Editor's Note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan's Second Wave series on solutions to affordable housing and housing the unhoused. It is made possible by a coalition of funders including the City of Kalamazoo, Kalamazoo County, the ENNA Foundation, and the Kalamazoo County Land Bank. 

KALAMAZOO, MI — Communities across the country are struggling to find ways to help residents who are homeless.

That is certainly the case in Kalamazoo. But is this mid-size Michigan city attracting more than its share of unhoused people from other communities?
 
Kalamazoo County Housing Director Mary Balkema says she believes it is. And she says the county needs to tell other communities that this is not a destination place for their unhoused people.
 
“Our shelter is full, “ she says. “ … And all those folks go out in the streets during the day. Over half of them are not from Kalamazoo. So we are full. We are absolutely full.”

“Recently we’ve gotten a lot of people coming from other places,” says Pastor Michael L. Brown, chief executive officer of the Kalamazoo Gospel Mission. “And the Mission is full.”
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In September, an average of 147 men per day stayed at the Gospel Mission, the city’s largest overnight shelter. Brown says that’s a 25 percent increase from September of 2023. An average of 102 women found overnight shelter at the 448 N. Burdick St. mission in September, up 38 percent from September 2023. The location served an average of 360 meals per day during the month, up 38 percent from a year ago.

Not everyone wants to stay at the Gospel Mission

Many unhoused people, says Pastor Brown, will not use the Gospel Mission. Some don’t like its rules. Some don’t like that it is a Christian, faith-based operation. Others, including those with substance abuse and mental health disorders, aren’t ready to change their lives.

Al JonesThe Kalamazoo Gospel Mission, at 448 N. Burdick St., is the city’s largest overnight shelterBut the Mission is trying to help change that. It offers a short-term program called the Next-Step Program that pairs an individual with one of its staff members to develop a plan to move forward. That may involve getting a job, getting off drugs, or any number of things.

“We don’t give them a plan,” Brown says. “They are the architects of the plan. We just want them to have a plan.”

It can be followed by classes that help people learn to budget their money, make better life choices, or find work. It can also be followed by a long-term program that takes a deeper dive into various services, including Bible study.

Kalamazoo County is still 7,000 housing units short

Balkema says a periodic survey by the Kalamazoo County Continuum of Care finds there are about 1,300 unhoused children in the area’s public schools. And at a time when the county is estimated to be about 7,000 housing units shy of what is needed, she says the county has more than 1,000 refugees relocating here from Yemen, Jordan, and other troubled countries.

“We can’t build fast enough,” she says of providing long-term housing. 

Balkema’s recommendation to unhoused people who hear that Kalamazoo County is working to build affordable housing, has a new millage to help fund more affordable housing, and is taking steps to build more housing for those in need, is to NOT come to Kalamazoo.

“Keep moving on,” she says. “We have a homeless problem that we are trying to fix. We cannot fix it when we have a sign-up: ‘Open to homelessness. Closed to business.’”

Al Jones> As efforts are being made to define help for the unhoused, some worry that more or finding a way to Kalamazoo for services. >Carly Walter, president of Kalamazoo Coalition for the Unhoused, says that among the people who coalition members see on the street, there are a lot of new faces. “There’s several old faces,” she says. “But there’s always new faces.”

She says she learned a long time ago that Kalamazoo is considered “a hot spot where people think that we have enough resources to support outside folks.” But she says that is not the case.

She once spoke to a person who had a social worker give him a one-way bus ticket from a small town in Indiana in order to find a shelter in Kalamazoo. In April she talked to someone who traveled here from Saginaw after erroneously being told there is free housing in Kalamazoo.

About the idea that Kalamazoo has great resources, Walter says, “I think that it’s an assumption by maybe smaller communities that don’t have the resources to help people experiencing homelessness, along with other communities that are just overwhelmed.”

So they may transfer someone from one area to another in hopes there’s more opportunity, she says. But that leaves everyone in a tough spot, she says, “Because Kalamazoo is not prepared or able to handle the amount of folks that we already have and more people are coming all the time.”

Need for transitional housing grows

Balkema says last week she learned about three families who relocated to Kalamazoo from Florida after they heard there was a lot of affordable housing in Kalamazoo and “Kalamazoo is the place to be.”

After helping people find emergency housing, additional help is necessary if they are going to transition to more permanent settings.

“We’re still in the position that transitional housing is a definite need,” Walter says of the Coalition for The Unhoused. “That’s something we’ve been pushing since the inception of the coalition back in 2020.”

The organization supports transitional housing “whatever that looks like,” she says, “whether it’s the pods, the huts, or whatever. That is certainly a need.”

Pods have so far failed to find a Kalamazoo home

Housing Resources Inc. of Kalamazoo pursued the idea of using 50 small, one- and two-person shelters called ModPods to establish a pod community for the unhoused. But after three years of efforts to do that, the project stalled out in September.

Al JonesThe unhoused are often idle in downtown Kalamazoo, including areas near the Kalamazoo Gospel Mission.“For all of the time and resources that have been spent by HRI trying to get the project off the ground,” Walter says, “I really hope that there’s some concrete steps to move forward … some plan to take what they’ve been trying to do for the last couple of years now with those pods and make it a reality because there’s very much a need.”

She also expressed hope that the city provides “low barrier” shelter for the homeless. That is a type of housing that is easier for hard-to-serve people to access. Those include people with mental health conditions who may be off their medications, people who may be not ready to become sober, people who don’t subscribe to a specific religion and others.

Many hard-to-serve unhoused people balk at the rules they find at the Kalamazoo Gospel Mission — such as no smoking, no drinking, no substance use, and schedule requirements for when people come and go for meals and a bed.

Balkema lamented the closing of the Battle Creek Shelter, a low-barrier shelter at 209 E. Michigan Ave. in downtown Battle Creek. It closed on May 31, citing a lack of adequate funding.

Many local organizations and churches seek to fill needs

Grassroots organizations such as the Kalamazoo Coalition for the Unhoused and United For The Unsheltered, which regularly organize volunteers to help feed, clothe, and help the unhoused, are a testament to area residents’ willingness to help. A group of downtown churches, whose leaders say they are often asked for help by the unhoused, also began meeting recently to try to coordinate efforts to help the unhoused as winter approaches. They operate as the Downtown Outreach Churches Coalition.

Walter says Kalamazoo is very lucky to have Housing Resources Inc., Integrated Services of Kalamazoo, and other organizations working to effect change. But she says there is just not enough supply to cover the need. 

Many people have applauded plans by Kalamazoo County to buy the Holiday Inn Express & Suites at 3630 E. Cork St. and convert it into a 60-unit emergency shelter for families in need. The county is working with the City of Kalamazoo and the City of Portage to fund the $5.2 million project. But that is a long-range project that will not be available until late next year. And some are worried that its location more than 3 miles southeast of the downtown, will have a limited impact on the unhoused situation overall.

Al JonesAn unhoused man seems to find his own green space in the heart of downtown Kalamazoo.Pastor Brown says he expects the unhoused population to continue to gravitate to the downtown, where they can often find free meals and services. And also because they can ask others for money.

“Panhandling is the big thing that’s going to keep people coming into the downtown, and keep the homeless in the downtown,” Brown says.

He says the community should be encouraged to donate to organizations that serve the unhoused rather than risk giving money to people who are sometimes not actually unhoused. 

Walter says Kalamazoo’s big problem — as it is for many other communities — is still the same.

“We have an affordable housing crisis,” she says. “Rent is rising. Inflation is hefty. None of that is new. The big, long-term goal of finding people long-term housing, whether that’s in an apartment or in a house, still faces obstacles and we don’t have the necessary things in place to make it possible.”

Regarding more unhoused people deciding to come to Kalamazoo, Walter says that appears to be a word-of-mouth thing.

“It’s really great to be recognized as a place that has some really good and really needed resources,” Walter says. “But the problem behind that is that we just don’t have enough for everyone, especially the people that are already here.”

Balkema says, "At some point, you have to say we are closed to homelessness. You really do. Leave us our own people and their experience with homelessness. Sure. We’ll find the resources. But from every other county? They really need to solve their own issues.”