Ohio-based KeyBank and its associated nonprofit, KeyBank Foundation, have invested $300,000 in Avalon Housing to strengthen its supportive services for tenants and clients throughout Washtenaw County. The funding will enable Avalon to offer more personalized support to help tenants access resources, navigate care systems, and work toward long-term stability.

“This was a perfect partnership for us,” says KeyBank Corporate Responsibility Officer Yvonne Harrington. “Our main focus is supporting organizations that support low- to moderate-income individuals, and we’re excited to continue collaborating with Avalon through this project.”

Harrington explains that the community impact grant to Avalon will help caseworkers provide more “intensive case management” to clients, as well as reduce their caseloads to make them more manageable and provide more effective support. She says she is “thrilled” to be able to support Avalon because there would “be many more homeless individuals” throughout the county without Avalon and similar organizations' work.

“It is very rare to find affordable housing in a county that is not considered low- to moderate-income according to the census,” Harrington says. “Because Avalon is building affordable housing, more people can now live in Washtenaw County that couldn’t afford to before.”

Harrington says the KeyBank Foundation's collaboration with Avalon goes back over a decade. Another Ann Arbor nonprofit tackling homelessness, Michigan Ability Partners, has received grant funding through the KeyBank Foundation. Harrington says she wants to continue to support Washtenaw County through initiatives like Avalon’s.

“We’ve engaged with Washtenaw County organizations including Avalon in the past by financially supporting them, but we want to have a deeper engagement,” Harrington says. “We’ve also offered our services to teach community members basic financial education as a way to deepen those relationships and really help the community further.”

Rylee Barnsdale is a Michigan native and longtime Washtenaw County resident. She wants to use her journalistic experience from her time at Eastern Michigan University writing for the Eastern Echo to tell the stories of Washtenaw County residents that need to be heard.

Photo courtesy of KeyBank.