Kansas City has spent years trying to reduce homelessness.
It created a Houseless Task Force, put people into hotels during the pandemic, backed a housing navigation center, expanded street outreach, invested in affordable housing and adopted Zero KC, a five-year plan announced in 2022 with the ambitious goal of ending homelessness.
Yet the number of people living outside has continued to grow.
And the problem never stands still. City officials estimate about 1,750 single adults flow into homelessness across the Kansas City region during a year. That is not a net increase — many resolve their housing crisis relatively quickly — but it means the system is constantly trying to move people out of homelessness while others are coming in.
Now Kansas City is trying another approach.
The City Council established Housing Gateway in February, putting an initial $1 million behind a new public-private strategy that now has a first-year goal of moving 600 people into housing.
The question is: What is different this time?
KC Has Been Here Before
Housing Gateway is not replacing Zero KC. The city calls it a “pillar” of that existing plan.
That distinction matters because many of Gateway’s ideas sound familiar.
When Zero KC was introduced four years ago, Mayor Pro Tem Ryana Parks-Shaw — then chair of the city’s Houseless Task Force — said one problem was organizations doing good work but operating separately. Zero KC, she told The Community Voice in 2022, would “allow those organizations to stop working in silos.”
The plan called for low-barrier shelters, more affordable housing, street outreach, eviction prevention, faster rehousing and better coordination among service providers.
Kansas City has made progress on some pieces. In March 2025, it converted its seasonal shelter effort into a year-round low-barrier network, starting with 100 beds and planning to reach 160.
But homelessness itself has moved in the wrong direction.
The city says unsheltered homelessness has increased about 168% since 2018, and more than 1,000 people were counted sleeping outside regionwide in 2025.
Long-term homelessness has been particularly stubborn. HUD data cited by The Kansas City Star counted 283 chronically homeless people in the region in 2023, 94.7% of them unsheltered. By 2024, the chronic count had risen to 383, with 89.9% unsheltered. Chronically homeless people are individuals who have been unhoused for 12 consecutive months. pl
Those are regional figures rather than Kansas City-only counts, but they help explain why city and business leaders concluded another change was necessary.
Enter a Houston Homelessness Expert
One major difference this time is Mandy Chapman Semple, managing partner of Houston-based Clutch Consulting Group.
Commerce Bank CEO Kevin Barth began looking at Houston after hearing about that city’s widely recognized reduction in homelessness. He connected with Semple, who had served as Houston’s first special assistant to the mayor for homeless initiatives and helped design that city’s homelessness-system overhaul.
According to The Kansas City Star, Barth gathered Kansas City business leaders who paid to bring Semple to town. In December 2025, Semple and another homelessness consultant, Jim Mathy, conducted two multi-day workshops with service providers, outreach workers, police, nonprofits and city staff.
Their diagnosis was blunt: Kansas City had plenty of programs, but funding was not aligned around housing outcomes; its homelessness database was inadequate; newly homeless people had difficulty accessing the coordinated-entry system; housing options were insufficient; and existing federal housing resources were being distributed inefficiently.
Those findings helped shape Housing Gateway.
The council formally established Gateway in February, but Semple had not yet been announced as its continuing consultant. By May, Deputy Housing and Community Development Director Mary Owens told the City Council that the business community had retained Semple to advise the city on its homelessness strategy and Housing Gateway.
Semple told council members Clutch’s approach grew out of Houston’s experience and is designed to go beyond planning — working from “boardrooms to encampments” to get people housed.
So What Changes With Gateway?
Gateway is trying to organize existing providers, city government, businesses, landlords and money around a common result: getting people into housing.
The first-year target is 600 placements — about 400 rapid resolutions for people newly experiencing homelessness and 200 more intensive interventions for people who have been homeless long term.
That split is important.
A major part of that intensive work will focus on people living in encampments and other unsheltered locations in some of Kansas City’s most visible areas.
The initial effort is concentrating on greater downtown — including the Power & Light area — along with the Country Club Plaza and the 18th & Vine Jazz District. The Kansas City Business Journal reports Gateway plans to permanently close eight major encampment areas during its first phase. The strategy is not simply to clear people from those locations, but to engage residents, move them into housing or temporary shelter and then keep the sites from becoming encampments again.
That last step is part of the plan as well. City officials are working with Kansas City police on an agreement for managing sites after encampments are closed, with the goal of preventing people from returning and rebuilding camps in the same locations. The program has already closed its first encampment and begun moving residents into housing.
For people newly homeless, Gateway wants to move quickly with short-term rent, deposits, utility assistance, transportation or other help before a temporary crisis turns into prolonged homelessness.
For the long-term homeless population, the intervention is more intensive, involving housing navigation, case management and other support. The Kansas City Business Journal reports the first phase also targets eight major encampment areas. This month, the program closed its first encampment and moved five people into housing.
Housing Gateway is also supposed to bring flexible local money that is not bound by all of the restrictions attached to federal programs.
But there is an enormous obstacle: Kansas City says the metro is short roughly 64,000 affordable homes.
A program can identify people, provide rental assistance and employ housing navigators. It still needs apartments — and landlords willing to rent them.
Can 600 Really Move the Needle?
Housing 600 people would be substantial. But it would not necessarily reduce the homeless population by 600.
That’s where the estimated 1,750 single adults flowing into homelessness each year matters.
Some quickly find another apartment, stay with relatives, receive assistance or otherwise resolve the crisis. Gateway’s goal is to catch more of those people early, before weeks of homelessness become months or years.
At the same time, it will concentrate more expensive, intensive resources on people already living outside long term.
In other words, Kansas City has to work both ends of the problem: move people out faster while keeping fewer people from becoming stuck in homelessness in the first place.
Otherwise, the system can successfully house hundreds of people and still watch its homeless population grow.
A $26 Million Test
Gateway began with $1 million in city funds. By May, officials said about $4 million in public funding had been identified, including $2 million in planned federal HOME funding.
The Royals’ downtown stadium agreement later committed another $5 million.
The Kansas City Business Journal reports Gateway now has $10.8 million committed toward a $26 million goal for its first two years. The money is expected to pay for housing interventions, encampment work, low-barrier and transitional housing and related services. Sustaining the effort could eventually cost about $18 million annually.
Owens told the Business Journal those first two years must demonstrate to investors and the public that Gateway is “meeting the targets” and “reducing homelessness each year.”
That second measure is considerably harder.
Four years ago, Zero KC also promised better coordination and a Housing First approach. Gateway adds a nationally experienced outside strategist, stronger business involvement, flexible funding, landlord recruitment and specific numerical targets.
That gives Kansas City a clearer scoreboard.
Did Gateway house 600 people? Did they remain housed? Did fewer newly homeless people become chronically homeless? Did the targeted encampments remain closed? And, most importantly, did Kansas City end the year with fewer people living outside?
After years of programs and promises, those results — rather than the announcement of another initiative — will determine whether Housing Gateway is truly different.
