- Welcome to Mutually Inclusive.

I'm your host, Kylie Ambu, and today we are tackling one of the biggest issues in West Michigan, the housing crisis.

I'm sure you've heard it before, the market is crazy.

Inflation rates are skyrocketing and people are being displaced because paychecks can't keep up with rising rent.

In very real cases, there are many who don't have a home to go to.

And today we're talking with our community who's working to change that.

(bright music) Grand Rapids is the second biggest city in Michigan.

It's also been named one of America's fastest growing cities, but studies are showing that housing isn't keeping up with demand.

A report by Housing Next shows Kent County is outpacing the state in population, growing five times faster.

And while Michigan is expected to decline in population over the next few years, Grand Rapids and Kent County as a whole are expected to grow.

It's projected that Kent County will need about 35,000 additional units by 2027.

While this gap hits all price points, lower end middle income buyers are the most vulnerable, and that's on top of prejudice that can impact the housing system, but we'll get to that shortly.

Lack of sustainable, affordable housing plays a huge factor in the number of people battling homelessness.

In its 2021 annual report, Michigan saw a 2% decrease in these numbers, but here in West Michigan, shelters like Mel Trotter Ministries have been forced to expand into overflow shelters, with numbers generally spiking each winter.

And there is a line separating levels of income, insecurity, poverty, and homelessness, but all of these factors play a role in our community.

Today, we're talking with leaders in West Michigan's housing sphere to get a better snapshot of where our neighborhoods stand.

We start with WGVU's Jennifer Moss, who's in the studio with the Fair Housing Center of West Michigan in an important conversation about equal opportunities.

(bright music) Hi everyone, of course, we are talking about housing concerns today and we have the pleasure of having Liz Keegan and she is with the Fair Housing Center of West Michigan.

Liz, we wanna thank you for joining us today.

- Thank you so much for having me.

- So, you know, there are many issues surrounding housing, affordable housing, of course, being one of the top and affordability as well as availability.

Those are our two big concerns.

You guys deal with housing discrimination in many cases and you've mentioned when we talked earlier that your caseload right now is the highest or the second highest it's been in 43 years.

Tell us about that and perhaps delve into the why, as to why it's so high within 43 years.

- Right, it's disappointing to see, but it could also be for positive reasons.

So, I'll back up and say, our job is to investigate illegal housing discrimination based on protected classes at the federal state and local level.

So things like your race, your skin color, whether or not you're married, if you have a disability, if you have children, there's a whole list of growing list of protections.

So we investigate and hopefully help the industry understand their obligations to comply with Fair Housing, but we also welcome complaints of housing discrimination.

So the numbers will always go up, we think, before they go down, so I'm hopeful that the numbers going up means that more people know their Fair Housing rights and are reporting discrimination.

On the flip side, there's also the possibility in a very tight housing market, as you said, where some of the best qualified applicants are struggling to find housing.

Then, finding housing discrimination on top of that can be very, very challenging, so it is surprising to see the numbers go up.

I hope that means people recognize and report housing discrimination because that's what's gonna be critical to stopping it and confronting it.

- And you do, again, get a lot of those complaints.

You deal with those allegations of discrimination.

We look at that a lot of times in the realm of race and color, but quite frankly, your number one housing discrimination piece is disability.

- It is, and that does surprise folks.

It's been that way in West Michigan since 2015, following a trend of discrimination against families with children that came out of the foreclosure crisis.

However, race-based discrimination is on the rise.

It's always been happening.

It tends to be a little bit harder to uncover.

We have a lot of West Michigan polite happening and people have really learned to offer housing in a way that doesn't seem like they're discriminating.

But on the backend, when we do our investigations, we find that they are.

But disability based discrimination is a real problem because people are looking for not only affordable quality housing, but also accessible features.

A lot of folks are thinking about, where can I live for the rest of my life?

Where can I age in place?

Can I put a ramp here, a grab bar here?

Will my apartment community allow me to have a caregiver, an assigned parking spot?

So those are the types of discrimination cases that we see is just really not working with the needs of people with disabilities.

- And so, how do you guys track, how do you figure out, well, we can pursue this particular case of alleged discrimination versus this one.

I mean, we've got, again, the different realms and the protected communities that you talked about.

- People bring us complaints or allegations.

Our services are free.

We do not have attorneys on staff, but we have an incredible team of enforcement coordinators who walk side by side with all of our clients.

Another notable point is that we have our highest caseload.

All the cases that we have represent individuals.

So we have a lot of clients who are directly experiencing Fair Housing violations.

Sometimes we find problems just kind of doing survey investigations, or you see a billboard when you drive by and it's not in compliance, so it's really showing us that a lot of people of people are experiencing Fair Housing issues directly, bringing it to us.

And we help them walk the path.

We figure out which laws have been violated, which options our clients have.

They can go to court, they can file administrative complaints.

There's different ways.

And quite frankly, in this housing market, a lot of people just want us to work directly with their housing provider to get the transaction back on track.

To either get into the housing that they've worked so hard to find, and also to maintain the housing, you know, if they're a person with a disability to get those changes in the bathroom so they can stay there longer, keep that affordable rental rate, maybe, that they've been able to get.

It's critical that Fair Housing laws are upheld for those reasons exactly.

People should be able to choose where they live based on what meets their needs and what they want.

What's in their neighborhood, is it close to work, groceries, parks, employment, healthcare, all the things that we need to thrive and survive can be yanked away by a Fair Housing violation.

And it's been very challenging with this market that we're in, identifying housing discrimination and moving fast enough to try to help stop it because you've got home selling overnight, you know, units are leasing up left and right.

So pausing for a civil rights case is very stressful and it asks a lot of folks, but we need to know about it in order to correct it.

- And you don't have a lot of time with those either.

- [Liz] Correct.

- With the market the way that it is, right?

- [Liz] Exactly.

- You've kind of got to move fast and sometimes maybe limited staff or different, or with an overload of cases.

- Right, right.

A lot could fall, by the way.

So do you feel like you're making some inroads in this?

- We do, we've had some incredible grant opportunities.

We've grown our team a little bit.

We've also expanded our service area, so we're covering about 38 counties in Michigan, but we're right here, downtown Grand Rapids, doing our work.

We really need people to bring these issues to our attention.

And anyone can report housing discrimination.

We don't have attorneys, we are a non-profit, so that gives us a unique space to work in where we can advocate for both the clients experiencing discrimination and also for the people who wanna uphold fair housing.

A lot of housing providers, professionals, realtors, lenders, landlords, they wanna do the right thing.

They may not necessarily know that what they're doing is illegal, so some of them are responsive to education.

- [Jennifer] Okay.

- That said, we do help file cases in court, et cetera.

- Absolutely, and the Michigan's Elliott Larsen Civil Rights Act, that's gonna be added to, in the coming year.

- [Liz] Yes.

- What parts?

- So, sexual orientation and gender identity will officially be added to state law as protected classes, which has been a long time coming, so we're really excited to see.

It could be anytime before March of 2024.

We've been doing a lot of education.

Prior to this, it's been a little bit harder to help advocate for discrimination based on those two protected characteristics, so having it on the book, so to speak, is going to be really incredible to open up opportunity for those communities.

- Give you a little more power there.

So, as we look at the big picture of Fair Housing, Liz, what would be your end goal or hope, when you look at all of the things and the case overloads and the overwhelming number of applicants and those filing complaints and that sort of thing, and you are making some inroads, but what's your goal, your personal hope?

- I am so passionate about housing choice that I hope we work ourselves out of business.

It's very trite, many non-profits say that, but as a Civil Rights Movement member, we really wanna see the need for the enforcement and the education to go away over time.

Until then, we're here to meet either need and to help move that needle.

With civil rights, you can take three steps forward and five back, or three steps forward, and then another one forward.

And with a 43 year history, we've been able to be a part of that movement and maintain it here in West Michigan, which is an incredible place for everyone to live.

And everyone should have that right and that opportunity.

- Well said, and thank you so much for what you do and what the center does.

We appreciate you and thank you for joining us today.

- Thank you for the opportunity.

(bright upbeat music) - A 2022 study by the University of Michigan shows the state's high school aged youth face significant risks for experiencing homelessness.

In 2019, 5.6% of youth reported being homeless in the last 30 days of the study, which is equivalent to more than an estimated 22,400, living without a stable place.

And while we just heard earlier that some populations are impacted more than others, we are seeing that black indigenous people of color and LGBTQ plus individuals are facing the heavier rates of housing discrimination.

Our next group wants to knock down these barriers, acting as a drop-in center where people can come as they are.

(bright upbeat music) Adolescents, it's a coming of age time with new experiences and constant transitions, but for thousands of Michigan's youth, 24 and under, it can be a time of isolation, struggle, and battle for support.

- I mean, I tell people all the time, like, think back when you were that age, did you make mistakes?

Absolutely, you know, did things happen to you that were out of your control?

Absolutely, did you know everything?

No.

- [Kylie] Each year it's estimated 4.2 million youth and young adults experience homelessness in the United States.

700,000 of which are unaccompanied minors.

And here in West Michigan, the number of youth seeking housing, or other support services is growing.

- A lot of people ask why people are seeing this rise in homelessness.

What does this mean?

It is a lot to do with the social and economic factors that are at play.

So, that compression in the housing market, almost everybody has felt at some level, whether you're trying to buy a home, sell a home, or rent, there's this compression.

And so, as rates rose and as the sale prices of homes went up so quickly, we had people at every single level unable to move to the next level.

For our young people that we serve who are generally under 30% of the area and median income, that means that there's 0% vacancy actually right now for youth to be able to access housing.

- [Kylie] And on top of a housing crisis with crippling rises in rent, advocates say certain communities stand most vulnerable.

- So, what we see here is really representative of community data.

A high percentage of the youth we serve are gonna be youth of color.

That is a highly overrepresented population where we're looking at youth that we currently serve in youth who historically come from marginalized communities.

We also tend to see a lot of youth who identify as queer.

Specifically in the last year, we've seen a lot more youth who identify as transgender, seeking just basic support services.

And then we also have started to see a rise in the number of youth exiting the child welfare system.

Which again, all of these populations historically very, very marginalized within this community.

- [Kylie] Amid Grand Rapids established general shelters like Mel Trotter or Degage Ministries, AYA Youth Collective fits inside a specialized area, offering supports to individuals 14 through 24.

- We wanted to create just this affirming powerhouse.

And so, with that, we really felt that it was necessary to have like a collaborative and all-encompassing name.

And so, what we settled on was AYA, which stands for As You Are, which is extremely simple.

It's how we want youth to enter our space.

Our two biggest components are that we offer a drop-in space here in Grand Rapids, as well as a supportive housing program.

- [Kylie] Previously two separate organizations, AYA is a brainchild of 3:11 Youth Housing and HQ Grand Rapids.

Serving over 560 people this year.

But it's more than a drop-in center, more than a community.

For many, it's a lifeline.

- One of the key things that we've been able to grow as our comprehensive health initiative, which serves young people ages 14 to 24, who are experiencing housing crisis, instability, homelessness, and who are uninsured or underinsured.

We support youth getting connected to behavioral healthcare, to physical healthcare.

- In addition to housing and health services, AYA has an onsite state specialist who helps get incoming youth enrolled in benefits, like Medicaid and food stamps in real time.

- Prior to her coming, we worked with a variety of partners and we had about a 10 to 20% success rate of youth who applied for Medicaid or food stamps and actually received it.

That's because of a variety of barriers with phone, address, ability to locate.

We now have a 100% success rate with youth who apply for any kind of assistance and aren't able to actually receive that assistance.

It is game changing.

- [Kylie] Much like its community members, AYA youth collective is in a state of transition itself, adding in three additional homes and contracting with community partners in hopes to house upwards of 50 more people each year.

It's also one of five organizations in the country to receive a grant implementing direct cash transfers to residents.

- This is a way to actually disrupt systemic racism and to put money in the hands of young people.

And we have piloted this project with about 50 youth, and we've seen incredible success.

99% of youth say spend the money on what they say they're gonna spend it on.

And they actually use it to help themselves move forward in their future.

So we're excited to also grow that kind of an intervention.

- [Kylie] The team says rising rates of homelessness necessitates more innovative approaches.

And youth experiencing these challenges, sit at an important crossroads.

- I say it's one of the most hopeful spaces to work in because we see young people who say, I want something different for my life and I'm here to figure out how to make that happen.

And that was a really exciting.

I also think it's one of the most pivotal and important places and time spans to work in because we know that 40% of homeless adults also experienced homelessness when they were between the ages of 18 and 24.

And so, if we can support youth now, our hope is that we can then over time, we're long reducing the number of individuals that are experiencing chronic homelessness.

- [Kylie] While many of these individuals are battling low income, it can also be an issue of low experience, whether that's knowledge in the housing system, or basic life navigation.

AYA says that's something its staff can play a unique role in.

- I actually came to AYA shortly after becoming sober.

My very first interview, the first question they asked me was, how can we make this a safe space for you?

And would you be willing to use your experience and your journey to guide other youth who might be looking into recovery support?

For me, coming as you are, it means I come to work and I can also share my life experiences with youth and not feel that I have to put on the facade or that mask and act a certain way in front of our youth.

I can use my life experiences to help support them as they navigate their own.

- [Kylie] As numbers of people living unhoused or unsupported continue to grow, AYA youth collective says its goal is to serve as a landing spot, a place to be seen, appreciated and accepted as you are.

- I can't promise housing resources because we don't have enough housing in our community.

But what I can promise is a community, a space where you're seen, where you're treated with dignity and respect and where you belong.

And a hot meal and a shower to go along with it.

(bright upbeat music) - As we discussed earlier, Kent County is experiencing large population growth and housing is having a hard time keeping up.

Resulting in higher prices as demand soars, two groups in the county set out to examine how this is impacting neighbors, real people in our community.

Take a look at this preview of KConnect and Housing Kent's latest documentary, "Finding Home".

(bright music) - [Announcer] Let's take a look at the county statistics.

One out of six African-American children access to homeless system.

This is compared to 1 out of 130 White children.

Just think about that for a second.

- The homelessness started 2017.

Before we moved into Red Roof, I would sleep in my car and my children went to Las Vegas with my grandma.

I ended up becoming addicted to drugs to try and keep going at the 16 to 18 hour long days at work.

I struggled with it for about seven months before I ended up being evicted.

You never know if the person you passed on the street was one of those kids or is one of those moms.

Homelessness has a lot of faces, and behind every face is a story.

- I've always seen people on the corners of the street panhandle and stuff like that, and I look at them and say, well, maybe they need to get a job.

- When we realized that the system goes from no housing to housed by choice, it really demanded a change in how we look at things.

It demanded a redesign.

(bright music) - The video you just saw is from a documentary called "Finding Home", which was created in collaboration with KConnect, Housing Kent and Candor Media.

It addresses homelessness and the housing crisis here in Kent County.

And today we're lucky enough to have Salvador Lopez from KConnect, and Eureka People with Housing Kent in the studio.

Thank you both so much for coming in today.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Before we jump into this documentary, I first just wanna talk about the role that both your organizations play in our community.

Salvador, I'll bring it to you first.

I know KConnect has their hands on a lot right now.

- Absolutely, so KConnect is a collective impact organization that brings private and public stakeholders organizations together for really one common good.

And that's to make sure that all children and families in Kent County have access to be as prosperous, as thriving as possible.

And so, we have a continuum from prenatal to career, which to your point, makes us really be everywhere for the community.

And so, KConnect's been around for about 10 years.

And so, we're excited to be here with you.

- Wonderful, excited to have you.

Eureka, can you talk with me about Housing Kent?

- Sure, so Housing Kent... Actually, KConnect helped birth Housing Kent.

- Yeah.

- As a part of a community planning process that took place over three years.

And so, we too are a collective impact backbone organization, which basically means that we help solve complex problems at scale.

The problem that we help solve in the community is housing.

And so, we're after housing stability for everyone in Kent County, which essentially means that we want everyone to live in safe, quality housing in neighborhoods that they choose.

And that's what we work towards.

The three big things that we're after are increasing affordable housing, dissolving homelessness, and eliminating racial disparities in the housing system.

- Wonderful, and because your group exists, because this documentary exists, we know that that is an issue here in our community.

Can I ask what made you both say, we need to bring a bigger light to this, we need to create a video?

- So, so from the KConnect side, this started in 2018 when KConnect received a letter by of 11 different leaders in the community saying that this is an issue that needs to be addressed at a system level.

And so, from then on, the work began, and fast forward to really 2021 when we started to really thinking about making sure that the story of what was happening in the community was being told.

And then more so for future generations to come.

Because often in our community we do excellent work, we bring people together, but what happens if we forget it, what happens if we just move on without it?

And so, I actually met up with a colleague and friend, Jose Guadalupe Jimenez, who is a founder of Candor Media.

And we started talking about storytelling and how important it is to make sure that the learnings, specifically the lessons learned from the project were being visualized in the way that a lot of people can have access to.

- I remember watching the video all the way through without sound because oftentimes if you see things without being able to hear what people are saying, it also tells a story.

And one of the key messages that came out was the one mother who had her children.

And I just always remember being taken with the love and the care that she was showing towards her children or people who are struggling with homelessness.

There are a lot of negative stereotypes that are associated with them.

And sometimes what we wanna do with our narrative and our storytelling is what we call ethical storytelling.

So, we wanna tell them who they, show them who they really are in a very dignified way.

And that means to let people know that they are resilient, that they are beautiful, that they do love their children, that they are invested in their community.

- Wonderful, and you talked about housing insecure or battling homelessness.

I know a big part of that documentary talked about, there's no real middle ground here.

- Yeah.

- Where do you stand right now in trying to fill that gap?

- So, on the house by choice side, for example, we still have a housing crisis in Kent County where we have a supply issue, 35,000 units short that we need to fill by, I think 2027.

On the homelessness side or the unhoused side, we have, I don't know, 5, 10,000 families every year that are experiencing homelessness that we're struggling to put into permanent housing.

But the biggest gap in the housing system that we have is right in the middle.

And those are people who are struggling every day to make ends meet.

I call it the silent killer in housing because they're the ones who are, again, paycheck to paycheck, or who are like one car breakdown away from losing housing, or one car payment away from slipping into, or one financial catastrophe away.

And that's about 65,000 people in Kent County, which is a pretty sizable number that most people don't know about.

And so, that's the number that's most alarming and most concerning, but again, most invisible because a lot of people self resolve when they're in that space.

And so, you don't necessarily see them or hear about them, but they're the coworkers, they're the person that's sitting next to you at work every day and you just may not know it because they don't talk about it because it's just, it's a pervasive issue in the community.

- Yeah, thank you so much for your insight on that.

And Salvador, where do you see kind of the housing, I guess, sector, moving in 2023?

What would you like to see change and how is KConnect positioned to be a part of that?

- Well, KConnect is positioned in a very interesting way here because we really bring systems together, right?

So, we don't build them, we don't design them.

We really connect them.

And the way that we do that is by bringing folks from education, from healthcare, from the business, or private sector, from government, and saying, this is an all of us issue, right?

This intersects... Housing intersects with just about anything, right?

And we all have a positive role that we can play, but we need to stay connected.

We need to be involved, right?

And we need to really show that we care by way of our behaviors.

We plan on intersecting and working closely with Housing Kent, and Eureka and her team, because it plays such a big role in the work that we're doing in education, in healthcare, anything related through K through 12, our children depend on it, right?

And so, that is something that I would love to see going forward.

How does Kent County and Grand Rapids specifically become a leader in this space at the national level?

- Well, thank you both so much for joining in on the conversation today.

And if you would like to see this documentary in full, you can access it on KConnect's website.

We'll be sure to have that information here on the screen.

Thanks again.

(bright upbeat music) Well, I feel like one thing I learned today is that housing issues, yes, there are some populations that are more vulnerable, but it's something that can happen to anyone.

- Absolutely, it can.

And as Liz Keegan with the Fair Housing Center of West Michigan pointed out, there are different segments of society that are hit a little bit harder.

I mean, obviously, we know race and gender are issues, but I never knew that disability was the number one issue that they're receiving as a complaint, at least.

- [Kylie] Absolutely, and I'm right there with you.

I'm glad that Liz brought that into the spotlight because disability is not something that I hear about, or I think I see are maybe as top of mind when we talk about discrimination in housing, you said, of course, to race and gender.

That's the things that we see a lot of the time across the board, but it's really important to have that outlook.

Housing holds such a wide variety of barriers in our community.

Unfortunately, we aren't able to cover everything all at once, but what we can do is partner with some of the community members that are highlighting and doing some of this great work.

- [Jennifer] That's right, and we want to give a huge thanks to our partners today.

And of course, we'll have links to those groups and resources on our website, but don't forget to follow WGVU on Facebook and YouTube for more.

- Thank you so much for spending time with us today and being mutually inclusive.

- We will see you next week.

(bright upbeat music)