Hickman Heights homeless camp is one of 1700 reported in Kansas City

By Ben McCarthy

Since January 2023, Kansas City has received over 1,700 reports of homeless encampments. City officials are paying attention to at least four that have sprung up along 71 Highway. 

Located just to the west of the Grandview Triangle, is an undeveloped road and property adjacent to Hickman Heights road. Down the dirt, and often muddy road, lies another such encampment that the city is aware of. 

The property belongs to Riverbirch LLC, based in North Carolina. When Robin Reel moved into the neighborhood in 2009, she was concerned about living at the end of a dead end, undeveloped Hickman Heights road. She went to City Hall and began looking through City Council minutes about the plans Riverbirch had to make the property into a densely populated apartment complex. Ultimately, neighborhood pushback thwarted those plans, and it has sat empty for 4 years.

In the spring, Reel and her immediate neighbor, David McArdle, both began noticing worn down pickup trucks coming up and down the street, often disappearing into the undeveloped land at odd hours of the night and early morning. 

“At first, you don’t think anything of it, because it’s a dead end road, but a lot of people still come down it and turn around,” Reel said. “Usually they get stuck trying to turn around, but eventually leave. These trucks were (proceeding) into the dirt road and disappearing.” 

The recurring truck sightings gave way in the Spring to much more concerning events. In the spring, a minivan exploded into fire as Reel’s daughter was getting ready for school in the morning. A truck without license plates came through the dirt road, past her house, and sped toward Grandview Road. By the time fire trucks responded, there was no sign of rubber tires on the  burnt out minivan. Getting a towing company to haul the charred remains away was a task that took almost two months from the time of the incident. It was all jarring to Reel, but apparently commonplace to the man hauling off the minivan. 

“I was asking the tow truck driver if this kind of thing is happening elsewhere in the city,” Reel said. “He said it’s happening often, and didn’t seem surprised by any of this.” 

Growing activity continued through the summer. Reel, McArdle, and other neighbors along Hickman Heights began seeing the outline of people at night traversing the road in and out of the general area where the encampment was set up.

Any goodwill was gone when the neighborhood heard gunshots coming from the general area of the homeless encampment. Police arrived just as a pickup truck was leaving the scene. Teresa Edens, a resident of the Royal Oaks neighborhood since 1980, says there’s been a turning point in the area since the Covid pandemic and the ensuing measures took effect. 

“You see it along 71 Highway and Hickman Mills Drive,” Edens said. “I just haven’t seen anything quite like this – with the gunshots or the homeless situation, not to this extent,” 

Some neighbors have been writing letters and appealing to the City, as well as the local property management, Ellis Associates LLC, based in Overland Park, KS. Other neighbors have taken it upon themselves to venture down the dirt road, into the unknown, and take what they could find and haul it off to a local dumpster. At the moment, it seems the inhabitants north of Hickman Heights could have abandoned the area for elsewhere in town. There’s been no incidents or sightings, sans McArdle’s encounter this month. Assistant City Manager Melissa Kozakiewicz says she and her small team are stretched thin with floods of requests all over the city asking that they do something about a new homeless encampment taking shape in their neighborhood. She points to a recent area at 14th and Spruce, as an example of how difficult it is to permanently “clear” a homeless encampment, and suggests in cases such as this, private property owners will have to step up and take a more active role in bringing about a resolution. 

“In the case of Spruce, we had to send someone out to that property over a 100 times, before we could clear the space,” Kozakiewicz said. “These sites are popping up all over town, and it’s a lot like playing ‘whack-a-mole’ if you don’t go about this correctly.” 

Jim Ellis of Ellis Associates, LLC, located in Overland Park, KS, said they still plan to move forward with a residential community in the space. He said plans for the property would be forthcoming in early 2024.

(This story has been updated 12-13-23 to reflect updated information from the management company.)