From unhoused to homeowner: David Harris says connection makes the difference

Editor's note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave's 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. 

David Harris showed us around his property near Borgess, just across the Kalamazoo Township border. 

He lives in a nice 1946 brick house on a corner lot. The house is modest, but its look and feel go back to a midcentury optimism for a new prosperity. 

The large, shady yard is neat and cared for, but a few leaves had fallen thanks to a dry September. He'd raked the day before, but, "there's more since last night," he says.

Harris doesn't sound too annoyed. "It's a lot to take care of, but, for me, every payment, every leaf, every little thing, it's like I'm kind of pouring into myself, and loving myself in a way," he says.

"Some days it doesn't feel real." 
Fran DwightDavid Harris sees the upside of keeping up with yard work. "It's a lot to take care of, but, for me, every payment, every leaf, every little thing, it's like I'm kind of pouring into myself, and loving myself in a way," he says.
He takes us into a breezeway, connecting the house to the garage. It's his meditation room. A stone Buddha sits peacefully in a corner.

Off of the kitchen, there's a sunny breakfast nook. It's his favorite place in the house, he says.

In the living room, dominated by a large fireplace, we sit and talk. The coffee table has a dish full of sobriety coins.

Harris is three years and eight months sober. "In January, I will be clean, sober, free from any mood or mind-altering chemicals for four years," he says.

He had been homeless for five years starting in 2013. Before that, even in stable situations he never felt like he had a home.

Harris told a story of how, step-by-step, he got his home, his sobriety, and a career. He gives credit to the Recovery Institute of Southwest Michigan, Open Doors Kalamazoo, KNHS, and other organizations in Kalamazoo that help people in crisis.
Fran DwightOff of the kitchen, there's a sunny breakfast nook. It's his favorite place in the house, David Harris says.
But another driver in changing his life was Harris himself. He realized he could help others by being a peer coach. He's now contracted through the Michigan Department of Corrections as a peer recovery coach, helping formerly incarcerated people transition back into the community. He's looking forward to finishing his undergrad in December, then he'll work towards a master's in social work.

The reality of housing insecurity 

It’s obvious that having a career and a home he’s “not going to get kicked out of” hits Harris in a very deeply emotional way. Life for him, now, is “unfamiliar and it's strange, but something lets me know that it's going to be alright,” he says through tears. 

Harris' story isn't too different from many people's stories. He went to Western Michigan University. He partied a lot yet managed to reach his senior year with job offers waiting for him.

But his childhood left him knowing that hard work may not be enough to keep you housed.

Harris was born in Kalamazoo in 1988. He grew up in Edison, witnessed housing insecurity early on. "In my life growing up, my mother, she worked full time. She worked doubles every day to make ends meet. And it still wasn't enough to keep the house. She got behind and things. And so even though she was working 16-hour days for 15 years, we were still always kind of barely scraping by," he says.

Fran Dwight"Now my life revolves on being myself for the first time," says David Harris.Looking back, Harris sees that "there's a lot of abuse and problematic things going on, unaddressed addiction and mental health things in my family. 

"They weren't accepting of me being LGBTQ and everything. All my life, I just really kind of wanted to get away. And school was like an escape for me, at Western. I had already kind of been partying."

His addictions became alcohol and meth. "It was just different for an addict as opposed to other people. Other people could pick up things and put it down. But for me, it seemed to solve a problem that I didn't know was there, that had been there for a long time. So it escalated for me."

During summers and winter breaks at WMU, he was homeless. "I was an independent student. My family didn't help me in any kind of way or anything like that. And so that's kind of what sparked this anxiety of finding a job after college."

During his senior year, he got a chance to interview for a job in Florida. He felt a panic that it was his only chance at a career, so he left school and went south. The job fell through. He found himself homeless in another state.

Harris managed to make his way back to Kalamazoo. "I was in need, and I reached out to my mother for support, just temporarily to help me get on my feet," he says.

"She and her husband at the time said that they didn't want my 'gay influence' around my younger siblings. So then I instantly became homeless, and that's what kind of did it."

Harris talks at length about his "spiraling." He tried to make his way in Chicago. Whenever he found some stability, substance abuse would cause him to lose out on a job or a place to stay. 

"I was getting arrested for little things, like stealing food, loitering, just little petty stuff." A "DUI-type situation" got him into court-ordered recovery, and he managed to get sober enough to deal with having a roommate.

Fran DwightThe coffee table has a dish full of sobriety coins. David Harris is three years and eight months sober.He was staying with a friend. She let him borrow her car, and he went party-hopping. Harris drank, "and wound up rolling her car four times. That was a bad situation."

Harris was in a very unwell place. "Into recovery, I realized for the first time that I also had mental health concerns, things like suicidal ideation, anxiety, depression. All of these things are what triggered it. From getting arrested to one day, I was actually having these crying spells. Beautiful day outside, nothing would be wrong, and just the tears wouldn't stop flowing. It would be that way for days."

For Harris, "Life was just surviving. It wasn't much of living. It seemed like the more I tried to grab for something, the more it would be pulled away from me. Year after year, just door after door continued to close."

Recovery

Harris returned to Kalamazoo. It was winter, he was cold and homeless. He walked into the Recovery Institute. "They had Wi-Fi and coffee, and I could charge my little phone and stuff like that. That's how it began."

He found a safe environment there, and a community through group sessions. He attended every group session he could for a year and a half, Harris says.

"I just really took to it. For me, it started to fill a hole that I tried to fill with the drugs and things for a long time. I really needed that connection and that support."

Fran DwightBeautiful touches are found all throughout David Harris's home.An administrator suggested that he could work there, that he could be a peer coach and lead therapy sessions. He knew what the struggle was like, so he could give peer support.

"That was probably the single moment that really changed my life. For the first time, it planted a seed to look at myself in a different way, in a more kind way that life hadn't shown me."

He was a person who needed help, but he realized he could also help others.

"Now, everything that I thought… made me ashamed of, or less than, or flared up the suicidal thoughts, I now use all of those things to empower others and help others," he says. "Being homeless, being addicted, having mental health issues, navigating the systems, being justice impacted, all of these things that I thought separated me, I lean into that now."

Harris gets emotional. "Now my life revolves on being myself for the first time. It's just, to me, such a higher power, spiritual experience because --" He can't finish the sentence, because of tears.
 
Open Doors

Harris had given a talk at a fundraiser for Open Doors, where he's now a board member, a few weeks earlier. He says he had a hard time not breaking down in tears reading his speech. It was difficult for him to get past his opening, where he thanked everyone at the organization who "open doors for countless individuals and change their lives for the better with their heartfelt generosity and contributions. I am one of those changed individuals you all have helped, and my name is David Harris."

Fran DwightDavid Harris says Open Doors provided steps up out of homelessness. First, they provided shelter, then affordable units to live in, then education and help buying a home. Before he found Open Doors, Harris says he'd "gotten some clean time" thanks to the Recovery Institute. “That grace landed me in a peer support role, which turned me into a recovery coach, and a peer navigator, and doing all of these things, sponsoring people and having a sponsor."

But he spiraled down again. "I found myself homeless once again. As I'm building up, it come spiraling back down."

At the time, his first sponcee -- a person in recovery Harris was coaching, who "had been actively homeless for years, living in a tent in a field" -- told him about Open Doors. 

The man stayed in their homeless shelter. "He loved it."

Harris saw that Open Doors provided steps up out of homelessness. First, they provided shelter, then affordable units to live in, then education and help buying a home. 

"I just walked up and knocked on the door and there was an open door there," he said. It took about a half a year, but a unit opened up for him. "I was hopping around and freaking out still, white-knuckling it."

Harris found himself paying $800 for a studio apartment at Cooper's Landing, a "nice community of people striving for the same thing." Half his rent went towards required savings that he was expected to use as a downpayment on a house, once he was ready.

Fran DwightBeautiful touches are found all throughout David Harris's home.He was making $16 an hour at the Recovery Institute as a recovery coach.  He felt the same anxiety he's had all his life, "in survival mode, $16 an hour wasn't enough to live on." He found additional jobs, doing similar community work for Oakland House, Common Ground, and Integrated Services of Kalamazoo. 

Harris spoke in Lansing at a Michigan Peers Conference rally. He became known as "this guy in Kalamazoo who's recovering out loud."

This led to an offer to coach formerly incarcerated men reentering the community in Kalamazoo. He got that job last year in July. "That also changed my life to be able to afford a standard of living, to be more independent," he says.

Then Open Doors encouraged him to take the next step. It was a big, unbelievable step for him -- to buy his own house.

"Open Doors used to be a program that once you got in, you were in for life. That's not really the point of things. People don't necessarily need a handout, we just need a hand to the next whatever-it-is," he says.

Harris completed the Open Doors and KNHS courses on home buying, budgeting, and saving. 

"It was really just a leap of faith kind of thing. Just let me see where I'm at, see what I could afford."

Fran DwightA stone Buddha sits peacefully in a corner of his mediation room.He wasn’t sure what he could afford. Some set his sights low. A realtor who works with first-time home buyers showed him some properties that were "really run down," with structural damage and bad pet urine smells.

"He kind of crossed some lines professionally with me... just kind of like, the disrespect and things." Harris thinks that there might be an issue with assumptions, discrimination, in housing; Realtors who "think that that's all someone can afford, first time home buyers, Black -- 'Hey, this is you. Hey, do you like it?'"

He found another realtor who told Harris he could afford something better, "up to a $220,000 house, which made a drastic difference in what I was looking at."

What looked to be the perfect house for him came on the market early this year -- and was sold nearly immediately, before Harris could act.

He subscribed to automatic emails for houses in his price range. One morning, he saw his dream house again. Whatever deal the original buyers made fell through. 

"To me, the stars just aligned. There was something nudging me that when you find the one, there's no question. I put in an offer without even seeing it because I felt that much of a connection. That's how I got here." He purchased the home in July 2024. 
Fran DwightDavid Harris sees the upside of keeping up with yard work. "It's a lot to take care of, but, for me, every payment, every leaf, every little thing, it's like I'm kind of pouring into myself, and loving myself in a way," he says.
Connection

Harris puts the work that he does with men coming out of incarceration, and the life he's gone through, in the context of his family.

"Growing up in my own life, there weren't a lot of men in our families. And the ones that were around had mental health issues, dealt with addiction, and were incarcerated. They would do 15 years, get out, be out for six months, and go back," he says.

They'd go back to prison, "Because life on the outside is scary."

His family came out of Mississippi. "Race issues happened down there. They had to flee. My great-grandmother and my grandmother, they were the two oldest. They came up and found whatever work that they could, and had to send for their children."

Harris describes generational trauma. "All of our life, generationally, had been rooted in just survival. There was no security. There's no heirlooms. There's no generational wealth or anything like that. You just have a group of people, one after the next, trying to survive as best as they could," he says.

Fran DwightBeautiful touches are found all throughout David Harris's home."So, yeah, sometimes you kind of need someone who has been through the path already.... There were others who had walked through the snow before me. And when it was my turn, it made it easier for me to do the same," he says, weeping.

"I'm learning that tears and vulnerability and transparency are a strength," he says, wiping his eyes. "I think a lot of times we're conditioned to be this picture-perfect kind of person. I'm leaning into them."

Harris says, "I don't want to spend too much time dwelling about the reasons of why I shouldn't be here, but I know that I'm grateful for being here."

We ask, why shouldn't he be here? He is here, in a home that he owns.

"Like I said, the more I take care of this place and the more I look around, it's really.... It finally feels right. I can stand up on my recovery and know that my struggle, and my journey, and my life, and who I am has value. And so, to me now, it really kind of makes sense.

"It used to be a dream to have a place that no one could kick you out of, to have a community of support, to actually have a job that you care about and a career," Harris says.

A lot of people do have all that, and maybe take it for granted, or rarely get emotionally thankful and well up in tears like Harris has during this interview.

Fran Dwight"Some days it doesn't feel real," David Harris says of owning his hown home.For the people who haven't gone through his experience, who might see Kalamazoo's unhoused population on the street and wonder what the solution could be, what would Harris tell them?

Harris says, "In a nutshell, the cure to homelessness is connection."

People who are unhoused, disconnected from society in every way, seek out connection. He sees it in the encampments, how unhoused people form their own communities.

"People who, even if it's toxic, even if people are using, even if people have mental health (issues), people going through the struggle -- the people that you're with, you're with them for life. A lot of them, they can't think of life without that. It's the only type of connection or unity that they have."

People become part of a community, a family, and a life they're stuck in -- they may claim to have chosen that life, Harris says, but that seems to be out of pride. If they had other options, they wouldn't choose to be homeless.

"Kalamazoo is fortunate to have so many resources" for unhoused people, people who need help out of addiction, and other issues, he says. But still, there's "much pain and frustration" in Kalamazoo.  

"I think that's why we have that outcry of support. You have a lot of people (in nonprofits) trying to do the same thing. Just like the individual needs community and connection, I think that organizations need to do the same," Harris says.

"The more that we work together and see each other not as competition for funding or resources or however, the better we can serve the individual. Not losing track of why we're doing the work that we do or why that work needs to happen. Looking at the whole identity of the individual," he says.

"I think another part of connection is seeing the person who's struggling not as someone so different from you, but really realizing that we are more alike than we are different. Humanizing people, again, I think goes a long way. Me, I don't have a choice with the people that I work with."

Organizations, funders, and the rest of Kalamazoo need to start "humanizing people… and seeing that we're really more alike than we are different. There's no difference between me and other people in a worse-off way. There was somebody there for me, and I'll continue to be there for someone else."

Fran DwightLife for David Harris is “unfamiliar and it's strange, but something lets me know that it's going to be alright.”