‘Housing for All’ Millage is set to help families and individuals recover

A Way Home — Housing Solutions: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave’s series on solutions to homelessness and ways to increase affordable housing. It is made possible by a coalition of funders, including the City of Kalamazoo, Kalamazoo County, the ENNA Foundation, and Kalamazoo County Land Bank.

KALAMAZOO, MI – Look for Kalamazoo County to focus its next round of housing grants on projects that support families and individuals recovering from major health and social issues.

“On the multi-family side, everything that they wanted to fund deals with recovery or folks with addictions,” says Kalamazoo County Housing Director Mary Balkema.

The next round of awards through the Kalamazoo County Housing Millage will support Multi-Family Housing projects. The requests are being evaluated early this month by an ad hoc scoring committee of the Kalamazoo County Board of Commission.

That committee will recommend the proposals to receive money generated by the county’s housing millage, which is also called the “Homes for All” Millage. It is an 8-year, 0.75-mill property tax that was approved by voters in 2020.

Speaking of the ongoing need to address the unhoused and people struggling to find suitable housing as they recover from drug use, are released from correctional facilities, and are facing other problems, Balkema says, “A lot of times homelessness deals with facets of mental illness and substance use disorder. And they’re (the county board is) funding a lot of groups with recovery housing, substance use disorder. And so I kind of think it fits in line with what we’re seeing on the street.”

On Aug. 19, 2025, the Kalamazoo County Board of Commissioners approved $725,000 in new awards through the “Homes for All” Millage. The board provided new funding for supportive services projects and creative projects. Those allocations bring the county’s investment to affordable housing and support services for 2025 to $2.97 million.

The organizations that received new funding for supportive housing project were:

• Ministry with Community — $75,000 for housing navigation support and rent/security deposit assistance.
• Reach Sober Living — $100,000 to provide wraparound support to individuals living in the organization’s housing units.
• Healthy House — $50,000 to provide wraparound support to individuals living in the organization’s housing units.
• South County Community Services — $50,000 to support rent, mortgage, and utility assistance for low- and moderate-income residents in the southern townships of Kalamazoo County.

In the Creative Category, which recognizes innovative solutions to housing problems, Resident Opportunities Inc. has been allocated $450,000 to preserve affordable housing through repairs to 16 housing units in the City of Kalamazoo and 32 units in the City of Portage.

The board previously approved some $2.4 million in financial support in 2025 for various projects. They include:

• $415,000 in the Supportive Services Category to benefit the efforts of YWCA Kalamazoo, Community Action Agency, Kalamazoo Housing Advocates, Disability Network SW Michigan, and Kalamazoo Neighborhood Housing Services.

• 504,000 in Creative Category to support projects by Building Blocks, Kalamazoo Neighborhood Housing Services, and Housing Resources Inc.

• $325,000 in the Single-Family Rehab Category to support Community Homeworks and KNHS.

• $1 million in the Single-Family Development category to support the City of Portage’s development of the Stanwood Crossings project. It involves the construction of 45 single-family homes, priced to be affordable for area workers.

“This is actually just the first round of allocations we’re making this time,” Jen Strebs, chairperson of the Kalamazoo County Board, says of those awards made in 2025.  “We do have more coming up.”

“We funded a number of supports for treatment and recovery housing,” she says. “We funded significant investments in rehabilitating low-income and affordable housing for people with disabilities – (through) Residential Opportunities Inc. — securing those as affordable units for another 20 years rather than see those move back to market-rate rentals. So that was a huge success.”

Strebs says she loves it when any of the county’s specialty millages can tackle an issue that people are trying to address from multiple perspectives.

“We’re addressing both affordable housing, substance abuse recovery, and support for people who are unhoused,” she says. “It’s like a win, win, win when we can kind of hit all three things with the same pot of money. That’s effective programming. That’s why I’m really excited about that.”

Balkema says she sees the intersection between it all, “between our opioid funds, between permanent supportive housing, our drug courts, and really getting folks back on their feet with supportive services and recovery housing there are a lot of points for the county that we’re trying to address.”

She mentioned the county’s plans to allocate about $2 million in opioid settlement dollars to Kal Recovery, a three-building supportive recovery housing project that plans to provide 46 apartment units for nonviolent former criminal offenders who are in recovery from substance use disorders or mental illness. The State of Michigan is set to receive about $800 million as a part of a nationwide legal settlement reached with pharmacies and drug companies for their role in fueling the opioid crisis. Kalamazoo County is expected to receive about $14.6 million.

Kal Recovery is to be built on a little less than 7 acres of a 12-acre former Brownfield Redevelopment site adjacent to 333 E. Alcott St. in the Edison Neighborhood. Construction was expected to begin this fall but may not start until early 2026.

“I’m kind of a fan of when we get money for a specific purpose, that we put it back into that very purpose,” Balkema says.