All districts — Family Promise of West Michigan CEO Tenisa Frye was working on a recent rainy Saturday in July when a woman came to the organization’s door in downtown Grand Rapids.
“She said, ‘I was told to come here,’” Frye recalled.
The woman had called the 211 Helpline, which connects people in need to resources, but she desperately wanted to talk to someone in person.
“I told her to come in out of the rain,” Frye said, and the two began to talk. The woman, who had just started a job, was living in a car with her three teenage sons.
Though local shelters were full, an initial and pivotal connection was made, Frye said. The family hadn’t eaten, so the first step was getting them food.
Now, Family Promise staff and other organizations are helping the family to bring housing within their reach. The organization offers prevention services for people on the brink of homelessness, emergency shelter for those who have lost housing, and affordable housing for people getting back on their feet.
Sadly, the woman’s situation isn’t uncommon, Frye said, noting that Family Promise on that date had 34 families — a total of 139 people — identified as living unsheltered in West Michigan.
A Summer Spike in Housing Needs
The number changes daily, but that snapshot of local homelessness shows the need for organizations to work together on summer outreach for people in need of housing, advocates say.
“Summer is when we see the highest rates of families and youth experiencing homelessness,” said Casey Gordon, special populations consultant at Kent ISD and regional McKinney-Vento Act coordinator for Kent and Allegan counties.
“It tends to be because many of our families and our youth are doubled up with another family, or they are couch-surfing from one person to another,” Gordon said. “School is done and other family members say, ‘OK, it’s summer. It’s time. You have to go. You’re not going to freeze.’”
Kent ISD has partnered with Family Promise, AYA Youth Collective and ICCF Community Homes on in-depth summer outreach to students and families experiencing homelessness, utilizing $75,000 in funding allocated to Kent ISD through the McKinney-Vento Act. McKinney-Vento is a federal law that provides important educational rights and services to children and youth in grades pre-K through 12 who are experiencing homelessness.
These summer outreach funds are helping to meet immediate needs by providing meals, water, juice and hygiene items. The money also pays for staff time for those already doing youth outreach, plus staff needed to help youth get back on their feet — connecting them with mental health, medical and other community agencies and helping with transportation through bus passes and gas cards, Gordon said.
According to the 2023 annual report “Ending Homelessness in Michigan” from Michigan’s Campaign to End Homelessness, Michigan witnessed a 2% increase in the overall homeless population that year, up to 33,226 — an increase of about 8% since 2020. The report logs people who are “literally homeless,” living unsheltered or in cars, encampments or emergency shelters.
This differs from the definition of student homelessness under the McKinney-Vento Act, which includes children and youth in shared housing or “doubled up” with other people or living in motels, hotels, trailer parks or campgrounds.
According to MISchoolData, during the 2023-24 school year, 35,495 students were identified as homeless in Michigan public schools. That was up from 32,762 students in 2022-23, 28,724 in 2021-22 and 26,867 in 2020-21.
Helping Youth and Families
Needs often vary when people experience housing insecurity, Frye said, and summer months pose their own challenges. Families may be safe from the cold, but living in cars and parks is always dangerous.
“Today is a perfect example,” she said during the recent heat wave. Her staff was busy making sure people knew about cooling centers and to not stay in their car during the heat.
At AYA Youth Collective, the summer funding is allowing staff to connect directly with youth.
The organization’s Drop-In Center, at 320 State St. SE in Grand Rapids, helps youth ages 14-24 with food, laundry, transportation, access to counselors, financial literacy and other resources. The center is on track to serve 1,000 young people this year, surpassing the 800 served last year, said Andy Allen, AYA vice president of advancement.
“(The increase is due to) a mix of the housing crisis, of resources beginning to be hard to access for this demographic, and a mix of more and more people experiencing instability, inflation, and of us becoming more effective at what we do,” Allen said.
While youth mostly come to the center to receive services there, an AYA staff member also works with all Kent ISD districts on outreach, connecting with guidance counselors and offering resources.
“We have been really intentional with the (Mc-Kinney-Vento funds) to do specific outreach within the (Kent ISD) school system,” Allen said. “We really want to make sure youth are getting the support they need.”
Those efforts have been working, he said: “We are seeing youth experiencing fewer weeks out on the streets before we can get them into housing.”
Working directly with 14-to-18-year-old students in local schools, AYA younger youth outreach specialist Ja-Quari Moore-Bass works to develop relationships with students facing homelessness. He typically connects with them through guidance counselors, teachers or principals, and then meets with the students regularly. He helps them get jobs, bikes and anything else they need.
Moore-Bass faced homelessness himself as a teenager, so he can relate to many of the students’ situations.
“They often have an easier time talking to me (than other adults) because I know what some of this stuff looks like and feels like,” he said.
His work with the students often extends from during the school year to the summer months, when there’s a risk of students dropping out and help is more difficult to find.
“I think summer is especially difficult for young people because there are a lot less resources,” Moore-Bass said.
At ICCF Community Homes, services span “homelessness to homeownership and everything in between,” supporting about 2,400 households including individuals and families each year, said Berniz Terpstra, the organization’s vice president of housing and family services.
Programs include emergency shelter for 30 people, or about six families, and much of their summer outreach is focused on providing resources that aren’t as accessible during the summer.
ICCF has hosted gatherings at the shelter for people to get together for hot dogs and burgers and community-building, and even made it possible for a few students to attend overnight summer camp.
“Kent ISD has supported us with making sure children at the shelter have access to transportation and basic needs,” Terpstra said.
For Kent ISD, working together with area organizations fits in with the goal of bringing students and families into their school community and providing them with what they need.
“We want to make sure we connect with anyone who has not yet been connected with their (district’s) liaison or perhaps someone who has been out of school for a long time and would like to get reconnected back into our educational system,” Gordon said. “This (outreach) will definitely help us with getting our students back into school on the first day of school.
“The sooner we connect, the sooner we can start providing resources.”
Read more from our districts:
• Board approves enhancement millage renewal proposal for November ballot
• Getting to the bottom of the so-called ‘summer slide’
