The Council voted unanimously Tuesday to create the City of Wichita ID to lower barriers for the homeless to access resources.
by Stefania Lugli/The Journal
The Wichita City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to create a municipal ID, the City of Wichita ID, in an effort to lower barriers for Wichitans who lack standard documentation for a state-issued ID, such as people who are homeless.
IDs will be issued at City Hall and the Multi-Agency Center, where services for the homeless are being consolidated. The ID will display a person’s name, photo, address, date of birth and ID number, making it I-9 compliant to verify an individual’s identity for employment.
Three changes were made to the draft ordinance during council discussion: waiving application fees entirely, adding “not valid for voting” along “not valid for state ID” on the card’s face and changing the name from Air Capital Card to the City of Wichita ID.
Distribution is expected to start in the spring, but no exact timeline is available yet, according to city spokesperson Megan Lovely. Rollout will depend on equipment arrival and staff training.
All Wichita residents 14 and above can apply for the card. The municipal ID card doesn’t grant status or authorization to work, according to assistant city attorney Nate Johnson.
“The idea of this ID is to establish proof of identity. It does not, on its own, provide any authorization to be able to work in this country. As a municipal government, we can’t provide that kind of authorization that the federal government can,” he said during the meeting.
Lacking ID prevents many homeless people from establishing residency and applying for jobs or housing. It is also harder to apply for benefits, fill prescriptions or cash checks without any photo identification.
“This is really the intention from the get-go, that individuals who are facing homelessness have an opportunity to have a municipal ID and be able to connect to a resource or a job,” Mayor Lily Wu said.
Startup costs (including a specialized printer) won’t exceed $20,000, with funding already included in this year’s budget.
Public comment heard no opposition. One woman, Sara Price, who’s experienced homelessness on and off for several years, thanked the city for their research and action.
“We would have a lot less homeless if more homeless people could get jobs. More people would have places to live if they could obtain places to live. Those IDs right now are our barriers,” she said.
The city worked with the Homelessness Task Force to determine the types of documents necessary for the application, such as an immigration visa, a homeless ID from another municipality, or department of corrections release paperwork.
Officials committed last May to establishing a municipal ID after Justice Together, a grassroots coalition of interfaith communities in Sedgwick County, lobbied city and county officials on homelessness policies.
Lory Mills, co-chair of the Justice Together Steering Committee on Homelessness, said the group hopes to expand the ID program to cover all of Sedgwick County, a goal she said county officials agreed to in last year’s public assembly.
“I’m not sure why that hasn’t happened. We’re really excited for what the city is doing and feel like that’s a big step forward, but we really want the county to come through on their promise to have a county wide ID,” she said.
Sedgwick County Commissioner Ryan Baty and Tom Stolz, the county manager, were present at last year’s Justice Together meeting, with Baty throwing his support behind a municipal ID program.
Baty said that he’s been in discussions regarding the program and that county staff has worked with the city on the infrastructure necessary to deploy a program.
“The city has taken the lead due to their relationship with the MAC, but once the program is outlined the county will look at opportunities and gaps,” he said. “Our challenge, which has been shared publicly, is that county government doesn’t have infrastructure and staffing outside of the footprint of the city of Wichita. We feel that the appropriate first step is with the city.”
At Councilmember Becky Tuttle’s suggestion, the city will prepare a report after the program’s first year evaluating progress and challenges.
Stefania Lugli is a reporter for The Journal, published by the Kansas Leadership Center. She focuses on covering issues related to homelessness in Wichita and across Kansas. Her stories are shared widely through the Wichita Journalism Collaborative.
This article was republished here with the permission of: KLC Journal