4A NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2009
SHELTER
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said.
Erin Pursel, Leawood master's student at the Edwards Campus, said she too felt concern while volunteering at the LCS for her summer marketing class. She said the guests would often sleep out front when the shelter filled to capacity, and she worried what would happen to those guests when the winter arrived.
"The people that can't fit into the shelter are sleeping under this canopy outside," Pursel said. "I really don't know what they're going to do."
Legally, the LCS can't accept more than its current 76-person limit because of fire regulations, Lawrence Fire Marshal Rich Barr said.
Loring Henderson, director of the Lawrence Community Shelter, said the LCS most needed donations of the following items for this winter:
Raising Awareness on Homelessness
Loring Henderson, director
Henderson said he expected more guests would soon line up at the shelter at night as the weather turned consistently cold and camping became intolerable.
Barr said one of the biggest problems of housing the homeless at the LCS shelter or in a church basement, as in the First Christian Church earlier this year, was that
"If they absolutely can't get in, we try to give them blankets so they can curl up some place out of the wind and survive," Henderson said.
clothing
blankets
cereal
Simran Sethi, KU associate professor of journalism, said students in her summer graduate "Social and Environmental Initiatives" class created a series with both articles and video for Lawrence.com, exposing spacial and other needs at the shelter.
Go to Lawrence.com and search "gimmeshelter" to find the series.
those buildings were not designed to house large amounts of people.
"When you change the use to a residence, then it has to be protected," Barr said. "It would have to be sprinkled, it would have to have a fire-alarm space, it would have to have adequate exits."
Henderson said the LCS was currently raising funds in hopes of constructing a new shelter with a 125-person capacity where Don's Steakhouse once stood at 2176 E. 23rd St.
A SOLUTION IN SIGHT
Mayor Robert Chestnut said city commissioners would vote in December on whether to approve the new location. He said the city had met little resistance to moving
"We've started to raise the money, but we don't have enough at all." Henderson said.
the LCS, but neighbors of the proposed site are opposing its relocation near their homes.
"There's a lot of concern in the adjacent neighborhood, making sure it won't have an adverse impact," Chestnut said.
Homeless men settle in for the night in the Lawrence Community Shelter. The shelter expanded occupancy from 31 to 76, but still may not be able to meet the need for space. Lawrence's Salvation Army Homeless Shelter closed last spring, leaving the city 44 fewer spaces for overnight shelter.
Henderson said even if the LCS received approval from the city commission to move to the new location in December, the homeless residents in Lawrence would likely have to endure another winter under the current shelter situation.
KANSAN FILE PHOTO
"If we were going to have enough for next winter, we'd have to start it now or within the next couple of months," Henderson said.
For those who will have to survive the wintry weather with a possible scarcity of shelter, even one winter without additional space seems dangerously long,
Worthington said.
For Worthington, the horror of what can happen without shelter in wintertime has a face, and he won't ever forget the day he discovered the cold had claimed the life of someone he knew personally. The victim's body, he said,
was found frozen, lying in the train park between Tennessee and Kentucky streets.
"I don't think I'd want to enforce such a rule on a cold night," Worthington said, reflecting on the tough job ahead of the LCS staff this winter. "I got to
look at people and say, 'I'm sorry, you can't stay here tonight.' And they're looking at me like, 'Where am I going to stay? What am I going to do?'
Edited by Abbey Strusz
AWARENESS
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from the tanning salon.
"It did spark a controversy, which caused people to pay a little more attention," she said. "But sometimes that doesn't necessarily help."
Amber Adams, Willis' roommate who has been helping with the fundraiser, said that the majority of donated bras usually came from sororities and that she expected to see more come in as the fundraiser continued to push forward. The bras will continue to be collected and donated, even though "Bras Across the Kaw" has already hung a portion of them.
Throughout October, Willis also hosts pink parties to promote the fundraiser. At a party pink, Willis goes to people's houses or even to student housing to give pink hair extensions to residents.
"This type of thing really hits home with a lot of people," Adams said. "It should pick up a lot with the pink parties."
Despite the lack of funds making their way to Salon Hawk's fundraiser, Heather Ackerly, foundation and corporate relations manager of Lawrence Memorial Hospital, said at this point they were still on track to reach their goal amount of $50,000.
Willis said the sororites had also decided to pitch in to help this year, selling T-shirts as a part of the Salon Hawk fundraiser.
"I think these last weeks could be great for her," Acklerly said of Willis. "We're still in the early stages of the fundraiser."
"There has been a huge community effort this year," Ackerly said. "Lots of other organizations have pitched in this year and, overall, there are more community fundraising events taking place."
Edited by Abbey Strusz
HEALTH CARE White House takes caps on premiums off table
WASHINGTON — The White House will not commit to health care legislation that would cap insurance premiums or tax benefits, taking a wait-and-see approach as congressional negotiators seek a deal, advisers said Sunday.
President Barack Obama will not demand that a final bill include a government-run plan
"There will be compromise. There will be legislation, and it will achieve our goals: helping people who have insurance get more security, more accountability for the insurance industry, helping people who don't have insurance get insurance they can afford, and lowering the overall cost of the system," aide David Axelrod said.
as a way of driving down costs through competition, though that's his preference, they said.
Associated Press
WEATHER
Hurricane weakens over open seas
Forecasters say the storm could still hit resorts near the Baja Peninsula in California
ASSOCIATED PRESS BY MARK STEVENSON
The track of the Category 5 hurricane threatened to disrupt a major sport fishing tournament scheduled to start Wednesday in Los Cabos, where hundreds of fishermen — mainly Americans — were gathering.
MEXICO CITY — Hurricane Rick, the strongest eastern North Pacific storm in more than a decade, weakened slightly over open seas Sunday as forecasters said it could veer into resorts at the tip of the Baja California Peninsula by midweek.
Los Cabos's civil defense director, Francisco Cota, said authorities were already weighing plans to open storm shelters and start police patrols urging residents of low-lying neighborhoods to evacuate. "We foresee opening a lot of shelters," Cota said, while noting the weather at the resort was still warm and mostly sunny Sunday.
It was projected to move over cooler waters and weaken to between 109 and 86 mph before hitting land, but "Rick is expected to remain a dangerous hurricane for the next couple of days," the center said.
The eye was centered about 450 miles south of Cabo San Lucas as of 5 p.m. EDT Sunday.
The hurricane's winds were still a howling 160 mph Sunday, down slightly from a peak of 180 mph (285 kph), according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida.
The first inhabited land in Rick's path is Socorro Island, about 300 miles southwest of Cabo San Lucas, where about 103 personnel from the Mexican Navy and other government agencies are based.
The mainland base that commands the detachment said Navy personnel on the island reported some wind and rain and lowered communications antennas to prevent them from being blown away when the hurricane passes near the island Monday. Isla Socorro is a nature reserve that hosts the Navy detachment as well as scuba-diving expeditions.
Rick was moving toward the northwest at about 14 mph and was expected to begin turning toward the northwest over the coming 48 hours before curving toward the northeast, the center said.
This image of Hurricane Rick was taken at 11 p.m. EDT Saturday. The U.S. National Hurricane Center says Rick turned into an "extremely dangerous" Category 5 storm on Saturday with sustained winds reaching 180 mph.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
INTERNATIONAL Suicide bomber in Iran kills at least 40 people
TEHRAN, Iran — A suicide bomber killed five senior commanders of the powerful Revolutionary Guard and at least 37 others Sunday near the Pakistani border in the heartland of a potentially escalating Sunni insurgency.
The attack — which also left dozens wounded — was the most high-profile strike against security forces in an outlaw region of armed tribal groups, drug smugglers and Sunni rebels known as Jundallah, or Soldiers of God.
President Mahmoud Ahmadading promised sharp retaliation. But a sweeping offensive by authorities is unlikely.
Iranian officials have been reluctant to open full-scale military operations in the southeastern border zone, fearing it could become a hotspot for sectarian violence with the potential to draw in al-Qaida and Sunni militants from nearby Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Associated Press
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