data, known as point-in-time census, is collected through collaboration between public and private entities in local communities across the country – called the Continuums of Care. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development uses the data to determine How much federal aid the municipalities allocate for programs to support the homeless.

Marquia Watson is the executive director of the Kansas City Coalition to End Homelessness, the lead agency for the Continuums of Care in Jackson and Wyandotte Counties. She said she had mixed feelings about the count.

“It raises awareness of the issue in winter when public concern is great,” she said.

But she said it was impossible to get an accurate count of so many people living in camps and on the streets. Not only does this limit how effectively communities can spend federal HUD funds, but it also makes it impossible to plan the allocation of local resources.

“We know there are between 500 and 1,500 in shelters in Kansas City,” she said. “But until we know more precisely who the people who are not in the accommodations and what their individual needs are, we don’t know how we can use our resources to meet them.”

New technology

In late December, outreach workers from the Kansas City Coalition to End Homelessness and other advocacy groups were introduced to new technologies that they hope will address the problem of undercounting.

Kansas City is one of a handful of cities using a new mobile app that allows field workers to enter information about their customers into a database year-round.

Called Show the Way, the app is designed to complement the annual homeless survey by providing a more thorough story about a person’s life and habits over time.

Are there friends or family members that a person might want to connect with? Do you like to stay in emergency shelters? Are there triggering issues that surveyors should avoid?

With the consent of the individual, this information is fed into a central database and is available to clerks and others for follow-up while they work together on a more stable life situation.

Matt Simmons, President of SimtechSolutions, who developed the app, hopes the more detailed information will lead to more effective policies and resource use.

“Demographics is one thing,” said Simmons. “But really, what happened in their life that made them now and what can we do to pick them up and move them to shelter?”

Three other cities – Houston, Texas; Charleston, West Virginia; and Vancouver, Washington – also use the app to map homeless camps, list people by name, and keep track of where and how they live.

For example, Simmons said, “If we could find a lot of people living in cars or vans, we could stock up on resources and have sanctioned parking.”

Nellie McCool and sales representatives from Creative Innovative Entrepreneurs and Free Hot Soup KC deliver supplies such as socks, underwear, coats, sleeping bags and propane to homeless people who stay away from shelters.

Attention from Congress

The inadequacy of the point-in-time count was one of the reasons US MP Emanuel Cleaver, D-Missouri, requested an investigation to improve the survey.

Cleaver, who represents Missouri’s 5th District, chairs the Housing, Community Development, and Insurance Financial Services Subcommittee, which oversees homelessness programs. Cleaver said timing is a necessary exercise, but the statistics are too unreliable.

“We have no idea about all the homeless people who live in the metropolitan area,” he said. “We throw away statistics, but those of us who have to make decisions based on them have very little confidence to accept the methodology.”

The question of how one can serve people without a home is a chronic problem, said Cleaver, which has come back into focus after the much publicized death of Scott “Sixx” Eicke. He was found dead on New Years Day near East 24th Street and Woodland, apparently from hypothermia.

Cleaver said if he and his committee members are to fight for federal funding, they need “real, accurate numbers”.

Nellie McCool was one of the field workers Eicke knew.

McCool, a 31-year-old no-nonsense mother of two, has been a Kansas City outreach worker for more than a decade. She works with Creative Innovative Entrepreneurs, a non-profit organization hired by the city to reach out to the homeless.

She is also the founder of Free Hot Soup (Kansas City), a network of thousands of volunteers who distribute supplies to those who avoid shelters. McCool’s group cultivates relationships with people who live off the grid in the forest.

She recently went to the tent camp on the grassy hill overlooking the city center on a sunny afternoon.

She said outreach workers were aware of around 150 such camps of various sizes in and around Kansas City.

“When people experience chronic homelessness, they lose faith and belief that service centers can meet their needs,” she said. “After answering the same questions six, seven, eight times, you feel dehumanized and would rather try to find out yourself.”

Carney took his name because it moves “like a carnival,” said his friend and advocate. He comes to various tent camps to get supplies and groceries.

One of the people who got supplies that day was a man named Carney, 40, a stocky guy who wore a Notre Dame hoodie and a pile of pearls with a small stone cross around his neck. McCool has known him for several years.

“I live in a ‘bando,’” said Carney, referring to an abandoned building sometimes referred to as a “vaco” or empty building.

“He got his street name for a reason,” said McCool. “Carney, like a carnival. He moves a lot. “

McCool estimated that 30% of the homeless in the metropolitan area are temporary, not because they enjoy the street life but because they are tired of feeling dependent on others all the time.

Carney needs certain foods because he has hypoglycemia, so he accepts a few cans of sweet buns. McCool knows it isn’t easy.

“Your pride is all you have,” she said. “There are many who don’t want us to question them. There are camps that are so well hidden … we may never find them. “