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.
"Depressed." "Disappointed." "Embarrassed." "Insecure."
These are just a few of the words that four Detroiters use to describe how they felt while experiencing homelessness. They recall feeling stereotyped, judged, forgotten, and forced to rely on their own determination rather than protected by a social safety net.
"I felt like I was a burden to many people around me," says Alan Jackson, 25, who has experienced multiple periods of homelessness since he was 17. "I was definitely going through mental health severities. I was suicidal and I just wanted to give up my life and just take the easiest way out, to no longer exist. ... I had the intention, I had the ambition, but I just didn't have the resources and the assistance, and I was always looked down upon because of my circumstances or conditions. But those aren't what defines me."
Jackson says he was surrounded by multiple family members struggling with addiction as he grew up, and he initially became homeless when his mother kicked him out of the house after an argument. But he says few people understood or empathized with his experience as he tried to get his life back on track. Detroit resident Jahnisa Briggs, who experienced homelessness in 2017 and again in 2019, echoes that sentiment. She lost her housing when she was forced to quit her job because she couldn't find anyone to care for her now 8-year-old son, whom she was parenting alone at the time.
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Jahnisa BriggsJahnisa Briggs.
"I think a lot of people might look at someone homeless and think that they're not trying to do anything to change their situation," Briggs says. "... I've seen people homeless, but they still had jobs. I've seen people living in their cars and just pretty much doing whatever they could to survive, but they only lacked that one thing, which was a home. I've been homeless with a job before. I've been homeless with a car, and people look at you different when you don't have somewhere to live."
Jackson's and Briggs' experiences are just two examples of a big problem in Detroit. An annual count found
1,725 people experiencing homelessness on just one January night this year in Detroit, Hamtramck, and Highland Park. We interviewed several Detroiters about what caused them to become homeless, the varying forms homelessness takes, and what services the city's unhoused need.
Causes of homelessness
The Detroiters we interviewed all expressed frustration with feeling stereotyped while experiencing homelessness. Erica George, deputy director of the Detroit nonprofit
Cass Community Services, says people experiencing homelessness are commonly assumed to have a mental health problem and/or a drug addiction, but the causes of homelessness are far broader.
"We have people that might be fleeing domestic violence, for instance, and then they leave everything behind," she says. "... People having a fire, or losing a home in any capacity, could cause that. And then you do have certain folks that are dealing with addiction or mental health issues or challenges that cannot or won't be addressed unless they're able to connect and get services. .... It's a lot of different variables that could result in homelessness, and it's not what everybody always thinks it is."
For example, Detroit resident Donna Price experienced homelessness after having to quickly leave her home due to her live-in partner's mental health issues. Price moved in with her weed dealer, who began to force her to pay all his bills and then became physically violent towards her when she couldn't. Price fled to a homeless shelter.
"You could say domestic violence got me there, but it wasn't recognized in the shelter that I was in," she says. "And I sat and I watched it, because there was a lot of women that were there for that reason. I watched one lady. Her abuser would come get her every day and send her back there, drugged or bruised and whatever."
Soaring housing costs, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, have also increasingly contributed to homelessness in Detroit. According to the state of Michigan's Housing Data Portal, the median rent in the city rose 30% from 2012 to 2022 (the most recent year for which data are available) and 16% from 2020 to 2022. Jackson, for example, says he found his own place at age 21, but then lost it because "the rent was just too high."
"Trying to keep my vehicle, I had to compromise one for the other," he says. "I needed transportation in order to stay consistent with passive income and whatnot, so I needed to keep a job. I also ... wanted to try my best to stay at school."
Like Jackson, many people experience housing insecurity before they even become adults. Azaria Terrell, 20, is one of six children raised in Detroit by a single father. Her father is currently homeless, so she has nowhere to stay when she's not attending school at Jackson College. But she says she and her siblings also became accustomed to periods of homelessness in their youth due to their father kicking them out during "chaotic" family arguments.
"I think a lot of people think that people who are experiencing homelessness or housing security, that it was their fault," she says. "I hear this from so many people that drive around the city and they won't give money to homeless people because they're like, 'Oh, they did this to themselves. It's their fault. They put themselves in this situation,' which is not always true."
Many forms of homelessness
Homelessness also encompasses a broad range of experiences. Terrell has never stayed in a homeless shelter, as some of her siblings have, but she's spent time couch surfing at various friends' places while she's had no established home. She says it took her a long time to realize that she was experiencing housing insecurity, and that homelessness didn't just mean "sleeping on the street."
"When I started thinking about it, I'm like, 'I know other friends of mine who are experiencing homelessness right now,'" she says. "It was just a big thing for me to realize that a lot of people are actually going through it and they just don't know."
Similarly, Briggs says she never stayed in a shelter while she was homeless, but spent long periods "bouncing around from house to house, staying with friends."
"There were a few family members who I could stay with, but it definitely felt like a shelter," she says. "It didn't feel like being with family."
Other Detroiters experiencing homelessness may sleep on the street or find a bed in a homeless shelter. Allah Young, 73, lived both those realities during the six years he experienced homelessness. He recalls seeing three people freeze to death while he was living on the street, sleeping in parks, bus stops, vacant houses, and vehicles. But his time living in seven different shelters wasn't much better.
"They don't keep the facilities clean," he says. "Roaches, bed bugs, mice – they don't spend enough time making sure that that's not a problem. That problem is pervasive in all shelters. Hate to say it. It's just the truth."
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Allah YoungAllah Young.
Price says she experienced "mental trauma" while staying in a shelter. She recalls arriving at the shelter in February and seeing people "piled up on each other" on blow-up mattresses in cold hallways.
"When I first got there, I was afraid," she says. "I was like, 'What am I doing here? What is this?'"
There's often competition to sleep in the conditions Price experienced. The city of Detroit has 1,200 shelter beds and expects to add another 200 by January, but that's still not enough to accommodate the aforementioned 1,700-plus people experiencing homelessness who were counted just in a single night this year.
"It's hard to find yourself in a position to get help," Young says. "And then once you get in a place where you're getting help, you get all these other problems to deal with."
Supportive services
Finding shelter is just one of many pressing needs that people experiencing homelessness face. They may also need food, a job, transportation, health care, leads on permanent housing, and more to get their lives back on track. Jackson, who is now an Americorps outreach specialist at the Detroit nonprofit
Community and Home Supports, often observes a complex web of needs among clients experiencing homelessness.
"A lot of the time, I see that they get housing, but they probably don't have food, and then that's all that they get," he says. "They lose their housing because they don't have the life skills to keep the housing. So I think that it's just a lot. You have to kind of reinvent a person that's been neglected for so long."
In Jackson's own experience with homelessness, he was sometimes frustrated by finding that he didn't qualify for certain services that he needed. Similarly, Price was surprised to find that no other services or resources were available to her in the homeless shelter where she stayed for a month. Briggs also became frustrated in her efforts to find housing assistance and other resources, saying she encountered many people who made her feel "less than" because of her situation.
"They would be looking at me like, 'Where's your family? Where are the people that owe you this support?'" she says. "I would feel like they would look at me like they didn't owe me the support, so I would just be on hold, and I always had to wait."
When people experiencing homelessness do find the assistance they need, the effect is often transformational. Terrell says she found a slew of "super helpful" services at the nonprofit
Detroit Phoenix Center, where she is now a Youth Action Board member. She found food, hygiene supplies, and mental health support at the center. She says mental health care was particularly crucial for her, as she believes it is for many experiencing homelessness.
"I've realized that it really does not matter how many resources [or how much] money that you give to the youth," she says. "If they're not mentally okay, they will just end up relapsing and going back to their situation, because that's what they're used to. ... We need you in a good place so that you understand how you need to be helped."
For Briggs, transportation assistance made a dramatic impact. While she was experiencing homelessness, she stayed with friends in Detroit and worked at Amazon in Romulus. Most car-owning Detroiters know that's about a 30-minute drive, but Briggs didn't own a car. She would leave three hours before her shift to begin a long, unreliable bus ride to work.
"Oh my God, there was no getting there on time," she says. "I was either early or late. I would have to get there like an hour early."
Briggs eventually found help through
Michigan Works!, which provided transportation for her to get to and from work. She also found cash assistance helpful when she was unable to work, and she discovered resources like food and clothing drives that helped as well. Jackson says holistic services are what people experiencing homelessness need most. He found wraparound services at Detroit-based
Covenant House that included medical, mental health, and dental care; job fairs; personal counseling; and more. He says those services were crucial to helping him get back on his feet and into his current apartment.
"All you had to do was just choose which route you wanted to take to begin whatever it was that you wanted to initiate for yourself," Jackson says.
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Steve KossAlan Jackson in his apartment.
Jackson is not the only formerly homeless Detroiter we talked to who has gone on to do work providing services to others experiencing homelessness. Briggs now works for the Homeless Action Network of Detroit as an ambassador, finding ways to better connect people experiencing homelessness to resources.
"When you have people in these positions that can relate to the people that we're helping, it makes it a lot better, a lot easier," she says. "It's like, 'I want to help you more because I've been there before, and I know how it feels to be looked at different because you don't have what someone else has."
Price has also taken on a slew of advocacy work since her experience with homelessness. She now sits on the
Detroit Continuum of Care board and the
Michigan Homeless Policy Council, and volunteers with
Detroit Action. She says that in the process of helping herself out of homelessness, she began helping other people.
"It warms my heart to see someone be lifted up if I can help, because I've always been the person that I can't see nobody unhappy," she says. "... Housing is a human need and a human right, and we should all have it. ... A roof over your head is dignity. And we deserve dignity."
This story is the first of two focusing on homelessness in Detroit. Check back next month for the second part, which will focus on innovative solutions to end homelessness in the city.
Patrick Dunn is the managing editor of Concentrate and a freelance writer and editor. He lives in Ypsilanti.
Alan Jackson photos by Steve Koss. All other photos courtesy of the subject.