THREE RIVERS, MI — Affordable housing is on the lips of seemingly everyone nowadays. But what does affordable housing actually look like in St. Joseph County?
Watershed Voice looked at the question from multiple points of view, including from that of a developer, city and county officials, and homeowners themselves.
What is affordable housing?
The most common definition of affordable housing comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). It’s when no more than 30% of a household’s gross income is used for household costs including utilities. It sounds simple, but there are other factors to consider.
Each year, HUD calculates the Area Median Income (AMI) for a county or metropolitan area. That figure is commonly used to determine the costs for intended affordable housing.
St. Joseph County’s median household income, according to
censusreporter.org, is $62,281 per year. The county’s per capita income is $30,171 per year. Additionally, 39% of local households make less than $50,000 per year. The current poverty line for a family of four is an annual income of $37,000 or less.
![]()
(Frank Stanko|Watershed Voice)Thomas Kuehn’s house on South Constantine Street in Three Rivers.Based on the above figures,
Watershed Voice determined that an individual and/or head of the household in St. Joseph County should not be paying more than $1,250 a month for rent and utilities. According to the $62,000 figure, however, that individual and/or head of the household would be paying approximately $1,550 a month, or $3,600 higher than affordable in the course of a year.
We’ll take a look at the national picture in a moment, but first, two St. Joseph County residents describe what they experienced while seeking, and later attempting to keep, affordable housing of their own.
‘I was very fortunate for answered prayers …’
Rachel Fish, 43, chose to have purple in her hair last October as an observance of Domestic Violence Awareness Month. The Sturgis woman currently rents after losing her family home in a divorce.
“Lack of housing in the area, along with the burden of high expenses, are a big reason that women are stuck in bad situations or end up in severe poverty,” Fish said.
Fish shared her story two ways: first with a response to
Watershed Voice’s initial request for reader comments on affordable housing, then by answering follow-up questions. She opted not to answer some questions, like how much of her monthly income was devoted to paying household costs.
“It took me almost six months to secure housing,” Fish wrote on Facebook. “(I was a) single mom leaving a marriage of domestic violence, (with) no support and limited income.”
![]()
Courtesy Rachel FishRachel Fish, seen in October. The Sturgis woman wore purple in her hair as an observation of Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Finding anything available at all was difficult in itself.
“The search for housing (was for) local and neighboring counties,” Fish explained in her follow-up. “Most places never responded to calls or emails. Most offices had no attendant. Out of the dozens I reached out to, I was only able to find one respondent. I was very fortunate for answered prayers to come through, as my home was closing in on the final days of divorce proceedings.”
Fish’s initial post noted that the “ridiculous” cost of rent makes it “nearly impossible” to afford or move forward in life. She said the payment for a 3,800-square-foot house on a full acre with a barn was cheaper than what she pays in rent for a three-bedroom townhouse.
“I am grateful to have found it and to keep a roof over my kids’ heads, but the cost keeps going up, and as a single mom with one income, (it) makes each month draining,” Fish wrote on Facebook. “The area definitely needs a lot more housing, but also affordable housing. Not free, but affordable to those with real life situations that are not in our own control.”
Fish said she truly believes that God is leading her, talking more about the opened door she has prayed for, but also difficulties.
“I am grateful for where we are two years later, and look forward to our future of growth, but with rising costs and life hurdles, it makes it difficult to save and set aside for future housing opportunities we can again call our own,” Fish said in the follow-up. “But we continue to set goals, have dreams, and most importantly, lean on God to make our way.”
Fish is confident in her story.
“I hope that it will bring light to the area and help someone in need,” she says. “Even if it is just a small glimmer of hope that they can make it. Or that they can bring a change to our community with truly affordable housing for limited income families.”
‘I found it pretty difficult and tiring’
After growing up in rural Three Rivers, Thomas Kuehn is adjusting to life in the city.
Kuehn, 32, lives with his girlfriend in the 700 block of South Constantine Street, just north of Broadway. He owns his home, having closed on it in July 2023.
Watershed Voice spoke with Kuehn by email, then spoke with him while taking photos.
“It’s a very solid house, and it has a nice big garage,” Kuehn said. “We also have a whole home natural gas backup generator.”
The house was built in 1950, Kuehn said, and has several old appliances and electrical work.
![]()
Frank Stanko|Watershed VoiceThomas Kuehn relaxes in his Three Rivers living room. The house on South Constantine Street came with the wall art“We have cast iron plumbing, steel galvanized water lines, a furnace that’s older than 20 years, and central air. I plan on replacing things when I come across the time and money,” Kuehn said.
An HVAC installer by trade, Kuehn said that about half of his monthly income goes toward housing expenses. About 35% of that amount is devoted to the mortgage. His girlfriend helps with the bills, but he takes care of the mortgage and utilities.
“The HVAC business has a couple slow seasons each year when the weather is tolerable, and it can be difficult to pay the bills during these times,” Kuehn said.
Kuehn said he has not consulted with any City of Three Rivers, St. Joseph County, or State of Michigan programs to obtain or maintain his housing. He recalled searching for his current home.
“I found it pretty difficult and tiring,” he said. “I was searching for a house with a couple of different realtors for about eight months before I found a house that I could afford and was in decent enough shape.”
Kuehn says if housing prices do not decease within the next decade, he sees himself staying at and upgrading his residence.
Some people don’t have that choice.
‘Nearly every category of unhoused people grew …’
More than 770,000 people experienced homelessness on a single night in January 2024,
HUD reported on Friday, December 27. That was an increase of 18% from the number of unhoused people in January 2023, representing the largest annual jump since HUD began counting in 2007.
High rents, stagnant wages, and a surge in migrants seeking assignment all played roles in the unhoused population’s increase, according to HUD’s report.
The New York Times reports that homelessness rose by a third in the past two years, after a modest decade-long decline.
“Nearly every category of unhoused people grew, with the rise especially steep among children (33%) and people in families (39%),” the
Times reported. “The number of people in shelters rose by about a quarter, while unsheltered homeless rose 7%. The rise in homelessness among older adults continued as well, with a 6% growth in those 65 and older.”
HUD also reported that veterans were the lone group to see a decline in homelessness, falling by 8% last year. More than a third of the overall unhoused population, 274,000 people, were reported as sleeping in cars, encampments, and tents under bridges.
“(These are) places where the risks of violence and illness are especially high,” the
Times reported.
So where can people live?
‘One of the things we have to do as a community is act at the county level’
Developer John Carmichael, 47, aims to answer that question for at least some Sturgis residents seeking shelter — given their income and life circumstances — that they could reasonably deem as affordable.
The Watershed (no relation), a five-story building with 23 studio ($725), one-bedroom ($850) and two-bedroom ($1,500 to $1,600) apartments located at 108 W. Chicago Rd. in Sturgis,
opened its doors to residents back in September. Carmichael estimates the multi-use development that includes a third-story community room, and
Amendment, a 4,700-square-foot steakhouse that’s scheduled to open some time in 2025, has cost somewhere in the ballpark of $13-14 million to develop.
The project utilized several incentives, most notably the
New Markets Tax Credit Program (NMTC) and the State of Michigan’s
Brownfield Redevelopment program, to make its development more financially feasible. Carmichael said smaller communities like Sturgis face economic challenges even greater than larger communities when attempting to provide its residents with more affordable housing options.
“It’s just an economic challenge that rent in Sturgis is half of what rent in Grand Rapids is, but it costs the same amount to build the building,” he said.
![]()
Watershed Voice file photoDeveloper John Carmichael, seen shortly before the September opening of The Watershed, his multi-use development in Sturgis. At least six of the 23 apartments would always be available for “low income” residents, Carmichael said.“The same construction company that’s working in Grand Rapids is also working in Sturgis, so the net result of this project was probably not feasible by market standards, but feasible enough for me, given that my objectives were not simply profit-driven, that my objectives skewed more towards community development.”
According to a 2023 Quality of Life dashboard developed by the Sturgis Area Community Foundation, St. Joseph County has a significant number of households who are working but experiencing financial hardship, as indicated by the ALICE (Assets Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) measurement.
As of 2019, 34.9% of households in the county fell into this category, struggling to meet the basic necessities of housing, food, childcare, technology, healthcare, and transportation. However, this percentage has decreased dramatically since 2017 (47.7% to 34.9%). [Sources: countyhealthrankings.org, datacenter.kidscount.org]
As part of the incentives that made The Watershed’s construction possible, six of the building’s 23 apartments are required to always be available for “low income” residents. In this case, that means for people who earn 80 percent of the area’s median household income ($62,281 per year), which amounts to $49,824 annually. That would mean each of those six apartments should cost no more than approximately $1,245 monthly, when factoring in rent and utilities.
“As it happens, almost all — I would say 21 of the 23 — meet that requirement simply based on the price I’m asking for them,” Carmichael said. “Six are required to be affordable through the incentives, but the market rate in Sturgis kind of dictates that there they be affordable because if people can’t afford them, they won’t rent them.”
Many of the housing projects currently under development in St. Joseph County are geared toward families, and not necessarily toward individuals who don’t have children or the means to pay for a house or apartment built without them in mind. These individuals are oftentimes recent high school graduates attending college or joining the workforce for the first time, and without viable housing options, they are forced to seek housing outside of St. Joseph County.
Carmichael said much of The Watershed’s strategic vision was centered around improving the quality of life within the community, which includes keeping young people here.
“One of the huge drivers of quality of life in a community is having our young people come back, not move away permanently, right?” he said. “How does that play out in terms of a housing development? Certainly having young people stay is part of it. I think having a vital downtown is part of it. So increasing the amount of population density in downtown Sturgis could have a, I hope, sort of catalyzing effect for future development.”
Carmichael says his 23 apartments “are a drop in the ocean of what’s needed” in Sturgis and St. Joseph County, but he’s hopeful “that the nature of the project will be to have a catalyzing effect so that more development is done, and that each subsequent development builds on itself.”
With so many social and economic factors to consider when attempting to improve the county’s housing stock, Carmichael said the various municipalities, organizations, and individuals already working on the issue would work more effectively if they did so as one cohesive unit.
“One of the things we have to do as a community is act at the county level,” he said. “We’re more powerful as a county and can have more of an impact by having all these talented, smart, dedicated people collaborating on these issues.”
Another major roadblock to developing more affordable housing, besides construction costs and financial feasibility, is the area’s lack of skilled tradespeople available to complete the work.
“We can’t increase our housing stock because we don’t have enough qualified people to build houses,” he said. “Because we’ve generally undervalued the efforts of these people, we have hollowed out our capacity to solve our housing problem because we don’t have enough of the trained, capable people to do this very valuable and vital community function.”
While finding enough skilled workers is still very much an issue, help could be on the way.
‘We’re providing that training for them’
Kathryn Myers is executive director of the Sturgis Neighborhood Program, which was established in 1991. The program’s mission is to improve living conditions in Sturgis by providing quality, affordable housing and homeownership opportunities. The biggest challenges are economics-based, she said.
“It’s supply and demand. The supply is low and the demand is high and naturally, that causes the prices to go up. There was a big adjustment when the market crashed in 2008 and again in response to COVID in 2020 and 2021. We haven’t seen prices recover since then,” Myers said.
![]()
Courtesy Kathryn MyersKathryn Myers, executive director of the Sturgis Neighborhood Program, discussed efforts to increase new construction.
Another significant factor is the number of residents who are comfortable with staying at their current residences. This only adds to the increasing demand for housing. Myers said the Neighborhood Project is working at the individual level to address this.
“We’re providing additional housing by partnering with the St. Joseph County Career and Technical Education (CTE) program for construction trade classes,” Myers said. The CTE partnership was established in 2020 to add one new residence annually to Sturgis’ housing stock, as well as provide more access to housing for community members.
“Our program also does renovations of blighted, dilapidated homes in the community,” Myers said. “A house that has been forfeited to the city or to the bank and is typically in an unlivable condition, we will purchase and rehabilitate to current living conditions or better. We will then put them back on the market, these homes that were not livable in the past.”
Myers is proud of the Neighborhood Program’s partnership with the City of Sturgis. Support comes from multiple sources, including the Community Development Department, the Sturgis City Commission, and outside of the local government, the Sturgis Area Community Foundation.
“We have a fund with the foundation, the Teaming Up With the Trades Fund. Profits from the sale of homes comes back to provide scholarships for students,” Myers said.
The “significant” lack of skilled tradespeople in the area affects both housing’s supply and demand, and its affordability, Myers said. What’s being done includes partnering with contractors who want students to gain knowledge of and experience with trades including electricity, plumbing, concrete, and excavation.
“Part of our partnership with the CTE consortium is that we’re bringing up these high school students who are building our new construction homes each year,” Myers said. “We’re providing that training for them.”
While training is being provided for future homebuilders, support is being provided in some locations for future homeowners.
‘In Kalamazoo County, there’s no wrong idea for housing’
“What Kalamazoo (Yes, Kalamazoo) Reveals About the Nation’s Housing Crisis,”
The New York Times titled an August 2024 article. Kalamazoo County, including the cities of Kalamazoo and Portage, reflects how the nation’s housing problem has changed from a surplus to a shortage.
In order to make the housing market work, the government has to be the catalyst, which will result in the private sector following up. That’s according to Kalamazoo County Housing Director Mary Balkema.
![]()
Frank Stanko|Watershed VoiceKalamazoo County is 7,750 units short of all housing types, Housing Director Mary Balkema said. Progress is being seen thanks to government support and embracing housing like mobile home parks. “Over the past two years, both the (Michigan) State Legislature and state housing agency have expanded developer subsidies for housing at all price levels and tacked on extra incentives for workforce housing for the middle class (including a law that vastly decreases property taxes on new rental projects with below-market-rate housing,” the
Times reported. “Perhaps more significantly, the state has raised the income limit to live in that housing. Now, households making 120% of their area median income can qualify, up from 80% previously.”
Kalamazoo County is 7,750 units short of all housing types, Balkema said during an interview with
Watershed Voice. She was citing a study by the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Balkema was interviewed for the purpose of seeing how a neighboring county addresses affordable housing.
“That’s every housing type (needed), from a microunit to a trailer to a single family detached. In Kalamazoo County, there’s no wrong idea for housing,” Balkema said.
Kalamazoo County has 26 mobile home parks. Balkema recalled visiting the Clayton Wakarusa manufacturing plant in Wakarusa, Indiana. Seeing the residences,
Balkema thought about how they could be used on property including the Sugarloaf Mobile Home Park in Schoolcraft. She said she also thought about how they could be used to house formerly homeless families.
“A mom with four kids is moving in,” Balkema said about one property. “The kitchens are stainless steel. They’re brand new. They’re really nice. (The park is) landscaped. There’s infrastructure. There’s a playground. We’re going to have supportive services. I really think this is an affordable option for families.”
Kalamazoo County checks in with families after they’ve moved into their affordable housing.
“Sometimes when you’re in any stressed population, you need a little bit of supportive service or love to keep you on your feet,” Balkema said. “This particular mom, her husband was gunned down in front of the kids in an act of gun violence. You know that there needs to be a little more help.”
This is where master leasing lots come in.
“Let’s say you move in, month one, and then you lose your job. Well, I don’t want to kick you out in month two just because you can’t pay your lot rent. We master leased them. We will keep track of these families and provide them the safety net so they can be successful,” Balkema said.
Watershed Voice asked about what long-term success rates look like. Is it when people are in their affordable housing a year later? How about two years? Five? A decade?
“We think that with transitional housing, you will have success if you’re there for up to two years,” Balkema said. “If I put you there for two months, that’s hardly a time to get your breath. If you have a child or a person with disabilities with you, maybe you need a little more time.”
The mother of four Balkema previously described is a recent college graduate.
There’s potential for her to have a good paying job and perhaps some raises within the next two years. It’s also possible that she may find another property she likes.
“It’s not quick, but humans are complicated,” Balkema said. “I can’t offer one quick fix, expect you to take it, and boom, you’re better. That’s not how humans work. I think two years, with whatever issues people have, is going to be good (for expectations).”
St. Joseph County faces many issues when it comes to affordable housing. It’s not just a concept defined by financial requirements from HUD or funding made available from the Michigan State Legislature. Problems are being considered, and from them, new ideas and programs take shape. Neighboring communities and counties offer potential blueprints for solutions.
From tangible solutions comes the potential for fulfilling personal ambitions. Whether it’s looking out for the greater community or seeking a sense of security for you or your family, there truly is no place like home.
Frank Stanko is a staff writer for Watershed Voice. Alek Haak-Frost is executive editor and publisher of Watershed Voice.
This story is part of Southwest Michigan Journalism Collaborative’s dedicated coverage of equitable community development. SWMJC is a group of 12 regional organizations dedicated to strengthening local journalism. Visit swmichjournalism.com to learn more.