History of the Community at Chapin Park

Helen Reicher

2 days ago

17 min read

For nearly a decade, people built a community at Chapin Park. Councilmember Hoheisel says the City is waiting on a State MOU. Wichita can tear down their community, but it cannot erase their history.

On September 11, Council Member Mike Hoheisel said by email that the city is awaiting a Memorandum of Understanding with the State of Kansas before setting a definitive action date for Chapin Park, likely in late September or early October. This leaves the community in limbo; residents know the city intends to clear the area, but the precise timing is unconfirmed. This ambiguity significantly impacts Chapin Park residents, who remain on-site, exploring housing and awaiting clarification on their tenure. The city has revised the proposed deadline multiple times without providing a conclusive date.

While Wichita remains committed to dismantling the community, it cannot erase its history. The city can remove structures, relocate belongings, and clear land, leaving minimal physical evidence that dozens of residents once inhabited Chapin Park. However, what the city removes from the landscape persists in the memories of those who experienced it. Their neighbors, shared experiences, and daily routines took years to build. Understanding this history is therefore paramount. Before Wichita moves forward, it must acknowledge what has existed there for nearly a decade.

Janna, a resident of the Chapin Park Community in Wichita, Kansas.

On July 18, I interviewed Janna, a Chapin Park resident for two and a half years. When asked about the community and outside perceptions, she stated, “It is a community, like any other community.” Janna also expressed residents’ dislike for the nickname “Narnia,” often used in news and public discussion. I will refer to it as “the community at Chapin Park.” She then revealed that some people had lived there for nine years.

This nine-year timeframe caught my attention, as public conversation about Chapin Park is much more recent. The extensive discussion has been limited to the last few years, and the political debate about dismantling it is even newer. I wanted to understand the documented history of whether people had truly lived there for almost a decade.

My research into old news coverage, City of Wichita meetings, and District 3 Advisory Board records revealed a community with a documented history far older than the current controversy. The public record dates back to at least 2017, showing the city knew about the community long before officials began discussing its removal.

A Community Had Already Formed

The earliest published evidence dates to December 2018, when The Wichita Eagle reported on a shooting involving two unhoused men at an encampment along the Arkansas River, near I-135 and Hydraulic, adjacent to Chapin Park. According to the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office, one of the individuals had resided at the encampment for approximately eighteen months, placing his arrival around mid-2017. This predates Chapin Park’s emergence as a regular topic of City Council discussion or widespread public attention by several years. (Swaim & Potter, 2018).

Nearly eight years later, Donna Castillo Garcia, co-founder of Grassroots Bridge Builders, informed the Wichita City Council that Chapin was the city’s largest and oldest long-term encampment, with some residents having lived there for as long as a decade (City of Wichita, 2026a).

The history of the Chapin Park encampment did not commence with Wichita’s deliberations on its future. Nor did it begin with media coverage revealing its presence or with city officials receiving complaints from surrounding neighborhoods. By the time Chapin became a political issue, people had already been building lives there for years.

The City Knew the Community Was There

Yes. “Facing housing insecurity” is too broad for people already living at Chapin. “Navigating a housing loss” is more accurate.

By January 2023, Wichita formally recognized Chapin Park as a place where people navigating a housing loss were living. During the annual Point-in-Time count, outreach teams went to Chapin Park to identify residents living without permanent housing. The Wichita Eagle documented the effort, publishing a photograph of a Salvation Army outreach worker speaking with people at the park (Kelly, 2023). Government agencies and service organizations clearly knew people were making their homes there, even if much of the broader public did not.

Eight months later, KMUW reporter Stefania Lugli provided one of the clearest early accounts of daily life near Chapin Park. Wichita was experiencing extreme heat, with temperatures reaching 111 degrees. Volunteers pulled wagons filled with water, food, pet supplies, and other essentials through the wooded areas along the Arkansas River, where multiple camps sat beyond the park trails. Residents stayed in the shade and limited their activity to survive temperatures dangerous even for people with air conditioning and running water (Lugli, 2023).

Lugli’s reporting documented far more than tents. Volunteers maintained a regular schedule that residents knew, while people lived alongside neighbors, partners, and pets. One woman told Lugli that when she arrived the previous winter, another resident had already established herself nearby. Volunteers referred to the area as the residents’ home and emphasized respecting that home despite the difficult conditions people were living in (Lugli, 2023).

Residents also described Chapin Park’s isolation from many of Wichita’s housing and support resources. Debbie and Red, who lived there with their dog Rocky, said Wichita’s Homeless Outreach Team transported them to emergency shelter when winter temperatures dropped below zero. They accepted the immediate help, but once the weather emergency passed, they still lacked permanent housing. Temporary shelter protected them from the cold but did not address their need for a safe, stable home (Lugli, 2023).

The City Was Never in the Dark

By 2024, Wichita documented the community through the city-backed documentary Hope in the Heartland: Wichita’s Quest to End Homelessness. The film followed 22-year-old Caitlin, who lived in Wichita’s largest tent community near Chapin Park, as she pursued permanent housing through city and nonprofit resources (City of Wichita, 2024).

At the same time, Wichita’s municipal government, police outreach workers, housing officials, nonprofit organizations, volunteers, and journalists all knew about the sizable community near Chapin Park. Trees may have kept much of it out of public view, but the systems that help people navigate housing loss already knew the community was there.

Around the same time, Wichita shifted its approach to people living on public property. In December 2024, the City Council voted 4-3 to expand enforcement of its camping ordinance. The changes allowed faster removal from designated areas and broadened which city personnel could help clear camps. After public opposition, the council retained a critical protection: people navigating a housing loss could not be cited for illegal camping when an appropriate shelter bed was unavailable (Lugli, 2024).

The revised ordinance took effect in January 2025. The Wichita Police Department then issued Policy 503 on April 29, 2025. The policy formalized procedures for unlawful camping and encampment cleanups and explicitly stated that “homelessness is not a crime.” Officers were directed to provide service information, confirm shelter availability, document interactions, and follow different procedures depending on where someone was staying (Wichita Police Department, 2025).

Wichita was now operating two systems at once. One connected people navigating housing loss with services and permanent housing. The other gave the city a more structured process for removing them from the places where they had created some measure of stability.

The City Saw a Permanent Community

On April 21, 2026, Castillo Garcia addressed the Wichita City Council about Chapin Park. Grassroots Bridge Builders had already spent more than six months building relationships with residents, and city housing navigators were beginning to work directly with the community. Castillo Garcia cautioned against closing Chapin too quickly, explaining that many residents had lived there for years and that moving people into permanent housing required far more than simply telling them to leave (City of Wichita, 2026a).

During the same meeting, Council Member Joseph Shepard asked City Manager Dennis Marstall about the city’s plans and timeline for cleaning up Chapin Park. Marstall said the city was evaluating places across Wichita where people were living outdoors but had not identified Chapin as the priority. A conversation that had largely focused on outreach and housing support was beginning to shift toward when the city planned to clear the community (City of Wichita, 2026a).

Two weeks later, on May 5, Mayor Lily Wu raised Chapin during a discussion about housing loss and mental health services. She said District 3 residents had repeatedly raised concerns and asked where people should go when shelters or daytime services were unavailable. Steve Burt with Housing and Community Services described Chapin residents as survivors and said the community included permanent structures and solar panels. He also acknowledged that some residents had significant mental health needs (City of Wichita, 2026b).

Permanent structures and solar panels did not make Chapin adequate housing. Residents still lacked reliable sanitation, climate control, flood protection, utilities, and any legal right to remain. But those features showed that Chapin was not simply a temporary collection of tents. People had lived there long enough to create a more enduring form of stability with the limited resources available to them.

The City Set a Deadline Before Establishing the Solution

By May 19, Castillo Garcia told the City Council that Chapin Park’s “pending closure” would affect more than 60 residents who Grassroots Bridge Builders and other organizations were already helping through the housing process (City of Wichita, 2026c).

That process was not quick. Outreach workers first had to build relationships, replace identification documents, connect residents to benefits, complete applications, and prepare them to enter the housing system. Castillo Garcia said even an early stage could take four to six weeks for someone with relatively few barriers who stayed consistently engaged. Voucher processing and the search for an available unit could add several more weeks (City of Wichita, 2026c).

A resident could therefore cooperate fully and still be living at Chapin. Completing paperwork did not guarantee a voucher, and receiving a voucher did not guarantee an available home. Being “connected to services” and actually having somewhere else to live were two very different things.

Shelters were not a simple alternative. Advocates described barriers involving capacity, couples, gender, pets, and program requirements. City Manager Dennis Marstall described the city’s approach as two parts: increasing outreach and case management first, followed by enforcement later in the summer (City of Wichita, 2026c).

On May 27, Hunter Health and other community organizations held a resource fair at Chapin Park for people navigating housing loss. Healthcare providers and community partners continued bringing services directly to residents even as discussions about dismantling their home moved forward (Hunter Health, 2026). Wichita invested resources in helping the community while also preparing for the possibility that residents would be forced to leave.

The City Turned Toward Enforcement

The city kept its attention on Chapin throughout June. At the June 16 City Council meeting, Mayor Lily Wu asked whether people living in the Arkansas Riverbed near Chapin Park were violating city law. City legal staff confirmed that camping there violated the city’s camping ordinance and rules prohibiting people from remaining in city parks after hours because the riverbed is considered park property (City of Wichita, 2026d). The discussion was shifting beyond housing assistance toward the city’s legal authority to remove residents from the area. Chapin had become both an enforcement issue and a housing issue.

At the same time, the city held broader workshops about housing loss and the systems serving people without permanent housing. On June 23, Housing and Community Services and the United Way Continuum of Care gave presentations. On June 30, city and county officials held an en banc meeting that included housing loss, COMCARE, law enforcement, and community support services (City of Wichita, 2026e; City of Wichita & Sedgwick County, 2026). Those meetings were broader than Chapin Park, but they showed the issue had become part of a sustained policy discussion across local government, even as plans to close the community moved forward.

The City Put a Date on It

By July, community members saw the city’s approach shift from general planning toward a defined timeline. During public comment at the July 14 City Council meeting, Sara Cowling said she had been present when Wichita Police Chief Joe Sullivan walked through Chapin. Cowling told the council that August 24 was the anticipated date for clearing the area. She also said 99 percent of residents had signed up for services but warned that a shortage of case managers could leave many residents without another home by the deadline (City of Wichita, 2026f).

Cowling’s statement placed the August 24 date into the official City Council record, but I found no formal council vote or ordinance establishing it as an official deadline. Cowling relayed information shared during the police chief’s walkthrough, making the date part of the public discussion without the council formally adopting it.

At the same time, media attention intensified. Television coverage brought viewers inside the community and showed a broader Wichita audience its size and established nature. Public discussion increasingly expanded beyond housing loss to include public safety, housing capacity, public property, sanitation, displacement, and whether Wichita could dismantle a long-established community before residents had another home to move into.

The City Debated Removing a Protection

On July 28, the City Council discussed camping regulations. One key protection in the 2024 ordinance prevents the city from citing someone navigating a housing loss for illegal camping when an appropriate shelter bed is unavailable (City of Wichita, 2026g). Mayor Lily Wu sought to reconsider that requirement, pointing to concerns about outdoor communities and pressure on Wichita’s shelter system. The provision remained in place. Wichita’s current ordinance still says a person cannot be cited for illegal camping when an appropriate shelter bed is unavailable (City of Wichita, 2026g; City of Wichita, 2026k).

That exposed a larger contradiction in the city’s approach. Leaders were looking for more ways to respond to complaints about people living outdoors, even as Wichita still lacked enough shelter and permanent housing for everyone who could be displaced. Chapin made that contradiction especially visible. Officials were considering dismantling a community of dozens of residents while housing workers were still trying to secure somewhere else for them to live.

The City Awaits the State

After the August 24 target date passed, questions emerged regarding the City of Wichita’s timeline for clearing the Chapin Park community. On September 11, we asked District 3 Council Member Mike Hoheisel for clarification. Hoheisel said the revised timeline hinges on an agreement between the City of Wichita and the State of Kansas, since the community occupies state-owned land.

“We await a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the state and city before we can set a new date, which will most likely fall in late September or early October,” Hoheisel stated. “The land is state property, and we must sign the MOU before we take any action.”

An MOU is a formal written agreement between two governmental entities or organizations that outlines each party’s commitments and responsibilities. In this context, Wichita cannot proceed independently because the state owns the land. The governments need a foundational agreement to govern actions on the property and define each government’s role in carrying them out.

Hoheisel also addressed concerns about removing trees and vegetation at Chapin Park. Earlier reports suggested that officials might clear vegetation to deter residents from returning after cleanup. Hoheisel clarified that this is not the city’s current plan.

“The city does not plan any deforestation beyond what is necessary for the cleanup,” Hoheisel wrote, adding that “the state also has the final say on that.”

Consequently, both the cleanup timeline and its ultimate scope depend on the State of Kansas. While Hoheisel indicated a probable window of late September or early October, officials cannot establish a firm date until they execute the MOU. His response also clarifies previous understandings regarding vegetation removal: the city asserts no plans for extensive deforestation, though the state, as landowner, retains ultimate authority over the property’s disposition.

For Chapin Park residents, uncertainty continues. The initial August target has passed, officials have not set a firm date, and the community is waiting for two levels of government to determine the timing and methodology of the cleanup.

The City’s August Target Passed, and the Community Remained

The August 24 target date discussed in July passed without the community being cleared. By September 1, residents were still living at Chapin, continuing through the housing process, and speaking before the City Council about the gap between receiving assistance and actually being able to move into another home.

One speaker told council members that even residents who had secured housing assistance still faced practical barriers, including too little case management and no reliable way to move their belongings across the city. She questioned what would happen to someone leaving Chapin with a housing voucher but without family support, transportation, or help physically making the move (City of Wichita, 2026h).

Outreach worker Darcy Smith described an even more striking example. Smith told the council that Wichita’s Homeless Outreach Team had contacted her about a woman whose vehicle transmission had failed. The woman was sleeping in her car with her dog and could not use a shelter that would not accept the animal. Smith said HOT then had the woman’s vehicle towed to Chapin. At the same time Wichita was preparing to dismantle the community, its own outreach team had directed another person navigating housing loss there because there was no better immediate option available (City of Wichita, 2026h).

The September 1 meeting also showed that the city was beginning to use its work at Chapin as a model for other housing-navigation programs. During discussion of a youth street-outreach and housing-navigation grant, Council Member Joseph Shepard asked whether the new program would operate similarly to the city’s work with Chapin residents. Housing official Steve Burt described a model built around street outreach, identifying available units, housing navigation, and housing stabilization. He also identified the shortage of community case management as one of the continuing gaps (City of Wichita, 2026h).

That created a striking contradiction. Chapin had become an example the city could point to when describing how housing navigation should work, even as Wichita continued preparing to dismantle the home where that work was taking place.

The City Moved the Deadline, Not the Community

Following the August 24 deadline, community outreach personnel expressed uncertainty regarding the initiative’s status. A source involved in the regular distribution of supplies to Chapin Park residents said they contacted Council Member Mike Hoheisel for clarification, as both residents and volunteers did not understand the city’s next steps. According to the source, Council Member Hoheisel communicated an extension for the community until the end of September. I directly emailed Council Member Hoheisel to corroborate this timeline but had not received a reply at the time of publication.

This extension would give residents and outreach workers additional weeks to progress with housing applications, voucher acquisition, unit searches, case management, transportation arrangements, and the logistics of relocation. A deadline extension won’t resolve the underlying housing shortage that caused the initial delay.

By September, residents actively participating in the housing process still faced deficiencies in case management, difficulty securing landlords, transportation barriers, shelter limitations, and the time gap between voucher receipt and apartment occupancy. Although the city may have granted an extension, the community’s continued presence underscored that many residents still lacked alternative housing options.

What Defines a Community, and Who Gets to Decide?

Wichita neighborhoods typically define themselves by formal markers: named streets, numbered homes, legal property owners, utilities, and residents with protected tenancy via leases, mortgages, or deeds. Chapin Park, however, lacked these conventional protections.

While such protections establish legal ownership and occupancy, they alone do not define a community. Neighborhoods organically build themselves over time through shared spaces, relationships, routines, memories, conflict, cooperation, and a collective sense of belonging. As residents move in and out, a place develops a history that transcends individual tenures.

Public records indicate these same human patterns appeared at Chapin Park. Individuals resided in the same river corridor as early as 2017, with subsequent arrivals joining existing residents. Volunteers established schedules and relationships with occupants; individuals lived with partners and animals; outreach organizations dedicated months to building trust; and residents constructed progressively more substantial homes, reflecting their expectation of continued habitation (Swaim & Potter, 2018; Lugli, 2023; City of Wichita, 2026a; City of Wichita, 2026b).

A community does not need to be perfect. The earliest published account of the encampment documented a shooting, and Castillo Garcia herself informed the City Council that Chapin was unsafe. Nevertheless, Wichita does not cease to recognize a housed neighborhood as a community when a crime occurs, when residents contend with addiction or mental illness, or when neighbors experience conflict (Swaim & Potter, 2018; City of Wichita, 2026a).

Designating Chapin as a community also does not imply acceptance of its living conditions. Individuals should not establish homes in a wooded riverbank environment without reliable electricity, plumbing, sanitation, climate control, legal protections, or assurance of continued occupancy. The assertion is not that Chapin provided adequate housing, but that individuals forged stability, relationships, and a shared home there because adequate housing was unavailable.

Stability Takes Longer to Build Than Destroy

Chapin’s history makes one thing especially clear: removing a shelter is fast; moving someone from housing loss into permanent housing is not. The city can deploy crews to remove structures, clear belongings, alter the landscape, and remediate the site in a matter of days. Helping someone secure permanent housing can require outreach, trust, identification documents, benefit applications, case management, vouchers, landlord participation, available units, inspections, transportation, deposits, moving assistance, and ongoing support. Testimony in May showed that individual stages of that process could take several weeks, while September testimony showed that significant barriers could remain even after someone received a housing voucher (City of Wichita, 2026c; City of Wichita, 2026h).

Being “offered services” is therefore not the same as being housed. A resident can actively participate in the process and still return to Chapin every night because another home is not yet available. That distinction also means the success of clearing the community cannot be measured by how empty the land looks afterward.

If a resident leaves Chapin for permanent housing, that person has achieved greater housing stability. If a resident leaves Chapin only to move to another wooded area, a vehicle, beneath a bridge, a sidewalk, or another outdoor community, Wichita has changed where that person is living without resolving the housing loss. Empty land tells us almost nothing about which outcome actually occurred.

The Chapin Park Community History Cannot Be Cleared.

A decade is a substantial period in the evolution of any Wichita neighborhood. Over such a span, children become adults, businesses emerge and dissolve, properties change hands, families relocate, and new residents integrate. Despite these transformations, a community’s essence persists. Chapin residents dedicated years to living there, even without land ownership or legally sanctioned housing.

The community’s history is extensive. A documented resident arrived in the river corridor around 2017. Point-in-Time outreach occurred in 2023, and the city sponsored a documentary in 2024. Revisions to camping ordinances and police protocols followed in 2024 and 2025. This narrative continues with several months of housing outreach in 2026, a projected closure by May, inquiries regarding riverbed enforcement in June, a communicated August 24 target in July, a formal camping workshop, and District 3 closure deliberations, an August plan aimed at dismantling the community and preventing its re-establishment. Residents still sought housing in September, and a current timeline extends through the end of the month.

This chronicle is not merely about a transient collection of tents, but the history of individuals cohabiting in a single area amid Wichita’s continuously shifting approach to their presence. Authorities enumerated them, documented them, filmed them, offered them services, regulated them, discussed them, connected them with housing vouchers, and ultimately designated them for removal. Nevertheless, the city’s official discourse largely omitted the fundamental reality of their established community.

Wichita possesses the authority to clear the land. It can remove shelters, modify vegetation, enforce camping regulations, and prevent former residents from re-establishing the stability they had cultivated. However, Wichita cannot erase nearly a decade of history simply by rendering the community less visible. Furthermore, if the individuals departing Chapin remain unhoused after their community is dismantled, Wichita will not have addressed the root problem that led to the community’s formation. Instead, it will have dismantled the home where that community resided.

Next: The Community in Janna’s Words

My July 18 interview with Janna initiated my investigation into Chapin Park’s history. I will soon publish this conversation, allowing Janna to describe the community in her own words. She discusses its residents, the stability they created, common misunderstandings outsiders have, and the emotional experience of watching the city prepare to dismantle it while residents seek new housing.

The full interview will be available on Substack, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. I will also share short clips and updates on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

Subscribe to the Wichita Area Housing Coalition on Substack so you don’t miss Janna’s interview or ongoing updates from Chapin Park. Follow WAHC on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, and share this history with anyone who has only heard residents described as an encampment. Before Wichita dismantles a community that has existed for nearly a decade, it must understand what residents have built there.