What would it take to end homelessness in Detroit?

This story is part of a series that highlights the challenges and solutions around housing in Detroit and is made possible through underwriting support from the Detroit (Region O) Regional Housing Partnership and the McGregor Fund. It is one of two stories focusing on homelessness in Detroit. You can read the first part, focusing on what it's like to be homeless in the city, here.

Having experienced homelessness herself and having helped others out of it, Tiffany Gist says solving homelessness in Detroit is "much bigger than just putting a person in a home."

Gist says her life was "blown to Ground Zero" after leaving her marriage, which led to divorce. It took numerous forms of support to get her back in even a semi-stable position. The Metro Detroit resident was fortunate enough to eventually find a friend who bought a house and put it under land contract for her and her three children. She found job training services and joined AmeriCorps. But she says she's still what the United Way defines as asset-limited, income-constrained, and employed (ALICE). That means unexpected expenses, like a car accident she was in last year, can still put her back on the brink of homelessness. 

"It doesn't stop," she says. "At the end of the day, even though I have a better job, I'm in that ALICE bubble. ... And this is kind of where people start backsliding."

Working as a case manager at a nonprofit, Gist says she sees diverse experiences and myriad needs among the people experiencing homelessness whom she serves. She says they may be dealing with mental health issues, fleeing domestic violence, or struggling to break out of a generational cycle of poverty. Helping them, she says, requires a big-picture approach that includes housing solutions alongside a suite of supportive services and a well-coordinated infrastructure to provide them.
Steve KossTiffany Gist.
"Homeless people want to do better," Gist says. "Sometimes people that are unhoused are afraid to ask for help because they're afraid of being judged. And they just want a chance to be able to make it."

In this second part of our two-part series on homelessness in Detroit, we're taking a look at how the city could better give people experiencing homelessness that chance. Here are a few of the innovative solutions being implemented or proposed to better address the big problem of homelessness in the city.

Affordable housing
Matthew TommeleinMatthew Tommelein.
Housing affordability is one of the greatest challenges to reducing or ending homelessness in Detroit. U.S. Census and American Community Survey data compiled by the State of Michigan Housing Data Portal show that nearly 60% of Detroit renters are cost-burdened, meaning they spend over 30% of their income on rent. Over half of those are severely cost-burdened, meaning over half their income goes toward rent. Matthew Tommelein, coordinated entry programs manager at the Detroit nonprofit Community and Home Supports, notes that residents have to make around $20 an hour to afford Wayne County's fair market rent, currently set by the federal government at $1,090 for a one-bedroom apartment.

"That's just challenging," Tommelein says. "If the fair market is dictating that a person makes $20 an hour, and we know minimum wage is [$10.56], ... and we don't have a great way to subsidize fair market rent, then obviously it's an uphill battle."

One unconventional program in Detroit offers a potential model for generating more affordable new construction. The nonprofit Cass Community Social Services has built 25 "Tiny Homes," each with an area of 225 to 466 square feet, for rent by low-income individuals. Renters pay $1 per square foot, and they are given the opportunity to buy their homes if they live there for seven years. 
Erica GeorgeErica George.
"Many of our homeless or low-income population may not have an asset," says Erica George, deputy director of Cass Community Social Services. "So that gives them a one-up, and it's really a game-changer to the community."

George and other advocates for Detroit's unhoused also see untapped opportunity in Detroit's many abandoned and vacant houses. Tommelein says that "theoretically, homelessness should be solvable in Detroit from a pure housing stock standpoint," and Gist agrees.

"I just really believe that we don't have a problem with affordable housing," she says. "We have a problem with not holding these landlords accountable for holding vacant properties for their own generational wealth, but neglecting to keep them maintained, which contributes to the blight of our neighborhoods. We need to find ways to incentivize them to release these properties to help house our people."

As Gist notes, solving homelessness requires more than simply housing people. Although it's not unique to Detroit, one model that's successfully filling that gap is permanent supportive housing (PSH). PSH is housing that pairs long-term rental assistance with case management and supportive services. It usually targets chronically homeless individuals or people with disabilities. Multiple Metro Detroit housing providers offer PSH, and it can be transformative for residents. Detroit resident Alan Jackson, who has experienced homelessness twice, says his PSH community offers support ranging from free food and basic home supplies to mental health services to cooking classes.
Steve KossAlan Jackson, 25, has experienced multiple periods of homelessness since he was 17. He now has an apartment in Detroit.
"It's definitely helped me kind of rehabilitate myself in many areas," he says. "... I'm not overwhelmed with having to always worry what to pay and having to put my job first, and I'm able to invest into school and my career and things of that nature."

Access to services

Even removed from a PSH-style model, services ranging from food to transportation to health care are sorely needed for Detroit's unhoused. 

"I think that a bigger misconception is that there's something for everybody that you see on the street – that if there's a person on the street, there has to be a shelter bed that's available for them," Tommelein says.

The city's 1,400 shelter beds are indeed not enough to accommodate the 1,725 people experiencing homelessness in the city who were counted in just one night last year, and Tommelein points out that other services are similarly falling behind demand. Another challenge is that many who need services aren't aware of where to find them. Detroit native Azaria Terrell found the nonprofit Detroit Phoenix Center's services invaluable in her multiple experiences with housing insecurity, but she fears that others in similar positions struggle to find the help they need.

"There are so many organizations and programs out there willing to do the work, willing to offer those services," she says. "They're just not connected to the community. The community has no idea that they're out there, that they're available, or that they're free."

Tommelein and colleagues at Community and Home Supports have been attempting to solve that problem by creating a comprehensive Google Map that lists locations offering services like food, showers, and laundry, as well as up-to-date affordable rental listings. They call it the Needs Management Map.

"You would think that maps would be a big part of homelessness solutions, but [they're] just not," Tommelein says. "... We maintain and operate that just as one attempt to sort of remove the bureaucracy from things and put things on a Google Map so people can access resources better."

One new facility in the city will help to comprehensively address needs for a variety of services. Cass Community Social Services recently completed construction on an 11,000-square-foot drop-in center, funded by a $3.5 million city grant. The center will provide three meals a day, medical care in partnership with Wayne State University, a laundry area, and beds for overnight stays.

"It's not just a daytime program, and I know a lot of drop-in centers are that," George says. "So I think the uniqueness of it is that people could stay overnight if needed."

Advocates say the biggest key to addressing unhoused people's need for services is securing more funding for the network of community organizations that works to fulfill those needs. But in lieu of that, George says the existing players need to keep getting better at collaborating.

"A lot of it just starts with maintaining consistent communication so that we are truly looking at the issues and hearing from the people that are dealing with [homelessness] – the frontline staff included, as well as the people with lived experiences – and figuring out a way to better service the whole community," she says.

Better collaboration among players

Service providers express hope that a collaborative road map for the future of addressing homelessness in Detroit is coming together. George says the COVID-19 pandemic hit service providers hard, but they're beginning to bounce back and figure out how to move forward. She sees a good start in a recently released five-year plan for improving Detroit's homelessness response system, prepared by the city, the Homeless Action Network of Detroit (HAND), and the Detroit Continuum of Care. Its goals include increasing affordable housing supply, deploying street outreach teams to connect people experiencing homelessness to services, and advocating for more funding for the unhoused.

Eleanor Bradford, HAND's systems coordinator for housing resources, says she's also encouraged by seeing better collaboration and communication among the myriad players in homelessness response, which include city and state government, nonprofits, and private developers. She attributes that both to the ongoing Region O Regional Housing Partnership, which brings together diverse stakeholders from across those groups, as well as new state housing funding programs that require developers to get sign-off from local community organizations on certain projects.

"We probably have never met in the same spaces, but now we're in common spaces and talking and understanding each other's jargon," Bradford says. "... The other day in one of my project development meetings, one of the developers was talking homeless language. He was like, 'Oh yeah, when you put in the database, how do you do that, Miss Eleanor? We got to do a vacancy request, right?' And I was like, 'Look at you!' And he laughed, but that's the type of authentic relationships that we're building."

Bradford hopes to continue building better relationships and understanding with the general public as well. She says debunking myths and educating people about the reality of homelessness in the city is crucial to solving a big problem.

"I think everybody can play a part in ending homelessness," she says.

Patrick Dunn is the managing editor of Concentrate and a freelance writer and editor. He lives in Ypsilanti.

Tiffany Gist and Alan Jackson photos by Steve Koss. All other photos courtesy of the subjects.