Editorial: Media blackout at new Wichita shelter won’t help solve homelessness

The main thing to remember is that helping Wichita’s homeless population make it through the winter is not an event, it’s a process.

So gracias to Humankind Ministries for taking on the daunting task of running of the city’s new emergency shelter, and kudos for getting it open early this year, on Friday, to account for the freezing weather of the past weekend.

The new shelter is in the former Park Elementary School at 1025 N. Main. The midtown location will ultimately be the site of what officials are calling “The MAC,” short for Multi-Agency Center.

It’s been a huge public investment. More than $6 million in city funds from the American Recovery Plan Act has been allocated for renovation of the building from an abandoned school into a hub of shelter, social services, job and housing assistance for those who would otherwise be sleeping rough on streets, in parks, and in makeshift encampments in parking lots and under bridges.

Another $600,000 has been allocated from the city’s ARPA money for the operation of the emergency shelter for the winter.

All those are good things, but there’s an asterisk here and it’s a pretty big one.

As this editorial started out, this is not an event, it’s a process. Part of that process is oversight. Another part is keeping the issue of homelessness in front of the eyes of the community.

That’s why we’re disturbed that the policy of the new shelter is “no media allowed.”

Humankind held an event as part of the proceedings — a one-hour open house last Wednesday, before the shelter opened.

It came with this caveat: “This will be the last opportunity to video inside the building before it officially opens. Due to privacy issues for the clients served, no media will be allowed inside the fenced campus once the shelter opens.”

Certainly, privacy is a concern. No one wants (and no one in the local media wants to create) a situation where people who are experiencing hard times have their suffering deepened by someone coming into the facility, camera rolling and invading their space.

However, a total media blackout sends the wrong message — and that message is “We have something to hide here.”

Humankind ran the emergency shelter for the winter of 2023-2024, in a different surplus school building. And through interviews with clients and volunteers, a diligent journalist, Stefania Lugli of the Kansas Leadership Center Journal, discovered and reported on multiple problems at the shelter:

▪ There was only one toilet serving more than 100 people at peak times, leading to situations where shelter patrons had to wait a half-hour and sometimes peed themselves in line. Lugli was able to confirm that through a site visit.

▪ Fights were common and security costs outstripped forecasts — nearly equaling the amount spent on salaries and benefits for the care staff — about $147,000 for each of those line items through mid-February.

▪ Meals were also an issue. Some were provided by volunteers with local churches, which were hearty and nutritious. But on days when that didn’t happen, a meal might consist of a granola bar, a piece of fruit and a cup of coffee.

We are hopefully assuming those problems have been addressed going into this winter, but other problems are almost certain to surface.

Public money funds the shelter, and it’s not too much to ask to allow reporters inside once in a while to see how things are going.

The shelter plan also counts on continued donations and volunteerism for its success. A media blackout runs the risk of creating a community perception of “out of sight, out of mind.”

If people in the community don’t see the problem of homelessness, they might simply assume that it’s solved (nothing could be further from the truth) and wash their hands of the whole thing.

As a news organization, we would much rather be able to identify problems at the outset, inform the public of those problems, and research potential solutions.

But to do that, there has to be transparency and trust — and it has to start before things get out of control and all that’s left to do is point fingers of blame.

Hanging a “no media allowed” sign on the door of The MAC is not a good start.

This story was originally published December 4, 2024 at 4:45 AM with the headline "Editorial: Media blackout at new Wichita shelter won’t help solve homelessness."