With one of the Nation’s Highest Rates of Unsheltered Homelessness, the City Is Rapidly Expanding Shelter Beds
Kansas City, Missouri, has the highest percentage of unsheltered homeless people per capita of anywhere in the country. The figure refers not to the total number of unhoused people in the city, but to those living outside without a proper roof over their heads.
Current estimates put the number of households living unsheltered at around 4,000 in a city of just over 500,000. According to HUD figures from 2023, 95.7% of chronically homeless individuals in the city were unsheltered. That is a shocking number, and city officials have recently been rushing to tackle this problem.
For now, their approach is focusing on more short-term solutions. The city is concentrating all its efforts and resources on creating more temporary shelter beds, which are a quick fix to an urgent problem but may leave people stuck in the long run.
Shelter Beds Have Been Tripled
Not too long ago, Kansas City had just 360 low-barrier shelter beds available. That number has now increased to 491, with an additional 440 beds available through community partnerships that may come with more rules and requirements…