- Coming up, we've got a great episode of "American Black Journal" for you.

Justice Kyra Harris Bolden, the first Black woman to serve on the Michigan Supreme Court, is with us to talk about her election victory and her priorities for the next four years.

Plus, we'll talk with two organizations that are working to raise awareness and support for the area's homeless population.

Don't go anywhere, "American Black Journal" starts right now.

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Thank you.

(pensive music) - Welcome to "American Black Journal."

I'm Stephen Henderson.

Michigan Supreme Court Justice Kyra Harris Bolden emerged victorious in the recent election to retain her seat on the state's highest court.

She was initially appointed by Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2023 to fill a seat that was vacated by retiring Chief Justice Bridget Mary McCormack.

Bolden is the first Black woman on the State's Supreme Court, and she is currently its youngest member.

I sat down with her for a wide-ranging conversation.

Justice Kyra Harris Bolden, first of all, congratulations.

And of course, it is great to have you here with us on "American Black Journal."

- Thank you so much for having me.

- Yeah.

So Democrats in our state had a lot of contentious, I guess, races, and lost the presidential contest.

There was a kind of a counter trend on some of the lower-ballot races, the Senate race and the Supreme Court, where Democrats will enjoy a larger majority than they have.

Tell me what that means from your chair.

- Well, my perspective is, well, my... First of all, my race is nonpartisan, so- - It's nonpartisan, right?

(indistinct), right?

- So, and I'm in a nonpartisan job.

I think some takeaways from, at least from my race, I think people should think about was I ran this race before, right?

I ran in 2022.

And even though I ran my race in 2022 and lost, I came within two percentage points of an incumbent.

And so I think that we were able to build upon a lot of that great work that we've done, and I think it reflected in our numbers for this race in receiving over 60% of the vote.

And I actually also received the most votes total out of any Michigan Supreme Court race in history.

And so I think that's a testament to the work we've done around the state of Michigan for the last two years, and people recognizing the great work that the Michigan Supreme Court is doing.

- Yeah, yeah.

So talk about that two years.

You were appointed to a seat by Governor Gretchen Whitmer when the Chief Justice resigned.

Tell us about the work of the Michigan Supreme Court and the things that you feel you've been able to accomplish that you can show voters and say, "Hey, I should still be here."

- Yeah, so I think, again, we did a really great job of making the case before I was even able to be on the court, getting really close to having the job.

But I did fall short.

Thankful for Chief Justice Bridget Mary McCormack, who stepped down two years into her eight-year term, and thankful to Governor Gretchen Whitmer for appointing me to that position.

And I have to say it was a whirlwind.

In 2022, I was pregnant with my first child and had my child in the middle of the campaign.

And so starting the job on January 1st, 2023, I had around a five-month-old and starting this new job.

But in my first year, I was able to author three majority opinions, one unanimous.

And I think the people of the state of Michigan recognized very quickly that, one, I was getting up to speed very quickly, and two, I was well-respected on the core to be able to do that.

- Yeah.

- And to date, I have issued, or author eight majority opinions.

And so I'm right along with my fellow justices as far as workload and contributing to our court and our team.

I'm also liaison to our treatment courts, as well as our family, our child welfare task force.

And so we're doing a lot of great work at the Michigan Supreme Court, and I'm honored to be a part of it.

- Yeah.

Just for context, authoring eight majority opinions in a term, that's quite a bit.

I mean, that is- - That's quite a bit.

- Yeah, that's not a small number.

- It is not.

- What do you attribute that to?

Talk about the work with your colleagues and the trust and the faith they obviously have in you to speak for the court.

- And that's exactly right.

I think a lot of people think that you just write it and people join it and it goes out.

There's an immense amount of discussion and back and forth, and there are times where if you write something a certain way that's not reflective of the majority, someone may just drop off and they might be a dissent and you may lose your majority.

So it's about writing in a way that represents the majority of the court, truly.

And it takes a lot of speaking with one another and working together.

It's a very, very collaborative court, unlike some of the lower courts may have experience.

So, I actually really enjoy that part of the job.

But yes, in order to offer and maintain the majority eight times and being the least senior member on the court is actually quite a feat.

And I'm honored that the other justices have trusted me to be able to do that.

- Yeah, yeah.

So, let's talk about the next four years.

Your next term, your first full term as an elected member of the court, what kinds of things are you looking forward to?

What kinds of goals, I guess, are you setting for yourself?

- So, yes, so I have four years, I have to finish the term vacated by Bridget Mary McCormack.

- That's right, right.

- Yes, and a usual term is eight years.

- Eight years.

That's right, not quite a full term.

- So not quite a full term, but we're getting there in 2028, I'll be back.

But you know, the goals that I have for myself are really to learn more of the intricacies, the processes, and procedure of the Michigan Supreme Court.

I think that that's a huge part of the job, and it takes time to absorb all of that.

I think, obviously making good decisions on behalf of Michiganders, but two, just trying to figure out how I myself can make it easier for the next person coming after me.

You know, what I went through was quite a feat, and there are reasons why I'm the first Black woman to ever serve on the Michigan Supreme Court, right?

And we have to be honest about the systemic barriers that are in place.

- Absolutely.

- And so, it's important to identify what those barriers are in order to remove them to make it easier for the next person after me.

Because- - What are some of those... What do some of those barriers look like?

Talk about those.

- Yeah, so I won't be too explicit, but I will just say sometimes I ask questions about why things are done a certain way, and the answer typically has been, "Well, that's how we've always done it."

(Stephen laughing) - Right.

- Right?

And with myself being the 14th woman to ever serve, the first Black woman, but only the 14th woman, and only the sixth Black person to serve.

- Right.

- There are things that I... And honestly being the youngest person, right, to ever serve, I may see things in a different way and how we can utilize the court in different ways that hasn't been done before.

And so those are the types of things that I raise and maybe push back on a little bit because we shouldn't be just... We shouldn't just be doing things because that's how it's always been done.

- Right.

- We should be innovative and working to serve all of Michigan.

- Yeah, and when you do that, when you raise these issues and say, "Maybe we ought to think about that differently," talk about the reception you get from the rest of the court, from the other justices.

- Yeah.

Actually, this is a really great court, and I'm very thankful to Chief Justice Clement, who really, even if that's the initial answer, there's always additional conversation.

And I feel that my colleagues currently serving on the court are generally receptive to new ideas, new ways of doing things.

We have a lot of discussions and I feel like we're going in the right direction.

But again, change is difficult, especially for an institution such as the Michigan Supreme Court.

So we're working hard, and I'm working with my colleagues to, again, identify some of those barriers.

- Yeah, yeah.

When you think about... Back to the opinions that you've written this term, the eight majority opinions, does one stand out?

I mean, I know you're not really at liberty to discuss issues and things like that, but talk about one or two that jump out at you as really important or significant.

- Yeah, so one of my opinions, I believe, has been cited close to 100 times having to do with criminal sentencing, which I think has been very impactful and important.

And honestly, I think all the opinions we write are impactful.

I struggle because I... Well, things be important to me and I may be proud of it.

- Yeah, right.

- Sometimes, people are just like, "That's not the sexy issue that we wanted you to talk about."

- Right.

(Stephen laughing) - But I also authored a majority opinion concerning pro bono fees, which, again, is not super interesting to some people, but for those recipients for pro bono work, I think it's very impactful.

And so those are the two that I would point to as far as the ones that I think are just really significant and ones that I enjoyed really working on.

But just for context, we receive about 200 applications for appeal per month.

We have to review because as you know, not every case is heard at the Michigan Supreme Court, we choose which cases we hear.

But in order to choose which cases we hear, we have to review all the application.

- You're gonna look through them, right.

- And so it's a very robust job and a lot of information, but I really, really enjoy it.

- November is National Homeless Awareness Month, a time to shine a light on the urgent need to address, end, and prevent home insecurity.

According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's Point-in-Time Count, more than 650,000 people who are experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2023.

That is a 12% increase from the previous year.

My next guests are providing support and hope for homeless adults and youth here in Michigan.

Here's my conversation with Father Tim McCabe of Pope Francis Center and Courtney Smith from the Detroit Phoenix Center.

I actually wanna start with both of you just giving us a sense of what homelessness and housing insecurity, which run hand in hand, what they look like right now in our city.

You guys are on the front lines of trying to mitigate some of these issues.

I just want to hear what things look like from your perspective.

Courtney, I'll start with you.

- Yes, so I would say that we primarily support... At the Detroit Phoenix Center, we primarily support young people that are experiencing housing insecurity youth between the ages of 12 to 24.

And youth housing insecurity looks very different from adult housing insecurity traditionally because young people are often hidden right in plain sight.

They may be couch surfing, they may be living doubled up, they may be living with family and friends.

They may be in homes with no running water or heat.

They blend in right with our society.

They may be the young person that you see at the grocery store, or at the bus stop, or at the traffic light.

And so we are really just looking to shed a face that really doesn't have a face, right, to what youth homelessness or youth housing insecurity.

We use those words interchangeably within the work that we do.

- Yeah, yeah, Father Tim.

- Thank you, Stephen.

At the Pope Francis Center, we're seeing a pretty large increase of our numbers on a daily basis where I think pre-pandemic, we would... If we saw 120 people a day, it would be a large number.

Now, we're rarely below 250.

- Hmm.

- So I feel the strain of that and also feels like there's not enough shelter beds available for people.

So, we're fighting with that system that doesn't really have an emergency shelter or enough emergency shelter beds for folks that are experiencing homelessness right now.

- So let's talk about Homeless Awareness Month, Homelessness Awareness Month and the things that will draw people's attention more to this issue.

And I guess the hope for, again, awareness and support.

Courtney?

- Yes, so at the Detroit Phoenix Center, we acknowledge Youth Hope Month, which is Youth Homeless Outreach Prevention and Education Month was is critically important to really to shine a light on not only the challenges that young people face, but their hopes and vision for the future.

We partner with young people to drive systemic change.

And so right now, we have a billboard campaign featuring young people that we partner with that have lived experience with housing insecurity, but to partner with them to create a world where every young person has a home.

So we have billboards all around the city with their voices.

One of the billboards is from our youth board members, Arya, who said that we need to create safe spaces that are youth-centered and youth-friendly for young people.

We have a host of activities.

We have our culminating youth service event, which is a 12-hour event on November the 29th, where we're partnering with young people to mobilize our community to participate in activities, such as educational activities, to make blankets, to distribute care packages, to distribute resources to young people, and need to really create a world to co-create our vision to create a world where every young person has a champion and a place to call home.

We have our annual Friendsgiving Event, we have a skating party, really youth-centered, youth-centric, because that also lean into prevention because the best way we believe to end youth homelessness is also to prevent it from happening.

So those community connections are critically important and for the work that we do as well during Youth Hope Month, in addition to partnering with our local organizations to provide additional resources.

- Yeah, one of the things that I think is maybe a misnomer about youth homelessness is the idea that the simple solution is just to get children or young people back with their families, right?

- Yes.

- And of course, that's the ideal, I suppose, in some ways.

But talk about the ways in which that is more complicated and more nuanced than many people might believe.

- Absolutely.

So, it is very much more complicated, because as Father Tim said, we're just now recognizing the impact of COVID-19.

And when we started, we used to serve primarily unaccompanied youth that were not in the physical custody of their parent or guardian, but many of the young people that we're seeing today are experiencing housing insecurity homelessness with their parents, with their families.

So they're looking for resources and support to be able to stay together.

And then also some of the young people that's unaccompanied, that's not in the physical custody of their parent or guardian, we are working with and dealing with systems such as the child welfare system, or a young person may have aged out of foster care and may not have those social, permanent connections that they need to thrive.

And ultimately, we become that ecosystem for them to lean on so that they can have the support that they need.

And also, youth homelessness.

Many of the young people that we service are literally living with parents, right?

They're couch surfing, they're living doubled up in apartments with 10 people in a two-bedroom, right?

And so it's a very nuanced, it's very, very, very nuanced.

And so we really just wanna shine a light on that this month.

- Yeah, yeah.

Father Tim, I know at the Pope Francis Center, you guys are focusing even harder now on long-term solutions to homelessness.

I mean, obviously getting people emergency shelter and getting people off the streets is a focus, but you're looking at things that move people to more permanent stability.

Talk about what that looks like during Homelessness Awareness Month.

- Yeah, we just opened our Bridge Housing facility and after years of research about what is most effective in treating chronic homelessness, we really feel like we've got a good program in place to help people heal from the traumas that have caused the homelessness and allow them some space for stability and then to move them into permanent housing.

We are in this country in a national humanitarian crisis with the numbers of homelessness that we're seeing across the country.

While Detroit's done a great job of addressing large numbers, there's still way more than we should have ever see on our city streets.

And we can talk about adding affordable housing onto the market, but if affordable housing is 30% AMI, that's kind of disenfranchising people who have extremely low income.

And so we've really gotta... We're not trying to cure cancer here.

It's a problem that's solvable and we just have to really partner together with all branches of government and the private-public sector to really work towards a common solution to end this blight on our society.

- Yeah, talk about some of the things that you're doing at this Bridge Housing Center that you think will work.

What are some of the solutions to this chronic homelessness problem?

- Well, understanding homelessness as response to trauma.

So a trauma-informed care, understanding the individualized care programs are necessary because everybody's story's different.

Everybody has different reasons for ending up without shelter, without a home.

So we really taking that approach and it's really like, I often say to people, like, the thing that stops us from falling into homelessness is really having family and community if we were ever into a crisis.

So we create a family, we create community within our program, within our Bridge Housing facility so that we provide that wraparound support that folks often who are on the streets don't have.

And so we have a medical, we treat the body, mind, and spirit, right?

We have a medical clinic, we have a gymnasium, we have an outdoor shelter for people whose trauma prevent them from coming indoors so they can sleep and stay protected from the elements.

So there's a variety of approaches that we take, but really, and then ultimately giving them the agency that they need to be self-determining and allowing them the space to heal, and to determine what direction their lives are going, and to help them find those places.

- Yeah, yeah.

So I wanna ask both of you this next question.

We just got through a presidential election and many local elections as well.

Homelessness doesn't come up much in the discussions about who should be leading us.

It's kind of thought of as a maybe a partner issue or an aside issue with poverty.

But I know that it's not, that it is its own, its own problem in many ways with its own characteristics.

I wonder what each of you would prescribe from a government standpoint, one thing that you think would make a huge difference in the homeless.

The number of people who find themselves housing insecure or homeless, and in getting them into more permanent housing, Courtney.

- I would say people power.

I would say really centering the lived experiences of young people who experience housing insecurity.

To really listen to them, to learn from them of their challenges, invest, right, in the solutions that they propose, because ultimately, those who are approximate right to the problem need to be the ones that are driving the solution.

So partnering with the government to really, really listen to what the young people have to say, and their solutions, and resourcing those solutions, so that they manifest within the work that we do every single day through our rapid rehousing program, through our drop-in center, through our prevention programs, because they know exactly what it is that they need that's not just only focused right on the trauma that they've experienced, but also on the healing that we need as a community.

So to listen and to learn from people and to create people-centered policies and programming.

- Yeah, yeah.

Father Tim?

- I would say that we've... I love what Courtney said.

I think empowering the folks is really important, but there's really... The system is so broken, and we really gotta cut through this bureaucracy.

We take the time somebody is documented as homeless, so the time they get keys can be a year, it can be longer than a year.

So this is unacceptable, and it's unnecessary, and it's a really about HUD requirements of money coming into the city and what data needs to be collected.

I think there's a... We can streamline that system and really be much more effective in making sure that people are housed.

- That'll do it for us this week.

You can find out more about our guests at americanblackjournal.org and you can connect with us anytime on social media.

Take care, and we'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] From Delta Faucets to Behr Paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator] DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan-focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at dtefoundation.com.

- [Announcer] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

Thank you.

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