Travis Kelce’s multimillion dollar homeless giveaway reveals Kansas City’s dirty secret

From his 17,000sq ft mansion outside Kansas City, NFL icon Travis Kelce and his pop star girlfriend Taylor Swift cannot see the homeless camps and crime hotspots just a 20-minute drive away downtown.

But Kelce, the Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end, is well aware of the social problems beyond the pickleball court and mini-golf course of his three-acre estate in Leawood – and he frequently opens his wallet to help.

The 35-year-old recently donated a $3.3million luxury six-bedroom Kansas City home to be managed as a shelter for troubled youngsters whose lives are coming off the rails, according to reports.

It wasn’t the first time. Kelce has in recent years paid for disadvantaged teens to learn a trade, and for building work so an elderly former athlete who suffered from arthritis could stay in her home.

Now, Kansas City’s non-profit bosses say the athlete’s donations spotlight a crisis in the Democrat-run city of 508,000 people, where vagrancy, crime, and poverty are spinning out of control.

Kansas City’s streets look less apocalyptic than those in San Francisco or Los Angeles, but Missouri’s biggest city in reality has a higher share of unhoused people sleeping rough than anywhere else in America.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development says a staggering 95.7 percent of Kansas City’s chronic homeless sleep in cars, parks, abandoned buildings or on sidewalks – worse than even LA’s 86.6 percent.

The overall number of chronic homeless is also getting worse across Kansas City’s metropolitan area of 2.4million, which straddles the Missouri-Kansas border, jumping six percent to 280 between 2022-2023.

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have separately made large donations from their celebrity fortunes

A 50-tent homeless camp on the south lawn of City Hall was one of the biggest Kansas City has seen

Hard-up Kansas City folks get a free meal at a community kitchen in the downtown area

Locals endure alarmingly high rates of poverty, a growing wealth gap, shoddy healthcare and scary pockets of crime, such as the South Blue Valley area, where robberies and murders are all-too common.

Stephanie Boyer, a board member of Project Homeless Connect, says Kelce is a ‘blessing’ for a city that’s seen an ‘astonishing’ 30 percent spike in people sleeping rough annually for the past three years.

‘He’s really focused on education and support to give young people a positive trajectory,’ Boyer told DailyMail.com.

‘Somebody of his stature getting involved in the community has a ripple effect of change that lasts for generations to come.’

Kansas City needs all the help it can get.

Locals have seen rents rise by as much as 50 percent these past five years, says Boyer. Vacant apartments are hard to find, and the city has a staggering shortage of 26,000 affordable homes.

Families who are evicted or priced out of homes are left sleeping in the backs of U-Haul trucks and storage units, she adds.

‘There’s just no availability for low-income folks,’ she adds.

‘We see people living on disability or Social Security checks of $1,000 per month. You can’t find a place to rent for $1,000 a month, much less pay any other bill.’

Kelce was born and raised in Ohio, and chosen by the Kansas City Chiefs in the 2013 NFL draft.

The record-setting tight end has helped his team win three Super Bowls.

The charity Foster Love praised Kelce for buying a luxury $3.3million Kansas City home for conversion into a shelter for struggling young people

The California-based group has since taken down their post about Kelce, which DailyMail.com could not verify

More of Kansas City’s chronic homeless sleep on the streets than anywhere else in America

Kelce with children at the Operation Breakthrough Ignition Lab that he helped develop

Kelce lives in a luxurious six-bed, six-bath property in Leawood, a leafy Kansas City suburb 20 minutes south of Arrowhead Stadium

He was exposed to millions of new fans when in 2023 he started dating Swift, who frequently attends his games. They both donate millions of dollars from their celebrity fortunes to charity.

Kelce recently said that his passion for football led him to push back retirement and return to the field for a 13th season.

He made headlines again with revelations that he’d donated a $3.3million Kansas City home as temporary digs for homeless youth, run by the California-based Foster Love charity.

DailyMail.com could not verify this donation, which has been queried by Kansas City charity workers.

Photos of the shelter appeared to be of a house in Washington state. Foster Love, Kelce, his agent, and his 87 & Running nonprofit, did not answer our requests for comment.

Kelce nevertheless has a track record of charity work in Kansas City, including Operation Breakthrough’s Ignition Lab, where 700 child victims of poverty and violence can get a square meal, healthcare, and learn a trade.

Holding back the tears in an interview with Fox Sports in 2021, Kelce said the learning hub, with classes ranging from robotics to catering, was a ‘safe haven’ for youth from broken homes to ‘dream big’.

‘I see so much of myself and my friends growing up in these kids,’ the athlete said.

‘I just want to make sure they have everything they could ever ask for [to] keep them off the streets, keep them out of all the trouble that’s around this area.’

Kelce’s charity last year helped upgrade the home of a long-time Kansas City resident and former athlete, Gloria White, whose arthritis and joint pain left her needing handrails and other remodeling so she could continue living there.

She once broke school athletics records and eventually competed in the US Olympic trials. The mom-of-two, originally from Oklahoma, died several months after the renovations were completed.

Police collecting evidence after a shooting left three people dead and five injured on the city’s rough east side

Kelce helped fund Operation Breakthrough’s Ignition Lab to help young people from rough backgrounds learn a trade

Mayor Quinton Lucas recently announced a landmark $300 million development for his city’s troubled east side

Kansas City’s Democratic Mayor Quinton Lucas, a Chiefs fan and advocate for slavery reparations, vows to address the chronic problems that plague his hard-up residents, especially those on the poverty-ravaged east side.

In his State of the City speech last month, Lucas said coffers were full and vowed to boost cops’ pay, tackle crime, and spend $3million on a homeless scourge that blights public spaces.

Days later he unveiled a $300million project for the city’s east side, with 1,100 new affordable homes, saying it would be a ‘crown jewel’ for the area and an ‘important part of our city’s black heritage.’

Likewise, Boyer’s group is breaking ground on a site for duplex homes this month, but she says even these new projects will still leave Kansas City short by tens of thousands of affordable digs.

Kansas City, she says, would benefit from more Travis Kelces.

‘We don’t have a celebrity sports person supporting our organization right now, but we would sure love one,’ Boyer told DailyMail.com.