Ypsilanti nonprofit A Brighter Way recently purchased a home in Ypsilanti to provide long-term transitional housing for formerly incarcerated clients, just a few blocks from the organization's office at 124 Pearl St., Suite 304. 

A Brighter Way was established in 2016 and is now staffed by seven formerly incarcerated employees who collectively served over 140 years in prison. The organization provides services, including mentoring, to formerly incarcerated individuals.

A Brighter Way Executive Director Adam Grant says several EMU students are still leasing units in the house, but when their leases are up, A Brighter Way will have full control of the house. After a remodeling project, nonprofit staff expect to house 13 or 14 residents. Anyone living in the house is required to participate in A Brighter Way's mentoring program. As remodeling is completed, Grant says A Brighter Way staff also want to create more programs for those living in the house, like classes on budgeting, money management, parenting skills, and navigating health care systems. 
Doug CoombeAdam Grant at A Brighter Way's future transitional house for formerly incarcerated people.
Grant says the project is filling a gap in services. The Michigan Department of Corrections provides some short-term transitional housing, but it tends to top out at 90 to 100 days, he says. 

"Even after 90 days, they probably don't have a job, don't have income. There are lots of things they don't have, but what they do have is a deadline," he says.

A formerly incarcerated person might have many hoops to jump through, such as getting a driver's license reinstated, before they're even ready to apply for work. Grant says that creates "a psychology of pressure" where they feel like they're "constantly in a state of catching up."

"Re-entry is kind of like launching a plane. Some take more runway than others, but very few are helicopters that take off and go straight up right away," he says.

Longer-term housing, lasting from three months to a year, allows those people to catch their breath, save money, repair their credit, and work on themselves, Grant says.

Funding the project was a real challenge, however. Grant says trying to buy the house was "a lesson in prices and a lesson in zoning."

A Brighter Way board chair Al Newman is also on the board of Ann Arbor affordable housing nonprofit Avalon Housing. He says there already aren't enough market-rate housing units, and even fewer units designated as affordable, for renters or buyers in Washtenaw County. He notes that 7,000 people applied for 20 available units at Avalon's Grove at Veridian affordable development project on Platt Road last year.

A Brighter Way had considered at least four other houses before staff were finally able to buy the house they settled on, and Grant says funding it with a traditional lender would have been extremely complicated. The nonprofit finally closed the deal with help from the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation's (AAACF) Impact Investing program. Through that program, AAACF acts as the fiduciary, and A Brighter Way will pay the loan back over about a decade so the nonprofit owns the house outright.

"That would make it a lot easier to look at expansion of this model, because we'd have equity in the house and proof of concept," Grant says. 

Newman says A Brighter Way leaders hope to run several capital campaigns over the next few years. After using funds raised to pay off AAACF, they hope to replicate the model in other areas of Washtenaw County, including establishing a similar residence for women who are formerly incarcerated.