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A month has now gone by since the Frank Williams Outreach Center was officially opened in downtown Kansas City, Kan.

But Jeff Sosinski, Wyandot Center’s service coordinator for homeless outreach, says it feels like almost no time has passed at all.

“It seems like it’s only been a week,” Sosinski said. “We’ve just been busy.”

Even busier, though not quite as crowded, than before, he said, when Wyandot Center’s homeless outreach was conducted out of a small, three-bedroom house a block away from the new Frank Williams Center. Most days, he said, that location was “jam-packed” with people needing assistance, creating an atmosphere that was less than ideal.

“Where we were, we were not able to serve the amount of people that are experiencing homelessness or mental illness because of just the space. It couldn’t hold enough,” Sosinski said, noting that people were so tightly packed in you almost “had to fight your way in some days.”

Now, having enough space is the last concern on anyone’s mind at the Frank Williams Center. The facility, which offers resources like mental health services and housing assistance to homeless members of the community, now ministers to about 60-70 people per day, Sosinski said. It also has enough space for three showers, three sets of washers and dryers, and racks upon racks of donated clothing — the former location only had one shower and one washer and dryer set. A main lobby area — what Frank Williams coordinators call the “drop-in site” — offers tables and chairs, coffee, computers with Internet access, newspapers and board games.

While no one lives at the center, Therese Horvat, communications director, said anyone was welcome to come in during operating hours, 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., for no other reason than a desire to sit, enjoy a cup of coffee and mingle with staff members and other visitors.

“What we offer is a place that people can drop in and they can do laundry … they can take a shower and they can use the computer and basically they can sort of be in out of the cold,” she said.

The Frank Williams Outreach Center was opened Dec. 5 by Wyandot Center, the county’s designated community mental health facility, in a vacated building at 1201 N. Seventh St. Renovations were funded privately by Wyandot Center, and its new center for homeless outreach was named in honor of Frank Williams, a former case worker who died of an aneurysm in 2001.

Chief among the facility’s objectives are to provide mental health services, such as therapy and counseling, as well as housing assistance for the homeless living mainly in eastern Wyandotte County. Sosinski said, however, the Frank Williams Center also existed as a resource for any issue endured by a struggling community member. And if the center itself doesn’t offer a particular need, such as assistance with paying utilities, he said Frank Williams coordinators will point community members “in the right direction” to the organizations that do.

The U.S. Census Bureau pegged the poverty level in Wyandotte County in 2009, its most recent estimate, at 21.4 percent, compared to 13.2 percent statewide.

“People are struggling just to keep food on the table,” Sosinski said. “The most vulnerable population we’re targeting is on the streets with mental illness. But the broader picture, with poverty in this county, just helping people meet their daily needs is” the center’s goal.

Sosinski, who has worked with Wyandot Center’s homeless outreach for five years, said the new, larger location has provided the space to help more people and also to hire more people. Since moving in, two new staff members, both of whom work with visitors to the drop-in site of the center, have been hired.

And organizers couldn’t ask for a better location, he said.

“The location’s perfect ’cause it’s right in the heart of where, I feel, the most need is,” Sosinski said.

He said it’s hard to tell at this early stage what the future may bring in terms of expansions or developments. For now, the focus is on taking it one step at a time.

“We’re really feeling things out. There’s a lot of opportunity,” Sosinski said. “It just gives us an opportunity to see what the community needs and go from there.”

To make a clothing donation or for more information about services provided by the center, call 913-233-3344.

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