By Michael Bushnell

When it comes to creating additional bed space for Kansas City’s ever-growing homeless population, sometimes innovation and new ideas take a back seat to the old-school, barracks-style beds in a gym concept that allows little privacy or dignity – much less security – for the newly sheltered guest.

City Union Mission hopes to change that paradigm by partnering with Shield Casework of North Kansas City to provide a new concept in interior sheltering options to the city’s homeless population just ahead of winter’s arctic blast.

City Union Mission will be installing eight new, customized “Murphy bed” style units along with roughly 20 traditional bedding units to expand its indoor housing capacity by approximately 30%.

“We’re looking to utilize every available space at our Family Shelter to ensure our guests feel safe, secure, valued and respected,” said City Union Mission CEO Terry Megli. “With winter fast approaching, we sought a short-term solution of expanding our bed capacity within our existing facility.”

The modified POD concept will go into production sometime in December or early January in Shield’s North Kansas City facility.

Shield Casework founder Steven Hopkins said the modified Murphy bed concept is ideal for installation in a large communal room such as a gymnasium because it takes up a minimal amount of space, allows for daytime programming in the open space and adds additional winter housing space for homeless clients.

“We partnered up with Perkins & Will in Los Angeles because we were already sending our POD housing units out to L.A.,” said Hopkins. “We worked with their designer Yan Krymsky on the modified design, ran it by the folks at City Union Mission; they liked the concept.”

Shield Casework works primarily in medical cabinets and tables, as well as higher end athletic lockers used by professional sports franchises like the Charlotte Hornets and the Los Angeles Rams. The modified design being used by City Union Mission is designed to be installed against an interior wall of an open space and folds neatly up during the day.

The Murphy bed cabinets will be constructed out of a Corian-like laminate surface and be roughly 26 inches deep by 42 inches wide in order to accommodate the fold away, XL-twin mattress provided by the agency. When the cabinet doors are open, they act as a screen and provide some privacy and dignity for the client versus a standard open sleeping area that would typically be in an emergency warming center. Each unit is divided by a 20-inch wardrobe area with birch doors for hanging garments and storage. 

Hopkins says he’d love for his organization to be considered for more local work as most of the company’s POD housing units are shipped to out of town agencies.

“We do so much work nationally, it’s really cool to work in the city in which you live,” Hopkins said. “It’s wonderful to drive up the road and be able to help people in our community.”

The POD units for City Union Mission will each cost around $4,000 and will potentially be installed early next year.