Kent County’s housing crisis: Meet the team orchestrating the work

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — More than one hundred stakeholders are working on Kent County’s housing crisis, and it’s important that they work together.

One organization working to address that need is Housing Kent, a data-driven, young organization aiming to coordinate work with several community partners. It’s aiming to transform the county’s housing system, President Eureka People told News 8.

“Our shared community vision … is really to make sure that everybody can live in safe, quality, affordable housing in the neighborhoods that they’re choosing,” she explained. “We do that through a network of partners called the Housing Stability Alliance, where the community came together over a three-year planning process and set three big, very bold and ambitious things to accomplish: One is to increase affordable housing, the second is to dissolve homelessness and the third is to increase racial disparities in the housing system with the unique lens of looking at families with children.”

Kent County’s housing crisis: How did we get here?

She compared Housing Kent to an orchestra conductor, working to make sure area housing advocates are all using their skills and resources while playing off the same sheet music and working toward the same goal.

The Housing Stability Alliance has almost 130 stakeholders, with Housing Kent working as its ‘backbone.’

HOUSING CRISIS CAUSES A SHIFT IN THE FAMILY

In Kent County, around 60,000 families are struggling to make ends meet, People said. And for families who are renting but want to buy a home, many are priced out: People explained the average home sale value is around $300,000, which requires an income of around $107,000 to qualify for a home loan.

“That price is putting the American dream at risk for many households in Kent County,” People said. “We’re talking about young college graduates who are coming out of school, seeking to start a family if they desire… They can’t purchase a home on their own.”

Other young couples with kids don’t have the option to have a parent stay at home if they want to afford a house, she said, while older parents may have their adult children still living with them because they can’t afford to move out and buy their own home. It’s a “completely different ball game” than it was 10 or 20 years ago, People said, and it’s causing a family infrastructure shift.

Many would-be homebuyers are stuck in the renters market, where the market rate has skyrocketed over the last decade or two, People said. She said wages haven’t matched that trajectory, and raises — if offered at all — aren’t matching inflation.

Kent County’s housing crisis: Are walkable neighborhoods the solution?

“The typical wage has basically remained flat relative to that trajectory,” she said. “The gap between the market-rate rent and how much money you have to make to secure a market-rate unit is something like an extra $400 a month. … Families are already living cost burdened, and who can afford an extra $400 a month?”

The struggle to afford housing is leading to some intangible results, she said, like people showing up to work more stressed and families worrying about putting food on the table.

“There’s just a fundamentally different fabric that’s being created today in the housing market and that just calls on all of us again to try to figure out what we can do to solve the problems,” she said.

‘STARK AND ALARMING’ RACIAL DISPARITITES

As the Housing Kent examines data on racial disparities in Kent County’s housing market, People said they are “stark and alarming.”

“On the homelessness side … a couple of years back, 1 in 6 African American children — compared to 1 out of 130 white children — entered into the homelessness system on a yearly basis,” she said. “That disparity is quite, again, disheartening and heartbreaking.”

When it comes to homeownership, People said Kent County has the fifth worst gap in the country between Black and white homeownership.

Kent County’s housing crisis: What can you do?

“There’s just a wide disparity that exists between the number of Blacks that own their homes compared to the number of whites,” she said. “We can also talk about other race and ethnic groups, but the one with the Black-white gap is the largest, so that’s why we focus there, because that’s the biggest problem that we have.”

She said her team is working on data analysis to find the root causes of the disparities, putting together strategies to address the gap and making the public is aware.

For example, she said, as county leaders work to add the 35,000 housing units needed by 2027, her team is advocating to make sure that the homeownership gap is narrowed and not widened.

BIG WINS AS THE ORCHESTRA CONDUCTOR

People said that several months ago, the downtown Grand Rapids area faces some challenges related to those who are experiencing homelessness.

“We were able to facilitate some solution-making that was some pretty difficult but very necessary conversations that showcase what we can do when we really bring all of our talent collectively together, from business, from nonprofit, as well as thinking about the families,” she said.

They were able to bring in around a half a million dollars in funding for short-term solutions, she said, like working with Community Rebuilders to get those experiencing chronic homelessness into bridge housing and then working with them to address their needs. Her team also worked with the Grand Rapids Homeless Outreach Team team and other housing providers, she said, to create a central location where people who are homeless can go to find the resources they need to get into housing, like getting an ID card or a medical assessment.

The work was a “big win in the community,” she said, as advocates and organizations where able to work together to agree on what the solution should be and then implement it.

Kent County’s housing crisis: GR goes small, Habitat for Humanity goes big

Working with the Housing Stability Alliance, Housing Kent is also in the planning stages of an eviction prevention pilot program, which will be launching this year.

While many in Kent County are in “crisis response mode,” working to address those who are already homeless, more people are becoming homeless.

“How then do we decrease the number of people that are experiencing homelessness in Kent County?” People said. “It’s an upstream intervention, which is really homelessness prevention.”

Partners like the health department, the state, landlords and tenants are working together to redesign prevention eviction. Strategies include things like improving relationships between landlords and tenants, People said.

Housing Kent will be working on predictive analytics, using data to predict which families may be headed towards homelessness and stepping in to prevent that from happening.

The program has raised more than $1.5 million. People said she is excited to see how it will move forward.

WILL THE TIDE BE TURNED?

As People looks toward what the housing system may look like 10 years from now, she said she’s optimistic. While she doesn’t believe the housing crisis will be solved — it’s a problem decades in the making — she said she believes the community can “start to turn the tide” if everyone works together.

“I have hope in general, because by nature I’m a woman of faith,” she said. “(But) I’m very optimistic and I can say very confidently that in this community, I believe that we have the expertise, we have solutions, we have people who are committed and dedicated and we have resources that can address and make progress on this issue.”

Kent County’s housing crisis: Will we hit 35,000 units?

People said there are an incredible amount of people in the county working on the issue, and she is thankful for every person involved in the Housing Stability Alliance.

As Housing Kent works to engage the community, people are receptive to its work. She encouraged people to educate themselves on the housing system and to start to look at it differently.

“It is not the housing market that many of us grew up in, and hopefully that’s the case that we’re making,” she said. “We’ve got to have an openness or receptivity to allow new and different types of neighbors to come into our communities.”

Those who want to help can work on advocacy through Housing Kent’s partner organizations, like Housing Next, or can volunteer at housing organizations or centers like Safe Haven.

People said community members are also invited to the Housing Stability Alliance’s quarterly meetings, where she said their input will be valued. She encouraged people to sign up for Housing Kent’s newsletter to stay informed.

“Think about your children and think about your children’s children. Because this is not an issue that’s about ‘them.’ … This is an issue about us,” she said. “It’s getting closer and closer to people who think that they’re distant from the problem. But the problem is really not even in your backyard. The problem is knocking on your front door.”

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WOODTV.com.