He bought his OP house so his parents could start over. Now it helps homeless men do the same

As Johnson County’s homeless count continues to climb, one Overland Park nonprofit is offering some men a unique path to stability.

Helping people in the Kansas City area who are homeless started as a small thing for Kar Woo.

An artist by trade, he opened a new gallery near the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri, and was shocked to see so many people in the area who were homeless. He found it all kind of jarring when juxtaposed against one of the wealthiest shopping districts in the region.

So, on a whim, one Sunday, he took 20 sandwiches to the park where a lot of the homeless folks congregated.

“Very naive and innocent,” Woo said of his mindset at the time.

From there, it all just grew. The meals in the park became a regular Sunday afternoon occurrence, something he still keeps up 20 years later.

It also blossomed into a transportation program, through which Woo started driving people discharged from hospitals to shelters in the area. During his conversations with his passengers, he heard about their lives and the challenges they faced.

Woo saw a lot of people who wanted to change their lives but were stuck in a system that made it hard to do so. People were going to the hospital to start treatment, getting discharged soon after and winding up back in the same situation as before.

“When they discharge you, you have no place to go to, then you go back to square one,” he said. “There should be a better solution to address that.”

That inspired him to start opening respite houses, which offer shelter and recovery for men dealing with substance abuse disorders. Through that, his nonprofit Artists Helping the Homeless also provides wraparound services based on each individual’s needs, like GED support or other educational opportunities, basic medical and dental care and counseling.

“I think we just have a look at each person as a person,” he said. “We can, each one of us, do our part, no matter how big or small, as long as we do something to contribute to the community.”

Eventually, he established a respite house in the Overland Park home he’d originally purchased for his parents to live in when they left Hong Kong to join him in the U.S. years ago.

Woo saw it as a sort of full-circle moment. He bought the home for his parents to restart their lives in a new country. After they died, that house could be used once again to help countless people restart their own lives with a new sober living journey.

He eventually transferred the home to his homelessness nonprofit and set to work creating what the Artists Helping the Homeless calls Concord House.

He faced some initial pushback from some neighbors at the time in the Shannon Valley neighborhood, including a lawsuit, but Woo said a lot of that dissolved when people learned what his actual intent was.

“When we deal with the unknown or something that we’re not familiar with, of course, we have concern,” Woo said. “But we have proven to them over the years that the people we serve are the people that wanted to do better in life and change.”

“Over time, we’ve proven to them we are very mindful who we bring in, what we do,” he continued. “We are also mindful of making sure that we are involved in the community.”

“They take the obstacles away”

John Tyler, 45, currently lives in Concord House in Overland Park, and has for the past six or so months.

He found his way there after getting out of prison last year through a cousin who had previously gotten help from one of Woo’s programs and now owns an auto mechanic business.

Tyler had nothing — he left prison with just the clothes on his back. If he hadn’t gotten connected to Woo and Artists Helping the Homeless, he isn’t sure where he’d be now.

“It wouldn’t have been good,” he said. “I had no plans at all whatsoever. And if I wasn’t able to come here, then it would have been a totally different story.”

Tyler is also in recovery and struggled with homelessness before going to prison for 10 years for drug distribution.

Now, he’s a student at Johnson County Community College, and he recently finished his first semester in the two-year construction management program. He said school is his big focus right now, but he’s also working on completing a Level 2 Peer Support Specialist certificate.

He feels strongly that Woo’s program saved his life and put him on a new path.

“It gave me opportunity,” he said of his time in Concord House. “They take the obstacles away. If you want to succeed, they give you the shot to do it. They give you the tools, but they also make you do it; they’re not holding your hand through the whole thing.”

“They open the door and just let you do what you feel like you need to do,” Tyler added.

More people are homeless in Johnson County than before

In Johnson County, homelessness has become something of a hot-button topic lately as the issue becomes more protracted.

According to United Community Service of Johnson County’s soon-to-be-published report, 321 people were experiencing homelessness on Jan. 28, 2026. And that’s likely an undercount, said the nonprofit’s executive director, Kristy Baughman.

Still, that number is a 27% increase from the point-in-time count conducted in 2025. It’s also a 147% increase since 2017.

“We’re certainly seeing increasing numbers,” Baughman said.

About 40% of people included in the 2026 count are employed, Baughman said, netting an average monthly income of $1,800.

“A lot of people think about people experiencing homelessness as not having money, but I think that what they don’t have is enough money,” Baughman said.

She pointed to the $1,300 median monthly rent of a one-bedroom apartment in Johnson County as part of the issue. That doesn’t leave a lot of money for other expenses after the rent is paid, she said. That median rent cost is going up, about 35% in the past five years.

“Anytime you see something like that, where the cost of housing is dramatically increasing over time, but wages are not keeping pace, you know people are struggling, you know people are having a hard time maintaining stable housing,” Baughman said. “If you’re already very precarious in your housing, you can easily be pushed into homelessness.”

Some efforts to address homelessness have fallen through

In 2023 and 2024, local officials and community members pushed to create a Homeless Services Center with some of the county’s federal pandemic relief funding at a hotel in Lenexa.

That effort was scuttled after the Lenexa City Council voted the project down, and the money set aside for it was diverted to other housing projects in Johnson County.

In the nearly two years since, nonprofits like Woo’s have continued to work on the issue.

Ben Keefe, who manages philanthropy and communications for Artists Helping the Homeless, said Woo has developed something of “encyclopedic knowledge” of the different resources and support networks for homeless people in the Kansas City area.

It’s a skill Woo puts to use a lot as he continues help people who are homeless, and one he was recently recognized for at the 2026 Summit on Homelessness and Housing earlier this spring with the Marion Nichols Caring Service Award.

“There is momentum” on the homelessness issue

Woo sees the need for more shelter space in Johnson County every day.

He sees the work others are doing, too, including Project 1020, the shelter that’s open during the cold winter at the Shawnee Mission Unitarian Universalist Church.

As much as they do, that’s not enough to meet the need, Woo said.

“I think we need to have more services like that in Johnson County, so that people have the opportunity,” he said, “because there’s not enough facilities that can provide those services.”

From his perspective, there’s a lot of room for other nonprofits or even government to get involved.

“As a community as a whole, I think we need to work together a little bit more and find out what is missing,” Woo said.

While Baughman from UCS said she was disappointed when the shelter project fell through, she doesn’t feel like all hope is lost. For her, the fact that the county was willing to get involved in the Homeless Services Center conversation at all is a good sign.

She also thinks more people are aware than ever before that there is a problem with homelessness in Johnson County.

“That gives me optimism,” she said. “I feel like there is kind of a universal acknowledgement that we do have people experiencing homelessness in Johnson County, and that it is something that we need to address.”

“There is momentum, and I feel like there is commitment, and I think that with those things together, surely we will find a path forward,” she continued.

Keep reading: Blue Valley graduate overcomes traumatic past through Artists Helping the Homeless