A Way Home — Housing Solutions: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave’s series on solutions to homelessness and ways to increase low-income and affordable housing. It is made possible by a coalition of funders, including Kalamazoo County, the ENNA Foundation, and Kalamazoo County Land Bank.
KALAMAZOO. MI — For families desperate for shelter and anxious to stop living in a relative’s spare room, or in a car, or at the Kalamazoo Gospel Mission, or on the street, life is about to become more stable.
The Kalamazoo community was to officially be introduced today to The Landing Place, a shelter intended to help families transition from crisis situations to more permanent housing.
Community leaders, human service organizations, and others were invited to tour the property today (Thursday, April 30, 2026). After nearly two years in development, it is the full conversion of the former Country Inn & Suites at 1912 E. Kilgore Service Rd. into transitional housing for families. Owned by Kalamazoo County, it was acquired for about $5.6 million. Another $2.5 million has been spent to renovate it into a 77-room shelter, where unhoused families can find support to transition into permanent housing.
Housing Resources Inc. of Kalamazoo is working to identify and place families in the new facility. No limit has been set on how long a family can stay.
Wraparound support services will be provided to help families hurdle barriers that have left them in crisis. Included will be job training, financial planning, and life skills services. There will also be child care support and referrals to other community resources. Agreements have been made with area school districts to make school bus connections available and allow children to remain in their same school.
The need for a transitional shelter was bolstered by data from Kalamazoo County that indicated that 1,700 K-12 students would be homeless in Kalamazoo County in 2024. That was a 30 percent increase from 2023. Jen Streb, chairperson of the Kalamazoo County Board of Commissioners, said the data will be updated soon, and she expects the number of unhoused students to have grown.
Family Promise Inc., a New Jersey-based nonprofit organization that helps run nearly 200 family shelters in the United States, will be the day-to-day operator of The Landing Place. The 38-year-old nonprofit organization strives to end homelessness by providing emergency shelter to families and helping them find their way to safe and stable housing.
Asked what attracted Family Promise to Kalamazoo, Chief Executive Officer Cheryl Schuch said, “We had incredible conversations with Kalamazoo County, and we understand the need. And we understand the number of families who are experiencing homelessness right now.”
Schuch said the development of The Landing Place and her organization’s role with it is special because of what the housing will do for families in crisis. It is also special to her because it is a homecoming for her. She is a 1982 graduate of Kalamazoo Central High School.
“I am a proud Maroon Giant,” she said. “And this one is like my heart’s delight. I am so incredibly proud of the work Kalamazoo has done.”
Family Promise of Southwest Michigan is a brand-new affiliate of Family Promise Inc. Andrea Tramel, its executive director, is excited about the new opportunity to help families in a dynamic way. The former development director at Kalamazoo’s Ministry With Community, Tramel started with Family Promise on Jan. 5 of this year, and in February, hired a program director for The Landing Place as well as an operations manager.
The Landing Place is set to open for tenants on Monday, May 4, with a 22-member staff. Ten of them will be support staff, Tramel said. “We need shelter support staff that interact with our families, to help them, make sure they’re getting their meals, help with laundry, clean up around the facility, (and) help them with day-to-day services that they need to eliminate any barriers,” she said.
Six of the other staff members will be case workers.
“Each family will be assigned a case worker,” Tramel says. “So we’ll have about 18 families per case worker. Case workers will work on helping them (the families) eliminate whatever barriers they have to receiving permanent and stable housing. It may be some financial counseling, or job coaching, or educational barriers, whatever it takes to get them to that next step.”
To fill those positions, Tramel said she looked for people who are humble, hungry, and smart.
“Those are the three principles that we run off of,” she said. “With that, we’re able to hire dynamic staff who already have a casework/social work background who understand our families that have experienced trauma and that are also right now currently in crisis.”
The organization is also looking to hire someone to help it develop beneficial partnerships with other organizations.
A housing specialist and a child engagement specialist also might be hired in the future. Tramel said the latter is expected to help children connect with activities at The Landing Place.
Tramel said she is happy that Kalamazoo County had the vision to pursue the project, “and it’s going to be fantastic for our community.”
“They’re jealous of us,” Tramel said of other communities that she’s visited and asked about caring for the unhoused. “Everyone is jealous of us because they hear Kalamazoo is so collaborative and so willing to be community-minded and serve its most vulnerable population,” she said. “And we do that.”
Strebs echoes that sentiment and remembers when her 7-year-old daughter, Olive, made a couple of new friends last summer in Bronson Park. “We were doing some volunteer work in the park, and she was playing with these two little girls who were about her age,” Strebs said. “We had extra table cloths, and they were making them into capes and running around with them. Then those two little girls took the two tablecloths and wanted to make a house to have a place of their own, to sleep.”
She also remembers her daughter and she seeing a family on the street panhandling for money. “And she says, ‘Mom, why is it that way? Why is it that way?’”
She said she told her daughter, “We’re going to try to do something about it.”
“Now that is what we’ve done,” Strebs said. “And I’m so excited for the kids that will come through here and to know they won’t have to hope to have a place to sleep that’s safe for them.”
“Everything that we can do to address homelessness in the community, in particular, whenever we can step forward for children …”
The name of the new family shelter dovetails with the idea of creating a soft landing place for people who would otherwise crash. The name also plays well with its location, just north of the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport.
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