With Chronic Homelessness Projected to Double by 2029, Zero KC Is Combining Low-Barrier Shelter, Outreach, and Permanent Housing to Reach Stability
As of May 2025, Kansas City had the highest rate of chronic rough sleepers in the country. Their homeless population is set to double by 2029. Rough sleepers in Kansas City live in some of the most dangerous parts of the country. Personal items are never safe. Theft is ubiquitous. And escaping the system can feel impossible.
Despite these barriers, the city’s director in its fight to end homelessness, Josh Henges, claims “homelessness is [still] the most solvable problem America has chosen not to solve.”
Kansas City’s plan, called “Zero KC,” is built on a foundation of five central beliefs.
- Living outside is dangerous
- Kansas City needs more housing
- Wraparound services are critical
- One size does not fit all
- Solving homelessness requires investment
These claims seem straightforward, but they identify that solving homelessness does not simply include getting people off the streets.
Their priorities encompass a range of investments, including collaboration with parallel organizations like local advocacy groups, street outreach, and the provision of low-barrier services.
Housing First, not Housing Only
All of these solutions ultimately work towards the belief that people should receive unconditional housing. That strategy, known as “Housing First,” has come under considerable criticism in the past year.
Pointing to programs that have failed, critics argue that housing first is a waste of money and should be scrapped. But these failed programs often only provide housing. They oversimplify homelessness and do not treat it as a complex issue with complex solutions.
Root causes of homelessness are not effectively targeted, and people are not consistently able to maintain stable housing.
Kansas City’s approach to housing first shows us that it takes more than just giving people homes. With a multi-pronged approach, the city can target the roots of homelessness, rather than slap a prestructured solution on a complex, personalized issue.
That’s why Zero KC, the city’s program to end homelessness, has adopted the motto “housing first, but not housing only.” Programs that apply one-size-fits-all solutions overlook that homelessness is a human-centered issue. Humans cannot be boxed into one problem and one solution. Solving homelessness involves treating people with dignity and respect.
Street Outreach
One of the keys to humanizing homelessness is meeting unhoused residents where they are, rather than expecting them to find the services offered by the city themselves. On the other hand, failing to inform homeless people of the services accessible to them is often one of the greatest barriers to reducing homelessness.
Street Outreach Coordinator Nick Allen works to lead these personalized interactions with rough sleepers in Kansas City. Beyond getting people off the streets, Allen’s priorities are to build trust, check in with those experiencing homelessness, and understand their stories better.
By doing so, Allen is able to report back to Kansas City’s Office of Unhoused Solutions, informing them of the needs within the city’s homeless community. Moreover, Allen can build relationships between unhoused people and the service providers available in the city. With these relationships, residents are more likely to know of, understand, and seek out further help.
But where can cities like Kansas City find the money to address their homeless communities?
A Coordinated, Humanizing Strategy
Houseless Prevention Coordinator Josh Henges claims that finding the money is not the problem. “There’s enough money currently in this system to solve this problem, but it is not coordinated,” he said. That coordination—between housing advocacy organizations, political groups, and policy makers themselves—is critical to fighting homelessness systematically and efficiently.
Henges has pushed for churches, aid organizations, and shelters to work together to support unhoused people. With a coordinated strategy, each organization’s limited funding can collectively target neighborhoods and particular demographics that are easily overlooked. With coordination, each group can begin to treat its clients with dignity and respect, pursuing personalized relationships with the people being served.
Shelter KC is one example working with Zero KC to provide low-barrier shelter beds to rough sleepers in the city.
Eric Burger, executive director of the Kansas City-based shelter, argues that homelessness will never be solved by simply offering affordable housing. Such a “band-aid” solution fails to address the chronic issues underlying rough sleeping. Instead, Burger advocates for a holistic solution that targets various aspects leading someone into homelessness. It’s about “how [can] we have relationships with people,” Burger argues.
As a Christian organization, the shelter seeks to serve sacrificially out of Jesus’ humanizing service to marginalized individuals. Shelter KC’s multi-targeted approach, therefore, prioritizes personalized interaction and care with clients. The shelter does not stop at offering beds for a night, but it gives its clients nutritious meals, case management support, a recovery program, and job skills training, among other services.
Low-Barrier Access to Services
Another key strategy developed under Zero KC includes its work to lower the barrier to housing services. Historically, hundreds of unhoused people have been refused access to shelter beds in Kansas City because of overcrowding, mental health concerns, and addiction. People like Greg Campbell, who suffers from Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD), have been turned away from shelters in Kansas City since they could not meet the prerequisites for receiving support.
“Being out there in these shelters, being around a bunch of people, it seems to trigger my C-PTSD,” he said. His condition can cause him to act in anti-social ways, which frequently prevent him from entering shelters.
But on cold winter days or long stretches through the summer months, Campbell’s inability to access shelter beds has been extremely taxing. Instead, he has resorted to seeking out services from mobile support organizations, like the Uplift Organization, which provides hot meals in vans around the city.
Zero DC has pushed against those barriers, believing that all Kansas City residents should be given the right to shelter. This summer, they worked to secure 160 additional beds to be made available to people like Campbell.
The beds were set to be divided among four localized agencies: Heartland Center for Behavior Change, Open Door, True Light, and ReStart. ReStart’s new beds will be designated solely for women, as a part of Zero KC’s plan to target the spike in female homelessness.
By collaborating with other organizations, Zero KC can limit unnecessary costs like building new shelter complexes from scratch, while also spreading support across the city and to targeted areas.
Josh Henges said that 78% more people have used Zero KC’s added resources since 2024, many of which are now without requirements to enter.
“We want to make [spaces] that [are] easy to get in and hard to get kicked out of,” Henges said.
A Functional Zero
And with low-barrier emergency shelter acting as a bridge to permanent, unconditional housing, homeless people are able to move from “housing crisis to housing stability.”
Unconditional housing means that Kansas City seeks to offer housing without any readiness requirements, job prerequisites, or rules for remaining in housing. Coupled with this housing, Zero KC plans to offer community integration, individualized support, and a choice for residents for the type of housing to live in.
With these plans, Kansas City is trying to lower homelessness rates to a “functional zero” and eradicate long-term homelessness. Henges believes that by offering a foundation to build one’s life upon, Kansas City can ensure that anyone who becomes homeless can be back on their feet within thirty days.
As the program continues to work into full swing, advocates will be anxious to see its impact on reducing homelessness and securing stable lives for more Kansas City residents. To learn more about Zero KC’s innovative plan to tackle the country’s worst rate of rough sleeping, read on.