Kansas City will host the 2023 National Football League Draft, an extravaganza that organizers predict will draw more visitors than any single event in the city’s history. The three-day event, from April 27 to April 29, will take place in the area around Union Station and the National World War I Museum and Memorial. Described […]
Mili Mansaray
Mili Mansaray is The Beacon’s former housing and labor reporter and began covering the beat in 2022. She’s documented the concentration of housing ownership by corporate interests and explored challenges to Kansas City’s homeless shelter capacity. She received training through the Solutions Journalism Network’s labor cohort. She has a bachelor’s degree in digital journalism and Africana studies from New York University. She also studied abroad in Argentina. She was a business reporting intern for the Dow Jones News Fund. She was an audio intern for The Urban Scene with Don Frierson on WGCV 105.1 in Columbia, South Carolina. She has lived in Kansas City since 2022.
Posted inHousing, Labor
Shelter resources are limited for unhoused who work nights
If you see a homeless person sleeping in public during the day, assume nothing. Though Kansas City doesn’t keep an exact count, nationally nearly 40% of unhoused individuals living on the street work full- or part-time jobs, and a significant number of those choose to work night jobs. There are many reasons why the unhoused […]
Posted inLabor
New KCI terminal promises shops, food, excitement and jobs
Sandy Cisneros has a retail job in Liberty, Missouri, where she makes $15 an hour. But the mother of two children was looking for something that would offer more hours, better pay and a more flexible schedule. After showing up at a Jan. 23 hiring fair sponsored by the Vantage Airport Group at Kansas City […]
Posted inLabor
Startups are growing in Kansas City, but is funding equitable?
In 2018, Dr. Shelley Cooper observed that a clinic she was working with was experiencing a high rate of no-shows for appointments. That same year, her father died in his sleep. He had medical issues but wasn’t able to book appointments with doctors as quickly as he needed them. A year later, Cooper channeled grief […]
Posted inEnvironment, Labor
The growing green jobs industry could mean more jobs for Kansas Citians
Before securing a position as a manager at KC Can Compost, a nonprofit dedicated to reshaping Kansas City’s approach to environmental and social causes, Chris Shelar was unhoused off and on for eight years. Now 60, Shelar lived in outdoor spaces and panhandled for change to get by. Eventually, he found steady work as a […]
Posted inEconomics, Labor
Pawsitive impacts: Program aims to break generational cycles of poverty through pet grooming
In 2018, Ashley Stillings was living in Hope House, a homeless shelter in Lee’s Summit, with her three children. Her husband had received a 12-year prison sentence and she found herself her household’s sole provider. Stillings was working as a waitress when she came across a flier stating that pet groomers can earn $20 an […]
Posted inEconomics
Kansas City’s new airport terminal promises a completely different user experience
Construction of a gleaming new $1.5 billion terminal at Kansas City International Airport is nearly down to finishing touches. Kansas City residents voted by an overwhelming margin in 2017 to go ahead with the largest infrastructure project in the city’s history, trusting in promises that the new terminal would create a much-improved passenger experience and […]
Posted inCivic Engagement
As Black women go missing in Kansas City, Black community looks to itself for solutions
The last time JoAnn Stovall had contact with her granddaughter, Samone Jackson, was in early 2021. Almost two years have gone by without contact with the now 25-year-old woman, who spent much of her childhood in Stovall’s home. Stovall raised Jackson from the time she was 5. About a year after graduating from high school, […]
Posted inHousing
Resources for people who need shelter in Kansas City
Last winter, social service workers identified at least 711 people in Kansas City staying in shelters or without a means of shelter on a single day. That number is known as the point-in-time count, but the actual number of people who are unhoused is thought to be much higher, with individuals and families transitioning in […]
Posted inEconomics, Labor
How investments in Black businesses can help close KC’s racial wealth gap
When Denisha Jones launched her business, Sweet Peaches Cobblers, in August 2020, it was just her, her husband, her mom and her sister in a community kitchen — taking orders, making the cobblers and doing deliveries. Now she has a team of individuals helping her sell cobblers in stores and at events and festivals across […]