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What I believe is common sense, I'm learning is not that common. The public has been left out of so many conversations on community issues, and as a publicly elected official, I want to change this. I want to invite my community in a new space, where you can listen in behind the scenes to the discussions that lead to the decisions that are impacting our lives. In a podcast I named Common Sense, I'm inviting the whole world to see these conversations happening in real time! Subscribe to listen in on these conversations!
What I believe is common sense, I'm learning it's not that common.
The issues of homelessness and housing are challenges impacting communities all
across the nation. And we're no exception here in Wichita and Sedgwick County.
The growing problems are top of mind for many of our residents. And in
early 2023, our community came together to explore these
challenges and try to find potential solutions. From these
discussions, a plan emerged and so did leaders from our
community that are pouring in countless hours hoping
to make Wichita a model city for how we address
homelessness and how we better serve our unhoused population.
One of these leaders is Steve Dixon, a local business owner, a
philanthropist, and now the board president of a non profit
forum to help lead these efforts. As we talk about the issues
around homelessness and housing and the work that's being done,
you'll see the passion volunteers like Steve have to serve this community
and invest sustainable solutions to our most vulnerable
neighbors. I hope you enjoy this conversation with a man that I
deeply admire, my friend Steve Dixon.
Steve Dixon, man, welcome. Thank you brother for doing this.
The cameras didn't get turned on quick enough to hear us singing the KU Alma
mater. That's true. Probably a good thing. It's probably a really good
thing. You know what's wild is your and I's relationship
didn't start. We're here to talk today mostly about the homeless
challenges in our community, how to better serve unhoused populations.
The board that we currently serve together on, which is the Second Light Board, which
was formerly known as the Mac, the Multi Agency Center. Right on. So but our
relationship didn't start there. We've served on a board previously.
That's right. Firm Foundations Ministry, a lot of sober living houses, second chance
work, a lot of some prison ministry. So I've
known about your heart for community and, and your heart for service for quite a
while now. But you don't just serve on a bunch of non profit boards.
What else do you and your family do in this community? I want people to
know. I want people to know. You sure? Sure. So thank you again,
appreciate the time. I always love having the opportunity to talk about, you know,
Second Light, other passions. Right. But you know, my day job, the job
that I actually get paid to do, I am the CEO of
P.B. Hoidale Co. As an 80 year old this year, family business
started by my great grandfather back in 1946.
You know, Pete started this business. Pete was an immigrant from Norway, you know, came
to the United States, you know, was born in Norway. Came to the United States,
didn't know a lick a word of English, you know, lived in Wichita for a
long time. At the age of 50, after his kids had moved out, everybody was
kind of everything settled at home, you know, decided to start a business. I'm like,
well that's cool. And then you put your name on it too, which makes it
even better. Right. So you really bold guy. And I was really
fortunate that I had the opportunity to grow up with Pete.
You know, he lived till he was about 95 years old. And so my sisters
and I got to know him as he moved my family back to Wichita,
or actually not back to Wichita, to Wichita from the east coast. That's where
my mom and dad met. That's where they got married. And so I am a
not quite lifelong Wichita, but you know, proud high school
graduate of Goddard High. So, you know, I've lived here for a very long time.
But yeah, day job at P.B. Hoidale is wonderful. I love it. It's
the thing that gives me and fills up the bucket. I work with a wonderful
team. You do. Oh yeah, those. And they are the ones that give me the
opportunity to do like you talked about, all the different nonprofit work and
community development work. But part of the reason that they do that is that
one of our core company values is community. This
is something I believe in, has been passed down generation, generation is
that business is a really important part of community.
We don't exist in this vacuum where, hey, we're all about just going to making
money, delivering shareholder value. Those things are super important and we
have to be profitable. Right. I mean capitalism is important.
It's a great driver, it's a great way to reduce poverty. But at the end
of the day, business does have a responsibility to be a good
steward and a good partner in the community. And so one of the ways that
we do that is my team frees up time for me to go do work
on Second Light, which has been kind of a part time job
recently. Certainly is for you. Yeah, right. But also to do all
the other stuff, you know. And what's been fascinating over the last,
I would say four or five years since again we've worked together on
the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Coalition board of Sedgwick
County. Right. And having the ability to see where we're starting to make
connections and we're starting to see our nonprofit partners really starting
to collaborate well together. You know, having people that
have served on these boards and seeing where hey, we can really do this better.
We can do things differently. And having the opportunity to infuse some business
principles into places that normally you don't see them, I think that's
really been where the big win has been so far. Without a shadow of a
doubt. And we're feeling this as an entrepreneur in this community, you know,
I, I was very much aware of the siloing that people talked about, particularly in
the nonprofit spaces, that there was siloing, that there were real issues, but there was
just always a struggle to really work together. I think all that's changed, man. I,
I, I'm in spaces now, and you're in these same spaces. Everyone
is at the table. Everyone is helping to shape outcomes. Everyone cares about what's
happening in this community. And what you said about B.B. hoydale
and the mission, not just for shareholder value and not
just for profitability, those things are important. You got to be able to run a
company and you've got to turn profit to pay the bills.
But what you said about community impact last episode, I had
Jill Woodward from Stand Together. Perfect. Yeah, you know them, and they talk a lot
about social entrepreneurs and what it means to use your business to socially impact
and to better impact our communities. And, and Hoidale is a prime example. You are
a prime example of a small business owner, an entrepreneur in
this community that believes wholeheartedly in that. So thank you for that example. Well,
and think about it, Ryan. I mean, when we talk about as business owners,
how do you entice people to come to work for you? Well, you have to
give them a community where people want to live. You have to give them schools,
you have to give them things to do, and you have to create a
community that people want to be proud of. Right. And
so they want to say, hey, I love working at Hoydale, but I'm also really
happy and proud that I live in Wichita. And for a long time, you know,
I've lived here now for 20 years, since I moved back from Kansas City.
That probably first 10 years, there's a whole lot of outflow, a whole lot of
negativity, a whole lot of I don't want to be from here. And what
I've really seen is that big shift and change. And I will always credit James
Chung coming to Wichita and kind of calling us out and saying, hey, you
guys aren't where you were when I lived here in the 80s, to really light
the fire under folks and say, hey, how do we make this better? How do
we make a difference? You see, you know, Wichita flag flies
all over the place. Yeah. You know, I have a license tag in the back,
my car that has it now. Right. But you see that sense of pride, you
see that sense of community really building, and that's what helps to break down some
of those barriers too, is people know that if we're not on board,
if we're not going to play ball with everybody else, we're probably going to get
left behind. That's right. It's competitive world, competitive environment. If we want to grow
this place, if we want to make this place continue to
prosper and flourish, then we need everybody at the table. And what we're
seeing is it's not just elected government, local government leaders. We're seeing the
nonprofit community, the faith community, the business community. They're in the rooms, they're shaping
these outcomes, they care about these issues. And you're at every one of these tables,
Steve. So I just, that's why for me, it was important to have you on
to talk through these things. I want to understand your heart. I want people to
understand what it is you're doing. And you are doing
things in this community. And you're a catalyst in so many ways and a conduit
in so many ways. So I want to talk through these things today because I'm
grateful for everything that you do. Thanks. Why homelessness?
So I think there's a couple of different things that factor into that, Ryan. You
know, part of it is as a person of faith, you know, very strong Christian
background, you know, grandpa was a preacher, you know, went to church, learned all these
things. You know, when I read through my Bible and I see red
letters in my Bible that say that, you know, love your neighbor, you know,
doesn't delineate out who is my neighbor. It doesn't say, well,
hey, it's the person living next door. It really means everybody. It means
all members of our community. And we can't cut off certain people because they
don't dress the way we want them to dress, they don't think the way we
want them to think, or in some cases, they don't have the resources that we
have. Right. And so that's part of it is that deep
seated understanding coming out of faith background that says
there's a responsibility that I've been
given a lot of opportunity, I've been given a lot of, I would even call
it privilege. And it's really, you know, I don't want to waste
my skills and talents, you know, where we could be helping other people.
And that's what all this is really all about is, you know, I have
a set of skills and talents. I'm not a great on the ground person. Right.
You know, I know how to do the work. I've met with people. I talked
to people. But really my skills are more in, like you said, connecting people.
Organization. Yeah. Figuring out what's the best strategy, what's the vision
for what we're trying to get done. How's the best strategy? What's the best strategy
to try to take the tactics and get this thing moved from A to B,
to really realize what the community itself wants to see happen.
And I believe that Wichita is a hugely compassionate community. They
really care about people. And I talk to a lot of people about the homeless
situation. And it's a wide range of folks from
caregivers and nonprofit executive directors
to business people. And I had a conversation with a business owner just last week
asking him about his experience. And, you know, it was rough. It's hard. I mean,
we've had that. This experience ourselves in Wichita, definitely in our
Oklahoma City office. People want to be compassionate. They care
about people. I get messages from business owners around Second Light.
They care about the homeless people. They care about the people.
But, you know, it's hard because it's impacting their business. And so how do
we craft good solutions to take care of all the stakeholders
around the table? That's what the challenge is, but that's what makes it super
fun. Yeah. Right. And that's the entrepreneur in you, that's the business person in you,
is to see opportunities to close gaps and to meet objectives and to your
percent. And again, the same thing that drives you is what drives me. I've told
people this publicly that when I was running a campaign in 2022,
I knew there was a homelessness issue, particularly in my district. County, District
4. So it's Douglas North. Yeah. 119
street on the west barrier, Oliver for the most part, on the east border.
And. And then it's north. So I have Downtown, I have Midtown, I have
Riverside. I have all these areas, the north end, that are seeing
a significant brunt of the homeless
population that is in this community. And to be
completely transparent, it wasn't top of mind for me as a. As a. As an
issue in my campaign. It wasn't until I was two
months, three months into office in 2023 when I
started to say, okay, all these things are connected. Yeah. And there was one. There
was one specific issue for me.
There were two that were really transformative. But I'll tell You this one. I'm
driving down south Broadway. I'm driving down Broadway to. Heading south to the rough
and building where we office for county government. Right. And I got to first
street and Broadway at the stoplight and I looked over and there was a young.
There was a young lady there, unhoused homeless individual. And she
was sitting in a doorway of an abandoned office. And we just locked
eyes. Oh man, we just locked eyes. And
what moves you is the same thing that moves me and that's people.
Right. It’s that the value of people. It's the “Imago Dei”. It's people are made
in the image of God. Yes, sir. And I just saw her and it just,
it's not like I was unaware previously, but it just leveled me differently that this
is a human being, man. Correct. That she's got parents, that
this young lady has might have brothers and sisters, she might have kids, she has
neighbors, aunts, uncles, friends that loved her. And this is a human being. And
to see people have full on crisis and
full public view. Yeah. I just continue to say that I think we're better than
this. I think we can do better. I think we can do more here. I'm
not talking about government. No, we'll talk about that. We as a community are better
than this. And I appreciate that differentiation too because it
is, it is a whole community effort that, you know, we talk about
homelessness specifically, but we could talk about any number of large civic.
But homelessness specifically. The only way that this probably move the needle
is if the whole community gets involved. Exactly. Right, right. We don't, you know,
government is wonderful and they are, you know, doing a great job. You know, we've
been very well supported by the city of Wichita in this regard right now.
Right. They had some ARPA money that they were able to seed into second light.
But it doesn't fall in just the police department doesn't fall in county government, doesn't
fall in city government. It doesn't fall in the parks department that's cleaning up, shelling
up encampments. It's all of us and you know, whether it's
how we get engaged, whether it's on boards or whether it's through. Through
philanthropy or you know, just be having a kind word
for somebody and asking him, you know, how are you doing today? Yeah, right, sure.
Because it is a person to person. And one of the biggest
issues that I think people have or that, you know, when I talk to people
that are experiencing homelessness is that people, they feel unseen, they feel
like. And that you know, lowers them from that feeling of actually being
a person. Right. And we could either treat this as
a problem and solve the problem, or we can look at these people
as persons and like you said, created in God's own image and
say, we can. Let's help out. Let's do what we can do. Let's do what
we know how to do. And I love hearing it always, every time I hear
you talk about it, we must and can do better because we can.
And it's just a matter of figuring it out how. You know what, Steve? This
isn't a political issue. We politicize these issues sometimes. And here I am, a
conservative Republican. Right on. For me, this is a. This is an issue of
life. This is an issue of. As a pro life person. This is an issue
of pro life policy. This is about people. And I've been constantly
and consistently encouraged my pro life brethren. Right. That we have to look.
This is. The pro life movement has to be expanded into the issues of
life and flourishing of life in regards to those that are vulnerable in
regards. This is why I'm very involved in the foster care community, the homeless communities,
and advocating for these. These are human beings, these are people, and we can
do better. When you see this going on in our community and
the trajectory of this is getting worse, not better, for a lot of different
reasons, which we are certainly going to talk about. We.
We've. We've got to intervene. We've got to intervene and we. There
is a trajectory that we can change to better these people's lives, to better this
community. We are too good to let this continue in this community
without question. And I think part of it is, again, we've got to
switch the mindset. You know, this is not a problem, but these are
people. Right. And once we get the mindset shifted that this is
a person and you. And you hit on it and, you know,
this is a critical piece of the puzzle is to see that, yeah,
this is somebody that has its parents, has brothers and sisters, aunts and
uncles. There is value to this
person. And you know, when you see somebody sleeping in the doorway
or you make eye contact or you ask them, you know, how has your day
been? Or what's your name? That makes it.
It's heavy. Personalizes. It's very heavy because that's a
responsibility. Yeah. We can't. We got to fix this. Can I tell you a story
then? I want to get into talking a little bit about who's what, what does
the numbers look like, what's the Data look like, what are the causes of homelessness?
So that we have a better understanding, because part of our job is to create
awareness in the community. Without question. Two emergency winter shelters. Ago,
when it was over on East 21st Street, I met a gentleman that was there.
He was in his mid-50s, late-50s. I can't remember his name, but
his story is what resonated with me. This wasn't someone that was an addict.
This wasn't someone that was. Had a mental health disorder. This wasn't someone that was
a felon that just got out of prison and can't get a job, can't get
housing. Right. This was an individual who told me his story. His story
was that he had got a divorce a few years ago,
a few years prior to this, this. This moment. And
he was from Missouri and moved to Wichita because he was a carpenter. And he
had been a carpenter for roughly 25 years. He was a sole entrepreneur,
sole operator. He ran his own carpenting little business,
and his daughter was getting married. And he basically
expended his entire life savings on his daughter's wedding because there had
been friction after the divorce, and he wanted to give his daughter the day of
her life. Right on. And he always knew that, hey, I'll just work harder and
I'll just. I'm a carpenter. I'll continue to get work and we'll make this happen.
He expended the bulk of his life savings, had no other
resources here in Wichita. No other relationship here in Wichita as a
carpenter. He's in his mid-50s. He got hurt. Yep. Hurt his back and
could no longer work. Again, he has no
disability insurance. He has no work comp insurance. He's an entrepreneur
that did that, worked for his own Two months led to three months.
Couldn't work. Three months led to four months. Missed one month of rent, missed two
months of rent, was evicted and was staying in the emergency winter shelter. His story
was not a story of addiction or mental health. His story was an addiction. It
was a story of love. He wanted to love and give his daughter the
best day of her life. And then life happened and he got hurt.
That moved me in a different way. I bet it did, yeah. Because, I mean,
it's those stories. And Ryan, I think that what it does is it cuts through
a lot of the perception, right, that every homeless person has
a mental health issue or every homeless person, you know, has an addiction problem.
That's definitely not true. I mean, there are folks that, you know, we talk about.
We'll talk about our hardest to serve, you know, group. Clearly those
are problems. But there are a lot of folks. And I remember talking to John
Allison when he was running two six or 259, you
know, several years ago, you know, talking about the kids
within the school district that are homeless. And how about 1100 and 259 district.
Exactly. And they are bouncing from relative to relative or school
to school and how hard it is, you know, for those kids to maintain current
trajectory. You know, you talk about folks, kids coming out of foster care. You
know, one out of four will end up homeless within two years, which is terrifying.
Right. And we both know that one of the bigger, biggest indicators of
future potential homelessness is a child enters, you know, the foster care
system 25%, you know, and those
are things we can work on. You know, we talk about homelessness.
I think people really, it's important for people to understand that
the work we're doing at Second Light is a reaction to it and
a solving of a current issue. But it's not, you
know, it's kind of like a band aid. Right. In some regards. Right. We are.
We are helping people in the current space where they are, but there's a lot
of steps that it took for them to get there. Absolutely. And if we can
intervene at any one of those key, critical. Yeah, we talk about this
in the foster care system. How do we intervene upstream to make sure kids don't
enter the system to begin with? I think it's important to. To name
what the causes of homelessness are. Sure. Because certainly mental health and
substance use are certain causes that do impact people that are homeless
at a higher proportionate rate than normal society. I mean,
it is certainly a catalyst that can create homelessness and all kinds of
trauma in people's lives. Exactly right. But that's not it. What we see in our
homeless population is we see eviction, we see loss
of job, and we see if you have the scarlet letter F, if you're an
old felon, we see it's very hard to get housing. It's very hard to get
work. It is hard. It's trying to restart their lives. It's very
difficult. Divorce, domestic violence,
on top of other issues. These are common things that cause
and create an unhoused situation, without question. And I
think the hardest part for people that have not delved deep into this is
to really understand there are a lot of these. One,
therefore, but my flat tire, so I couldn't get to work.
Since situations where people are. There's a lot of people in our
community that are Living on that very ragged edge of if I miss eight
paycheck or if I maybe miss two, then I get the eviction notice,
then that spiral is really hard to reverse. So we have data for
that, Steve. So help the audience understand a little bit what it means to be
cost burdened and what that looks like here. So, you know, there's
two levels, cost burden, Right. But the idea of cost burden is
someone, you know, whether it's an individual or a family that is spending at least
30% of their take home income on housing.
And it's not just rent or mortgage, but you have to factor in taxes,
you have to figure factor and insurance and all these things that go into
having a place to live. And so the cost burden group here
in Wichita is fairly large and that's only at 30%. And
there's another level, Ryan, that gets up to severely cost
burden, which means that there are people in this community that are spending more than
50% of their take home income on housing.
So when you think about what all does that, what does that really mean?
It means that I don't have money to do anything else. I cannot save money.
I cannot figure out a way to escape out of this cycle because all I'm
doing is just paying bills as they come in, or usually paying bills
two, three months late. It's difficult to find
transportation, it's difficult to find child care. They're incredibly
vulnerable to life circumstances. It is, it is literally a flat tire away. And
I've seen numbers of cost burden which is 30% or higher. I've seen numbers as
high as 40% of our households are in this. I need to validate that number.
But that's the recent number that I saw. But those that are severely cost burdened,
and this is what this is, this is the reality that I think we have
to name and make very aware to our community. As you mentioned,
they're not able to save a lot of money. Everything's going towards just living and
living very paycheck to paycheck. If you lose your job, if you
have a sickness, if anything, that you are really just one to two months away
from possibly being homeless. Our friend at Family Promises
Family Promise, dawn, she loves to say that homeless
problems are a challenge of running not out of money, but running out of
relationships. I agree. And if you run out of relationships, it can step in and
support. This is how close so many people are in this community to being
homeless. So it's not an issue just of mental health and substance use,
an issue of resources Growing poverty and the
housing challenges that we have in this community. Absolutely. And you talked a little
bit about this, and what Dawn was saying is really that it's that how are
you connected into the community? Right. Who are your friends? Where is your family?
And your example of the gentleman you talked to at winter shelter is a prime
example of that. It's somebody that moved here maybe for a job or to
be close to a parent that was not doing well. And then all of a
sudden, that circumstance changes. I don't have
friends. I can't go hang out on somebody's couch because I don't have friends or
I don't have family to step up and step in, and they're left
out there vulnerable. And
social safety net helps, but it doesn't fill those gaps. I just think it's really
important that we name that publicly. Whenever I talk
about homelessness, it's pretty much social media. I always get some of my
friends I love and adore, and I appreciate their perspectives and I understand
their perspectives, but I think their perspectives are misaligned because I have so many people
that said, well, they got in the situation by their own choice, or they got
in this situation because they're addicts, or. And yes,
that does exist, and it does exist at a higher proportion than the
normal society. Agree. But that's. That's not all. That's not the only
reasons why people become homeless, and we need to be aware of that. Right.
Well, and just take the addiction piece of this. A lot of
the reasons that you see high addiction levels is because people. There's no
hope. They do not have chicken and the egg. What came first exactly is
that I start to use because it makes me feel at least
a little bit better. Right. Because I do not see a way out of my
current situation. And so I start that process, and then, you know,
it just multiplies on itself. And you're right.
I really believe that the bulk. In fact, I know, because the numbers talk about
it, the bulk of our folks are really in that space where it's just they
are. Do not have either the financial
wherewithal to fully eject out of homelessness. They need
that little bit of assistance that says give them that space
partly just to find respite from life on the street. Life on
the street is very hard. I think sometimes people.
Nobody really wants to live on the street. If we all face facts,
you know, people will say, yeah, I like it here. You know, and some people,
that's their lifestyle choice. But that's a Very, very small number. Very
small number. It is really. Nobody wants to be there. They would much
rather be in a place that they feel safe, they feel secure. They feel that
they can get their life restarted and eject out of
homelessness. That's good. Steve, let's talk. You mentioned numbers. Let's talk a little bit of
numbers. Sure. I know United Way and the Continuum of Care, the Coalition to End
Homelessness here in Sedgwick county. They do great work
and they do a point in time count every year. The point in time count
is a one day in January, right? Yes,
one day in January. And they're required to do this by Housing and Urban Development.
The feds require them to do that to qualify for Continuum of care dollars. And
they send people throughout the community to try to count as many people as they
can that are homeless. It's one indicator. One night. It's not the
full depiction of who is experiencing homelessness in this community,
but what was the recent pick count? What do you know what that number was?
I believe it was close to 700 persons.
And I'm probably off by. I think that's right, 10ish or so. Right.
And that number went up this year. The year prior it had gone down just
a hair. But the difference what we're seeing is that the
folks that are the number of unsheltered persons, even with
the winter shelter being open and running pretty close to full
capacity, the number of unsheltered persons in Wichita did go up and the number
of sheltered persons did go down, but the total number did go up.
And so it's in. You nailed this right on the head. Right. This is something
that it is a portion of our homeless population
does not count the people. I'm couch surfing or I'm living with a relative or
I'm doing this or. Whatnot, or coming in and out of homelessness throughout the year.
Exactly. And so while it's not just
700 persons, that is at least a marker that we can
look at. And it helps to at least have some place to, you know, hey,
if we reduce this number by 10%, what does that look like? So it's a
help. But at the end of the day, I think it
misrepresents the total
issue we have with homelessness, which is probably in the two to three
times. I would get closer to three times. Yeah, I've always used the number around
2,000 people. And those that are experts in this space, they use that
number frequently. I've had USD 259 people tell us that
1100 of their students, 47,000 kids, 1100 of their students
are what they would deem as housing, vulnerable or homeless
or sleeping on couches, some sleeping in cars, a few sleeping in
shelters. So this number is bigger than the 700 number.
But let's talk a little bit about who it is that we're serving and
particularly at Second Light. So let's transition a little bit about
what the role you're in now as president of this board. It was once called
the Mac, the Multi Agency Center. And then we said, hey, we actually need to
get a better name for this thing. It's now called Second Light. It is, it's
at 10th and Main. Made a lot of news when the city of Wichita went
out and bought the Old park elementary and turned it into what we have
called for many years. This, this vision of
creating a consolidated campus where nonprofit providers
and, and health providers and mental health providers
can come on site and housing providers on site. One place
to administer services and to help people get connected to services.
You're the president of this board. Tell us what's Second Light? What's it
doing? So Second Light, I think you gave it a great
description. At the end of the day, there's two really key
critical components to what Second Light does. The first, and what
is currently active is it provides for the first time in
Wichita a 365 day a year, 24 hour a
day shelter for folks that you know to come on off
the street. And so starting with emergency winter shelter back
at the end of November of 24 and now through today,
that shelter has never closed other than for a brief couple of hours to
fix a water main problem or a sewer problem. One of those two. But
that's the first time, at least in my known memory
that the city of Wichita, meaning our community, has run
a shelter where persons can come in and have a place
that is there for them to not only get fed,
so three meals a day are provided, they have a bed to sleep in.
And up until Monday of this week
when construction started on rehabbing the building. Access
to some limited services. You know, so there's access to mental health
care, there's access to some physical health care and those services will continue and
be ongoing through course of construction. The second piece of
this component is really that wraparound services, what we would call the Mac, the
Multi Agency Center. That is the part that is now
undergoing construction. That's the two story part of Old Park Elementary.
It's a beautiful 100-year-old building gift to us, I
feel, because it's a really cool space. But what
makes it cooler is that when the construction is complete,
it'll be a space where we have a list of well over
120 service providers right now that are interested in providing
some sort of service to the homeless population in Wichita in that space.
Okay, pause. I want you to say it again.
120 service providers that are saying,
we want in on this situation. We wanted help, we want to provide services,
and we want to do this with partnership at the Second Light. Absolutely. Yeah.
We had a meeting over at Evergreen last year
and 120 people, 120 different organizations showed
up. I feel that number is light. I think that there are others. I mean,
I get people contacting me all the time, hey, how can we help? What
can we do? How do we get involved? It's remarkable, man. It's
heartwarming. It really is. And what it shows is that again, I
100% believe Wichita is a very giving, very caring community. We have
nonprofit partners that want to help. And it's not wanting to help because they want
to raise numbers. They want to, you know, find more money. They know we're not
paying anybody to work there, right? It is. They want. They know
that that's where their client base is, that they know where. That's where the people
they want to serve are. And so what the beauty about the
Mac is what the beauty about what Second Light is going to be able to
provide when construction is complete, you know, first part, end of this year, first part
of next year is that one space where I am
now a guest at Second Light. I'm taking in shelter service. I
walk down the hallway and I have access to any number of
social based services to help me figure out where I. Where I
want to go next. Right. But the long term mission of what Second Light is
designed to do is provide shelter space to give people the
sense of security and safety to come in off the street. But then
our focus is on how do we get you most well prepared
for a. For housing and exiting into housing. Our target is,
you know, between the 90 and 120 days work on housing plan
pretty much from day one. Right. What do you need? What are the hurdles? What
are the barriers? Because shelter is not intended to be housing. Shelter is
respite. Shelter is emergency. It is. It's getting you out of elements and
then getting you connected. It's not intended. Second Light is not. Not intended to be
someone's home. No, it's a stopgap. It's it's conduit to
getting them into a more permanent, sustainable situation. Absolutely. And I, I talk to
folks, you know, when I. The description I use, it's kind of like the front
door. Right. It is the entry point to where I can start
to think about. But I have to get out of that, you know,
survival mentality, which is what it takes to live on the street. You know,
where's my next meal, where am I going to sleep, how am I going to
protect myself, get out of that survival mode, into
I'm ready to start thinking about things I need to do,
whether that is accessing mental health services, whether that is getting an id,
whether that is working with Social Security. Some cases it's finding the
right connector or the right provider that has housing
opportunities. But what we don't want to do is get somebody running through
the process so fast that they exit out into housing and then they come
back. We have this recidivism issue. Right. Well, we want to make sure
people are well prepared. And so what is the right place for you to
be? What is the right opportunity? Because not everybody is well
suited to be, hey, I'm going to go find an apartment, live in an apartment
by myself, and. And I'll be successful. That's right. Right. And we, we
have some talking points, I think, coming up about, you know, what some of these
people need and what we need to look at in our community. It's not
just, hey, cool, I got an apartment, I'm renting an apartment, I'm working
with a private provider, you know, maybe have a housing voucher that's helping out with.
With that, that works for a lot of folks, but there's a lot of folks
that are walking in the door of the shelter that are not ready for that.
Right. So we want to help everyone that walks in
with a plan to exit out into whatever housing
looks like for them that helps them to be successful. Talk to me a little
bit about the link with homelessness and housing we have.
There's a gentleman that came and spoke, a consultant that came and spoke, wrote a
book that called Homelessness as a Housing Problem. Absolutely. He had a
fascinating, fascinating series of discussions he had in our community.
He talks about this link to housing and how our housing
situation is in. Induces more homelessness.
What are your thoughts on that? Is, you know, we have the housing first
philosophies and we talk a lot when it comes to housing. And just putting people
into housing is kind of what you said. And, and that's to solve all of
all these issues and tell me how there's a connecting link
with housing and homelessness. So to start with,
I think it's again, we go back to the concept that each person that walks
in the door, there is an individual, right? And that they have their own story,
they have their own background, they have their own things that they're dealing
with. And so cookie cutter solution doesn't
exist for starters, that just again, dropping somebody into
an apartment is not necessarily the best thing for that person. So that's one.
Number two, when we reduce the
number of housing units or right now, because housing units are
hard to find, but they're also expensive, you know, funding for
housing is not exactly flowing, you know, right now,
but. And I've had, I got asked this question a couple weeks ago at a
public Q and a in District 1. We have all this housing
that's sitting here, it's vacant, it's empty, it's whatnot. But the hard part is that
that housing, the dollars required to upgrade that housing to make it
habitable, to make it safe, to make it someplace somebody would want to live,
it's really expensive. And so, you know, we need to find a way,
an outlet where we can create more, you know, affordable
housing for folks that are ready to exit. We need to create more
group home opportunities for folks that are not quite ready
for living on their own. Right. That need maybe a little bit more help in
organizing day to day. And then in
some cases, what we would talk about, permanent supportive housing. Those are folks that
really need some help, you know, in their day to day lives or
because they have a mental health issue, they may have a
physical health issue, they're not really able to sustain housing,
fully sustain housing on their own. Right. So, you know, there's a great place for
what we call permanent supportive housing and we need more of those units as well.
So it's, it's really, yeah, there's a lack of
housing, but there is also, we have to be mindful that it's not
just let's go build a bunch more apartments and shove people in, what do we
need? And congregate poverty. That's not the solution. No, no,
absolutely not. I mean, and you see this coming out of Bergen, New Jersey. You
know that when you get to a functional zero goal, you are
really creating mixed income housing and really building senses
of community and giving people. And my personal story with that is, you
know, when I was mentoring through big brothers and big sisters, my little
brother lived in a rent subsidized apartment in Overland Park. His
mom had a job that paid her $14,000 a year, but she had two kids
with a three bedroom apartment where a bunch of other, you know,
professional type folks were living. Her rent was subsidized, but
those kids were exposed to people on a daily basis. You know, other kids and
other adults that said, hey, this is, you know, this is what it looks like
to go to work every day. This looks like what it looks like to be
responsible. Interesting. And both those kids have
doctorate degrees because they had an opportunity. And that's
really what it looks like to give people, or give especially
kids, better places to live where you're not congregating
poverty. Well, there is housing. There's a direct correlation, a strong correlation
between housing and homelessness. One of the things that moved me
to this space. Here's what I've tried to expand
the conversation in a couple ways. Some people get moved to the space of homeless
services and they care about these issues because of compassion. Right. I think
you got there because of compassion. I got there because of compassion. I got there
because I see the value in people. And I just think that we're
too good of a community to allow this to continue. Right. It's compact. A lot
of people get there. What I've tried to educate people is there's an economic
reason why we need to be involved here, a significant economic.
Because a lot of the issues that we're seeing in regards to the rising cost
of government, the rising cost of public safety, the rising, rising cost of
crime, a lot of these things are directly correlated to what's happening
in the housing or in the homeless situation. I've learned this is. These things are
so interrelated, you can't look at homelessness, pull a lever and solve
a problem. They're all interrelated. And that's what makes us
very, very complex. Exactly. I'll give you some examples
we had. You and I both contended that as business people,
these conversations started a few years ago in a, in a broader way with
homelessness task force and some of these discussions that were taking place in
those rooms that said, hey, what's the data like? How am I supposed to go
contend to my constituents that I think that we need to elevate this
cause of homelessness if I can't justify it with data? And so
what we did in Sedgwick county government, city of Wichita, we took the lead and
basically hired the Public Policy, Public Policy and Management
Center, WSU's PPMC and they did a homelessness study.
The cost of homelessness study and a housing study to give us data to say
hey, it either is or isn't a crisis. Right. What did we learn in that
study? Well, they initiated the first study and we learned that homelessness is costing
roughly $20 million a year in public services. That's right. A year.
A year. And these people would say, well wait a minute, timeout your kid $20
million a year. Let me give you an example. First hundred days of the
emergency winter shelter, right. EMS was called there over 600
times. I'm going to repeat it for effect. That's right, 100
days. EMS was called there over
600 times. When EMS calls go out, so do fire calls. So
fire department was respond at the same time. It's a cost. Just the
EMS cost is upwards of $500
per trip. Per trip. That's these. Most of these
individuals don't have insurance. You can't build them for, bill them for Medicaid or any
of that sort of. This is bore by the cost of the taxpayer.
It is. And the burden of the taxpayer. If you go to Via Christi, if
you go to St. Francis, you go to St. Joe and you talk to them
about what the cost is, what they're having to endure because of these
uncompensated trips, primarily for those that are, that are experiencing
homelessness. It's a significant cost. So and then we don't talk about
policing and then we're Talking about the 911 costs, we're talking about the jail cost,
we talk about the cost of economic development in our community and
the loss of business and community. Forget about the optic. I'm talking
about the hard nosed numbers that impact a community. It's compassion,
it's economics. It makes sense to get upstream and make the investments that we
need to change this trajectory. Well, and think about the lost opportunity
cost too, right. I mean when you've got people sitting in shelter,
most of those people, if you go to talk to them, there's a significant portion
of those persons that are. I would love to have a job. I would love
to because it gives me value, it makes me feel worthwhile, gives me something to
do. And there is a huge loss of
opportunity in people sitting around, you know, in the
shelter because they want to do something different. We just got to figure out how
to make the connections and again give them the stability they need in
the housing side. But we are losing out
on probably some potential superstars in our community. We just
don't know. Right. And what I don't want to have Happen is we
don't want to see that opportunity lost through, you know, just
a year over year, decade over decade of not being able to serve those
people and not be able to give them the hope they need to figure out
where they want to go next. But yeah, the economics of this are,
you know, are mind blowing. I remember the initial study
we did even back with the mental health Coalition. High utilizers report. High
utilizers report. Back then, I mean, that was back in 2018. You remember those numbers?
Yeah, it was $17 million. So it's gone up. But.
But it fried my brain. I'm going to just be very honest as a
business person to see that the economic cost, 17 some million
dollars spent on roughly 500 persons.
And again, I want to be hyper clear. It's not those 500
persons that are intentionally creating this issue. Right. They
just bring a lot of stuff the table. And this is just the services it's
required. And they're high utilizers of these public services. Exactly. And so
that number blew my mind. And then I see the $20 million number and I'm
like, that is where, yeah, I'm compassionate. I'm gonna do this because
I feel it's the right thing to do. But I love the economics of it
too. And I love to be able to walk in and talk to funders and
talk to other business people and say, hey, if we can work this towards a
functional zero number, here's what we can expect to see.
Because my nonprofit partners are all compassionate. They
all get it, they wanna serve people. But as business people,
like, hey, let's fix this, If we fix this, look what's going on. There's a pot of
money sitting over there. We can fund a lot of interesting other things that people
want from either county or city side. Right. When we're not spending money on
EMS calls. You know what, that's a great concept. It's a great point. You mentioned
nonprofits, you mentioned business. Let's talk about local government. Now.
I'm going to make a comment and remember, I'm the, I'm a county commissioner, chair
of the Sedgwick County Commission. Sure. I have taken an interest in this space for
a lot of reasons. Right. One of the reasons is the compassion piece. The other
reason is the economics piece. A very important reason is my
district is really bearing the brunt of a lot of this and the
burden of responsibility that that goes with homelessness in this community.
And the people in my community and in my district demand
that I, that I, that I work for solutions.
I say all of that and then I'm going to say this and I want
you to hear me out and I want your opinion, okay? This is not a
government problem to solve. Okay? Government
has a role, right? It has a role because
of the public safety is involved. It has a role because the cost to the
taxpayer that's involved. But we, local government, it's
not our job. It's not our sole
responsibility to solve this problem. You hinted at it early.
This is a community collaborative effort, right? Non
profits, private business, local government, faith, community. Come
on, my church folk, come on. We need you in a big way. Always. So
what are we saying? We're seeing the city of Wichita went out and bought a
building, right? And said, we're not going to operate a shelter. And I don't want
city of Wichita operating a homeless shelter. I don't blame them. Yeah,
this is. What do they do? They said we're going to have a board established,
Second light board of community, individuals. The mayor's on
that board. I'm also on that board. But they're going to be
operators. Humankind, a non profit organization,
is operating it. So they own the building, they put the
infrastructure together. But they said, here, community, help us to solve this. Sedgwick County's role,
our role in this space has always been about mental health, the health outcomes,
substance use. Why? Because we have Commcare. That's right. We have comcare. And that's the
role that we play here. So I want everyone to hear me very clearly. Those
on the right, those on the left, those that are benign in this conversation.
Ryan Baty doesn't believe that it is government's job to solve this
problem. Ryan Baty does believe government has a role. And one of the
things that we can do is help lead his conduit and really putting these things
together and putting the pieces together so this community can have success. Am I right?
Am I wrong? What do you think? I'm gonna give you 100% right on that
one, Ryan. This problem is
way bigger than any one entity has the ability to
solve. You talked about this. This is very complex. Yeah, there are
government pieces to this puzzle. And yeah, I would love, you know, as much
government funding as we can flow into second light. To flow into second light. I
get it. Because that makes the philanthropic piece a little
bit easier. But if we load all of this onto government,
then we're kind of washing our hands of the problem. Right? We're saying, hey, this
is, you know, this is the county commission's issue, the city council's issue.
And I lose then my tie, I lose my responsibility
as a member of our community to help solve
hard community problems. I believe it's every
citizen's responsibility to work on these problems. We see
the collectivity that is being driven. People are working together.
But I think if we have the mindset that it's always government's
responsibility to fix stuff, we're never going to get it fixed.
The money is not there, to be honest with you. The staff time, the people
are not there. I mean, the county government, the city government already are doing a
lot of different things that are very basic service functions. We can't
add this on top of that. Yeah, the money's just not there to do it.
And even if the money was there, why would we, you know, that's, there's other
places we can spend it. We have to have a full community
buy in. We have to have full community playing in the game.
Because otherwise, if you don't have stake in the game, you
don't care. Steve and this is why when I heard that you were being announced
as the president of the second Light board, I'm just going to tell you, man,
I was so encouraged to hear it. I was grateful because I know your worldview,
I know your heart, I know your resources, I know your connections, I know your
care on this issue. But I also know your philosophy is it's like,
no, we're not going to go to the city of Wichita and just do this
in Sedgwick County and just do this and go to the state and just
do. This is you guys have a role because this is, there's community interest here.
There's a community, the community has a great need here and that
and, and organically, if we do nothing, if we don't intervene, this is going to
get worse for it gets better and all those costs go up. You have a
role, we need you to have a role that this community has to do this
together. I'm, I'm so grateful that's your perspective and I'm so
grateful that you're working these things out. Sure. Well, Ryan, because think about
it, I mean, it's just, it's partly common sense,
right? At the end of the day, government has a limited role.
I mean, there's only so much y' all can do. Sure. And
you know, it is whether we call on, you know, our faith community brethren, we
call on social services. You know, there, there's a reason United Way
has been in the community for over 100 years. Right. It wasn't because we didn't
need it. It's because widows and orphans, you know, needed ice at
the time. That was where it started. Right? Yeah. But way back in the. Way
back, you know, over 100 years ago, there's United Way was here. They met the
gap. They met the gap. And that's what, you know, as, you
know, federal funding drops, we can't expect.
Can't get blood out of a rock. Right. You can't expect to come to the
taxpayers and say over and over and over and over, you know, give us more.
Give us more. It's got to be coming from a place of
we have civic pride, we have civic responsibility,
that as individuals that live within this community that we've got to do our part.
Yeah. And whether that's financial, whether that's skills and
talents, I love it. Time, whatever. I mean, you know, help out. I
want to talk about barriers. Steve, I got a couple more questions I want to
ask because this has been. Man, I get to hear you talk about this stuff
a lot. Sure, sure. So. But hearing you, I get
more and more encouraged when I hear you talk and talk about
these issues. But there are some barriers and there are some challenges. And one of
the challenges that I think that we need to elevate to this community and make
them more aware is that we do a really good job in this
community of those that want help, those that want help, those that
are maybe just down on their luck. Maybe it was an eviction, a loss, a
job, a divorce, a lot of different things. They want help. They're engaging
services. We house about 80 those. We actually
had 1300 of those contacts last year. 80% of those
state house. Right. I think we need to name it. We do a really good
job in this community with people that want to get help. And I want to
thank all the providers out there that are doing this work. I especially
want to thank people, City of Wichita Housing Department. I want to thank people at
the United Way, the continuum of care. I'm thinking about Cole, I'm thinking about
Matt. I'm thinking about Pete. I'm thinking about all these folks over there. I mean,
they're amazing. Yes, they're amazing. They do a good job.
There's a second subset of the population that, man,
we've just got to figure some stuff out with. Right on. It's what we're
calling the hardest to engage. These are individuals,
for the most part, that are not seeking services, they're not seeking help.
Many times it's because of severe mental health disorders. Right. It's
severe addiction, it's physical or intellectual disability.
These are individuals, and we're putting that number between probably 60 and 100
people in this community right now. And these people are typically what we see that
are on our streets right now. The hardest to engage
subset of the population. And it's going to require a different strategy. We're
taking traditional homelessness services and resources that we
do well with one. With one part of that population, and we're trying to use
those same resources and services with the hardest to engage.
Yeah. And it's not working, is it? No. And it's unfortunate. And, you
know, we ran a quick pilot program. Tell them about the pilot program. Well, and
it was a. And again, so I want to reiterate very
much that, you know, providers are working collaboratively
together. They recognize that this is. That we have this. This
tough nut to crack. Right. That there is this group of 60 to
100 to maybe 120 folks that really are
actively running away from service in some
regards. Right. They are not seeking, they're not. They don't want help,
partly, maybe for a lot of different reasons. But that group got together
and said, we need to do something, because not doing anything is not
fixing the problem either. And they convened, they put a
lot of intensive effort into, you know, how do we do this on a by
name basis. We are going to identify individuals, we're going to start to figure out
and work collaboratively together to help these people, you know,
find housing, overcome the barriers that they have in life.
Pilot program, you know, is the reason we call it a pilot. Right. You're trying
stuff. You don't know what's going to work, what's not going to work. You started
out very small as a group of, I think, five folks, and out of that
group, one of the five, so 20%,
you know, was able to maintain stable housing. One of the things I think
that came out of this that I find, you know, interesting is again, what
types of housing do we need? What do we need in the community to help
solve, you know, help these people? Because they are, as you've
identified and we've talked about, they are one of the larger drains on
the resources. And again, I hate to even talk about
it that way because it makes people look like, hey, you know, they're just sucking
money out, but it's not it. I think there needs to
be different and better solutions. Why I like what the group is doing that's working
on this pilot is, hey, okay, that didn't work. What's next? And
these were Significant housing support, significant case managers,
significant interventions and four out of five still could not maintain housing.
Absolutely. And that's that, that is something that we need to be aware of and
that's something that we've got to find a pivot, we got to find a pivot.
In the old days we had other types of stability housing stabilities, we had
group homes, we had institutionalization for some of these individuals. Right. These things aren't, don't
exist in our community today. So we've got to pivot and we've got to find
other opportunities because for a couple of really important
reasons. Number one is these people need our help. Correct. Let's
not lose sight. Thank you. These people need our help. Number two, the
businesses, the, the neighbors, the community
members, they also need our help as they also need
solves to these problems. And the third thing is the economics is again, these
are, these are the high utilizers at the public services that are driving up
costs and, and it just makes sense to be a good steward over these
resources. We've got to pinpoint where these challenges are and we've got
to attack them and we gotta attack them quickly. Fill the gap, right? I mean
identify the gap, fill the gap, figure out, you know, what needs to be done.
And I think that what I'm seeing now that is most encouraging is
that people are, from a service provision standpoint are starting to really
work through why we would attack a problem in a business, which is I'm going
to put something out there, I'm going to try this because I think this is
the best solution. That solution didn't work well, what did we learn from that? How
do we create this learning loop of we tried this, this didn't work. Here's things
that we like and here's things that just didn't fly. Then let's create another
trial, let's create this until we really get down to the heart of,
let's nail down what it is we need that's going to move the needle.
I still really feel that as you talked about and identified,
we are missing, there's a gap in the
housing side for folks that are, you know, I would say
present more challenges than others. And that's, you know, whether it's group
home, whether that's institutions, whatnot,
because that we don't know quite what the answer is quite yet. But we think
that that's where the answer is starting to point. And can I just, let me
just make this comment and I've been criticized when I say this publicly, but I.
This is how I feel. It's okay. It's not compassionate to
let people live in our streets and live
in alleys and live to where they are being preyed upon by
people. Not everybody. When you drive down Second and Topeka, not everybody over there is
homeless. There are people that are preying on these individuals. Absolutely. And we.
What I hope this community does and what I'm sensing in this community is, look,
we take mental health very serious in this community. In fact, if
you are a threat to yourself or to others, we can
involuntarily commit you for 72 hours. That's how serious we've elevated that
crisis. I don't yet believe we've elevated homelessness as
a community to that level of crisis. When we see someone that lives on the
streets saying, this is not okay, we are going to
intervene because we care. This is an issue of compassion. This is an issue of.
This is not. These are not habitable spaces for
human beings to live in. And what I've contended is that
we need to elevate homelessness to a level of crisis that's worthy of intervention.
These are human beings living on corners being preyed upon by the elements
and being preyed upon by my wolves out there
trafficking drug dealers. These women are being raped.
These people are being beaten, and there's violence. We're leaving
these people vulnerable. And I'm not okay with that. I'm willing to
aggressively intervene because I care about these people. Right? And I think
that that's. It's critically important for people to understand that, yeah, there is this
subset of persons, and when you talk about victims and prey, right.
That is the. It is true. It happens
daily. And it's. It is something that we as a community cannot
tolerate, we should not tolerate is, you know, people being
taken advantage of. And whatever their circumstances, whether it's because of age,
mental infirmity, you know, addiction issue, whatever. Again, no, we
cannot let people take advantage of people. Those are the people that really frustrate me,
that really. I'll just be honest. They piss me off because they are taking advantage
of the most vulnerable people. They aren't going to walk up to me and say,
hey, do you want to buy drugs? Like, yes. Hit the bricks, right?
But they know that if I go talk to this person here sleeping in the
in the doorway. Yeah, okay, I'll. Whatever it
takes. And, yeah, it's sad. Well, Steve, I'll tell you that we
could. You and I could set for hours and talk, because we could talk about
the data we can talk about the women and that we still don't have enough
resources for women and children in this community. Correct. I
would love to talk about the union rescue mission and all the great things they're
doing and Family Promise and these other organizations and providers. We could
talk for days. Yes. Last question, though, because I really
want to hear it from you and I want to hear your heart. What does
success look like here? How do we define this? Yeah. So
I will tell you, I think there's two. I'm going to give you two answers.
Right there is the practical answer, which is, you know, as a community,
we've set this goal of reaching functional zero. And what that
means, it's a national type benchmark that was originated again
back in Bergen county with Julia Orlando. But really it means that we have more
people exiting out of homelessness into housing than we do having
people enter into homelessness. And I think it's a very highly admirable
goal. Right. At the end of the day, that's a super way to at least
start the conversation, you know, and we can focus that and target that on
veterans, we can target that on families, whatever. But at the end of the day,
if you really want my honest answer, I would love nothing more than to.
And they'll take this, hopefully not the wrong way. I'd love to shut down, you
know, my partners and say, we don't need a humankind. We don't need an open
door, because guess what, we don't have. You know, the homeless crisis is solved in
Wichita. And whenever I talk to any of our executive director
partners, you know, one of the questions I ask is, are you willing to work
yourself out of a job? And thankfully, all of them say, yeah, I would love
nothing more than to be able to shut my door and say, you know, job
well done. Right. And we're not there yet. But, you
know, if we want to have a real aggressive, we want to really say this
is what we've done and we've won as a community. It would be to
say we don't need the shelter anymore because we are doing such a great
job of keeping people out of homelessness that we can take care
of those the last little bit that need the biggest amount. Well, man, what a
beautiful vision. I'll tell you, the second lights under construction
first quarter next year is when we expect it to be completely done. Oh, yeah,
absolutely. And all these providers that will be on site, and it's hard
right now. We're. We're not an emergency winter shelter. We're shelter plus right now to
where we have the shelter but we also have a few services but the full
multi agency vision is coming a vision that many people had in this community for
several years. Right. This is hard we're in the messy middle but can I just
tell you knowing that there's people like you involved and there's an army
of people like you in this community. Yeah people like you involved
help leading these efforts. I think our brighter days are ahead
of us in this so thank you man for coming on. Thank you for
visiting. Thank you for the work you're doing. You're spending hours and hours and hours
volunteering in this pursuit because you care and I want you to
know that we see you we notice it and we're grateful for you. Thank you.
I appreciate it. Thanks for your work bud. You are you're killing it it and
we can't do it without you. Thank you. All right.