Anonymous $100,000 gift brings 50 new beds to Lawrence Community Shelter

An anonymous $100,000 gift is bringing 50 new Step Up beds to Lawrence Community Shelter, a change that will give guests more privacy, more secure storage and a safer way to sleep than the shelter’s old row-style setup. Executive Director James Chiselom said the donation moved him to tears because it affirmed the work staff have done to keep the only emergency homeless shelter serving Lawrence and Douglas County running.

The new beds are modular pods with stairs instead of ladders, privacy walls so people are not sleeping directly face to face, lockers with combination locks, and space for lamps and charging equipment. The electrical work was not finished yet, but the shelter had already started assembling the first pod Monday. A three-person crew put the first unit together in about four hours from premade pieces, a sign that the upgrade can be rolled out without a major construction project.

The shelter’s need is easy to measure. Its listed overnight capacity is 125 people, rising to 140 in cold weather, while city records show it was contracted in January 2026 to provide 125 beds at the main building, 48 at Pallet 24 behind it, and 50 at The Village on North Michigan Street. That system is serving a county where the 2024 point-in-time count found 414 people experiencing homelessness, including 142 who were unsheltered, 137 in transitional housing and 136 in emergency shelter. The count was 18% higher than the year before, and the city said 51% of people counted had been homeless for more than a year.

Chiselom said the upgrade matters because a shelter built around beds should offer the best beds it can. One shelter guest made the same basic point from a different place, saying better sleep matters when people are already at a very low point in life. For guests trying to hold on to work, health care and stability, a bed is not a small detail. It is the place where the shelter’s safety, privacy and dignity are either protected or denied.

Jeff Watson, chief executive of Sourcing Systems, was on site helping install the beds and said the company sees the project as philanthropy that serves homeless people with dignity. He said Step Up beds have been installed across the country and was headed to Topeka after the Lawrence stop to install another unit. Chiselom called the donation just the start of improving the shelter experience, even as the facility still has more work ahead to finish the electrical setup and continue replacing older sleeping arrangements.

That larger effort comes after a difficult stretch for the shelter. Chiselom has said the facility came a long way from 2024, when leadership turnover, safety problems and fears of closure weighed on operations. By 2025, the shelter said it had served 806 individuals, moved 77 people into HUD-defined permanent housing and helped 127 more exit to other housing destinations, while 706 night-by-night guests came through its doors. Its annual report put overall utilization across programs at 89 percent, with some winter operations running over capacity. The new beds will not solve that pressure, but they will change what a full night in Lawrence looks like for dozens of people who depend on the shelter now.