Kansas Republicans Consider Penalizing Homeless
by Sherman Smith, Kansas Reflector
March 3, 2023
TOPEKA — Eric Arganbright got personal as he urged lawmakers to reject an out-of-state think tank’s model legislation for criminalizing homeless people.
Appearing before the House Welfare Reform Committee, Arganbright said he experienced homelessness as a child after his father — a Methodist minister — abandoned his mother. The family had lived in the church parsonage in Morganville, a town of about 500 people in Clay County. He was 10 years old when he woke up to find his father was gone.
His mother had never had a job outside of being a preacher’s wife. She found jobs working at a gas station, diner and hotel, each in a different area. They ended up staying along the Republican River and in the back of a car at Milford Lake.
“The problem with this specific bill, and the reason I stand in opposition of it, is specifically because it would have criminalized my mother and people like my mother,” Arganbright said. “Because that’s what rural homelessness looks like in the state of Kansas.”
Arganbright, now the director of community engagement for the Kansas Statewide Homeless Coalition, and dozens of other Kansans who have direct knowledge of homelessness offered a rebuke to House Bill 2430. The only supporter of the bill was Judge Glock, senior fellow at the Texas-based Cicero Institute, which has advocated for the same legislation in other states.