As federal funding for housing shifts, Kalamazoo pulls together to keep people off the street

This story is part of Second Wave’s series on solutions to affordable housing and housing the unhoused. It is made possible by a coalition of funders including Kalamazoo County, the ENNA Foundation, and the Kalamazoo County Land Bank.

When it comes to the struggle to provide housing for all, Kalamazoo is in a better place than most communities.

Even so, according to two Kalamazoo County Commissioners and the Kalamazoo Continuum of Care director Patrese Griffin, people working to improve housing in Kalamazoo are fighting headwinds, needing to close gaps. It can leave them feeling “as though you take 10 steps forward, and then you’re knocked three steps behind,” Griffin says.

There’ve been “incredible shifts happening at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, causing devastation,” Griffin says.

Thanks to the Homes for All Kalamazoo County housing millage, plus December’s generous “Keys to Kalamazoo” — a $23.3 million anonymous donation — the County is in a good spot at the start of 2026. 

Kalamazoo is not an island, however. 

Expected funds from HUD were halted, and changes in federal policies endanger efforts to create supported housing, to get people off the streets, and keep them in stable homes.

“The (Kalamazoo) Continuum of Care is responsible for administering state, local, and federal dollars. We administer the largest federal grant that provides support for the unhoused and those who are at risk of being unhoused. That’s the HUD COC (Continuum of Care) grant,” Griffin explains.

“There have been significant changes, challenges, and issues that have caused delays. And if a community does not have supports locally, there will be even more devastation than we’re already seeing. And I want to be clear, neither the state nor local philanthropic efforts could ever offset the gap that would be caused if federal funding were to end or be decreased.”

Bad news, good news

We spoke with Kalamazoo County Commissioners, Chair Jen Strebs and Monteze Morales in January and again this month. 

Morales spearheaded a November proclamation that the lack of attainable housing in the County is a “public health crisis.”  

She saw that people kept dying outside in the winters, and that there haven’t been enough 24-hour warming shelters in Kalamazoo. Benton Harbor has 24-hour warming shelters, she says, why not Kalamazoo?

“We’re a robust city. And it’s unfortunate that, due to rising costs, there’s so many more people being affected” by housing instability, Morales says.

It is tough to afford housing right now, she says. “We have houseless individuals who are sleeping in their cars that range from no employment to middle class,” she says. “I really want to erase that mindset that people are not working or are choosing to be in this situation…. The economy has hit us very hard.”

The results of last year’s point-in-time count — a survey of County unhoused people that usually takes place at the end of January, with results made public in July — showed a 19% higher number of unhoused than in 2024. 

For the 2025 PIT, a one-night snapshot survey of people in shelters or living outside in the County, found 791 people. 709 were in emergency shelters or transitional housing, 82 were unsheltered.

The 2024 PIT result was 664 people, with 542 in shelters, 122 unsheltered.

After these numbers, can we say that the County housing millage is having a positive effect on the people who need the most help?

“I do think so,” Strebs says. “I think that communities that don’t have the capacity to make the sort of strategic and voter-supported investments that we are making are in a much tougher position. That Kalamazoo County, among communities in the state of Michigan, is a leader in advancing housing.”

Because of the millage, Strebs says, “23 different projects have been funded in four categories since its inception, and $26 million in total housing development and supportive services,” have gone into place.

The millage has funded “over 1,400 new housing units,” Strebs says. Around 800 are complete, most of those are occupied, the rest are under construction or are about to break ground. “So not all 1,400 of them exist in three-dimensional space yet, but they are all in process. That’s a significant dent in development.”

The millage also led to the rehab of over 100 owner-occupied homes, “rehabbed so that people can maintain their housing,” she says.

Strebs continues, “With that said, we continue to have broader systemic issues that are putting more and more pressure on housing stability.” 

One big issue is chaos from the federal government.

“We used housing millage resources recently when there were threatened gaps in HUD funding for permanent supportive housing that could have risked people with significant disabilities being displaced from their homes,” Strebs says.

An expected 2025 notice from HUD, announcing funds that would normally go into six permanent supportive housing programs operated by ISK, that serve 144 households, and one permanent supportive housing program by Housing Resources Inc., was late. When it arrived, all funding for permanent supportive housing was removed.

“Vulnerable people” were calling Strebs, “terrified” that they’d be out on the streets again this winter. But the County stepped in Jan. 20 with nearly $1.161 million to fill the gap to keep the programs running.

Then there are the familiar, long-standing economic issues.

Housing is a huge expense for many. “A medical crisis, a lapse of employment, escalating food costs, that’s going to put people in a position where they’re choosing between health care they need and housing, or food and housing,” Strebs says.

“People are choosing,” Morales says, “am I going to buy food, rent, health care?”

After the news of the Point in Time results, of HUD’s withholding of funds, and the County’s declaration of lack of housing as a public health crisis, in late 2025 the County received the good news of a benefactor giving $23.3 million over three years to help. That will go into the “Keys to Kalamazoo” housing framework. 

“A lion’s share of that funding, we’re so excited, is going to help with wrapping up the construction gap funding” of The Landing Place, Strebs says. The Keys money will also fund the first three years of programming support and wrap-around services for the 80-unit transitional family shelter.

Strebs and Morales hope that the Landing Place will be a “proof of concept” to show that getting families housed, with support services to guide them into housing stability, will keep people from returning to the streets. “We want to demonstrate that these are our community members, our neighbors. And with good program design, we can support people to get up on their feet and into permanent housing,” Strebs says.  

A bit over $7 million of Keys funding will go toward a County housing voucher program, with rental subsidies — the County is working on that program design, which will start as “a three-year pilot to demonstrate how effectively we can manage such a voucher program,” Strebs says.

Another $300,000 will be spent on strategic planning, and $600,000 for “data integration, shelter coordination, and shelter diversion,” Strebs says. The goal is to “coalesce all of our partners” in housing and create a central service for people in need. 

The County could have a “one-stop-shop,” as Morales says, that would guide people to the services they need. People won’t have to “call all these providers, they’d have one place to call to connect,” Strebs says.

No supportive housing in NOFO

Shelter is needed, housing is needed, but without supportive services — financial and employment education, substance recovery, mental health treatment — getting a roof over one’s head is usually temporary.

“We’ve had some robust conversations,” Morales says. “We can write a check, we can catch your rent up, do all the things. But if you’re not stable, you’re going to go back (to being homeless) in three to six months.”

Morales says, “These families have dealt with this, the trauma of houselessness, for generations.”

Morales and Strebs point out that in 2025, HUD’s Continuum of Care “NOFO” — an annual notice of funding opportunities — reflected the Trump administration’s efforts to “dismantle existing programming” in most of the federal government, as Strebs says. 

“There has been a 40-year history of bipartisan support for permanent supportive housing,” Strebs says. “The current NOFO totally changed the parameters and really was about to strip away all of this funding, or the majority of it, directing it to transitional and shelter services — which are absolutely needed.”

But more is needed than just shelter, Strebs says. “We know that for people with serious mental illnesses and disabilities, sleeping in a cot in an emergency shelter is not the ideal stabilizing environment.”

At Kalamazoo’s Continuum of Care, Griffin also sees HUD shifting away “from permanent supportive housing and housing-first,” Griffin says.

“Housing-first essentially means that you house individuals first, regardless of whether they have a job, regardless of whether they’re clean, regardless of whatever. And then you wrap supports and services around them. That has been proven” to work, she says. 

Griffin continues, “For those who look at dollars, it’s more cost-effective for a community to operate in that way than it is to have more punitive responses to the issues of homelessness.”

Punitive, such as turning law enforcement against the homeless. Griffin brings up the Supreme Court’s “City of Grants Pass v. Johnson” ruling of 2024, allowing municipalities to jail people who are homeless, “regardless of whether they have a shelter for people to go to in their community. We’re up against things like that.”

Previously, “in Kalamazoo County, those HUD Continuum of Care dollars 100% fund permanent supportive housing. Those grants are available on a rolling basis throughout the year. There are multiple projects that are funded. “

Now, the funds are stopped, and are “tied up in court,” she says. 

Griffin brings up what Strebs mentioned earlier, the County millage needing to fund a projects that HUD’s allocated funding would’ve covered in previous years. 

“Because we have coordination, we communicate with our partners,” she says, and the County was “able to backfill. So those families didn’t have to be unhoused.”

The “significant shifts at HUD are going to continue to show up in local communities.” Local communities will struggle to fill the gaps, “when so many already didn’t have those resources in the first place,” Griffin says.

“If we thought we saw people outside and unsheltered before, we haven’t even scratched the surface of what it’s going to be.” 

Frustration, hope, and continuing the work

Griffin, who’s had experience being unhoused herself, speaks with sharp frustration about the PIT numbers, and the questions and political controversies over what is and isn’t working. 

“Because the problem is so vast and there’s so much, the first thing anybody’s gonna say is, ‘Well, what about this over here? What about this?’ And the truth of the matter is, it’s everything” — funding for everything from temporary shelter to permanent supportive housing is needed, Griffin says.

“For the person who just wants to make sure they can sleep safely at night, and for the community who just wants to make sure their neighbors can sleep safely at night, it can become a bit overwhelming to try to make sense of all of this, right?”

That’s where we’re at after 2025. For the coming year, what does Griffin see?

“Over the coming year, I see difficult conversations. I see difficult decisions needing to be made. I see hope. I see a tremendous amount of opportunity in the midst of this chaos, and if everyone uses this as an opportunity instead of a point of defeat, this time next year, we will be on a different layer of this conversation and closer to achieving our goal of ultimately ending homelessness,” she says.

Or “at the very least, having a cohesive, collaborative system that makes sure anyone who is unhoused is only there for a very short time and never returns.”

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