Today, Josh Henges formally begins his role as Kansas City’s first Homelessness Prevention Coordinator. In his new position, Henges is tasked with implementing community-wide strategies to expedite assistance to the houseless and those at-risk of becoming houseless and creating strategies to reduce homelessness and generational poverty.

The City is making significant improvements in delivering better services and support to our homeless residents, including:

• Allocating $12.5 million to the City’s affordable housing trust fund that will incentivize the creation of affordable housing units and other housing options within larger otherwise market-rate multifamily development projects
• Distributing about $16 million in emergency rental assistance funds to thousands of households in Kansas City with another $25 million on the way
• Enacting an extreme weather plan that activates when the daytime high is below 32 degrees, or the overnight low is less than 20 degrees
• Finalizing a city policy detailing processes which will help unhoused persons relocate from encampments to safe facilities with supportive services
• Using about $2.5 million annually to guarantee a tenant has legal representation, regardless of income, when a landlord sues for eviction
• Using community input to develop a “Vision for Housing” that outlines the plan to create 10,000 new affordable housing units by 2027
• Establishing a Housing and Community Development Department with the City’s first employees dedicated to homelessness prevention and support, tenant advocacy, and affordable housing creation and preservation
• Considering conversion of nearly 3,000 vacant lots and homes owned by the City’s Land Bank into affordable housing
• Turning two former hotels into permanent supportive housing and emergency transitional housing for those experiencing homelessness
• Constructing affordable housing on city-owned property in creative ways, such as the plan to incorporate affordable housing units into the reconstruction of the Barney Allis Parking Plaza

“My primary focus will be the safe housing of all of our homeless neighbors and to work with systems connected to houselessness to close loopholes that continually allow this to happen,” Henges said. “I am excited to join the team and to continue the great work already in progress.”

Henges will collaborate and work with the Houseless Task Force on their strategic long and short-term goals and work on street outreach plans and policies providing intensive outreach service to insure the houseless and housing insecure receive the services needed while being treated with dignity.

Henges comes to the City from Shelterwood Academy where he served as Chief Development Officer for their long-term youth residential program. He was also the Director of the Veterans Community Project, where he managed transitional housing within the 49 home village. Under his leadership, more than 100 veterans successfully transitioned into permanent housing.

Henges said his passion - his “obsession”- to help Kansas City’s most vulnerable came at a very early age.

“When I was four or five-years-old, my mom was driving down Broadway and in the lot where the Kauffman Center now stands was a man, by himself, that stood out in a way I couldn’t understand,” he explained. “My mom tried to explain homelessness to me, but it made no sense. At that moment, the obsession, the ‘passion,’ with finding a solution to end homelessness was sparked.”

Henges has a Masters in Intercultural Communication from Hope International University and is pursuing a second Masters in Technical and Global Development at Arizona State University. He said he’s excited to put his life experiences to work for the houseless community.

Media can contact Maggie Green, Media Relations Manager, at 816-379-6562.