TRAVERSE CITY — The Northwest Michigan Housing Summit kicked off Monday at the Hagerty Center as local leaders discussed ways to boost housing availability and improve affordability.
Homelessness is an issue that took center stage on the first day of the conference.
It’s been a problem in the Grand Traverse area for years, but thanks to the work of organizations like the Northwest Michigan Coalition to End Homelessness, the numbers have been stable.
But coalition director Ashley Halladay-Schmandt says that situation could change.
“The cost of housing is skyrocketing,” Halladay-Schmandt said. “And we typically in our region see things, maybe like a year or two after kind of, more coastal big cities, things happen, we’re anticipating the need to rise unless the cost of housing comes down.”
Additionally, federal cuts to Housing and Urban Development programs could result in a significantly smaller budget for local programs in the new year.
“It’s proposed to have cuts in the billions of dollars,” Halladay-Schmandt said.”The continuum of care funding could be capped at 30% for permanent housing in our region, and that would be a dramatic decrease from the high 80% right now of our funding being dedicated to permanent housing, which is what will end homelessness.”
The coalition is currently helping dozens of people through these programs, but funding cuts would make them unsustainable. This could roll back years of progress, Halladay-Schmandt says.
“So with these proposed regulatory cuts, we could see about 70 people in permanent housing go back onto our streets,” Halladay-Schmandt said.
The uncertainty has left local activists in a holding pattern, waiting to see what the federal response will be.
“Organizations in our region are focusing on a kind of plan B,” Halladay-Schmandt said. “So if these could happen, what can we do in response? And so, things like helping people move on to a different type of voucher and helping them consider the impact of this decision...So if there are no safety net programs that come out of this, what we could see is maybe people talking about staying with people that they know, uprooting their families and their lives to go somewhere far less stable than their permanent housing.“
Groups like the Coalition point out that the cost of treatment is far less than the cost of keeping someone on the street. People living in these conditions are more likely to access emergency services, such as police, ambulance, and fire services, and that costs the Grand Traverse Area an estimated $2.45 million per year.
Activists worry that less money for housing support will mean less support they can offer people in crisis.
“We are not in the business of just placing people in housing and walking away,” Halladay-Schmandt said. “What we try very hard to do is build out comprehensive supportive services that go home to people.”
