This article is part of State of Health, a series about how Michigan communities are rising to address health challenges. It is made possible with funding from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund.

In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, eviction filings in Kent County plummeted by about 50%, thanks to a national eviction moratorium and the COVID Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERA). But in the following two years, as the moratorium and ERA both ended, eviction filings steadily climbed from the 2020 low of 5,645 to 11,590 in 2023, topping even pre-pandemic numbers. That led a coalition of housing services organizations, people with lived experience of homelessness, government offices, landlords, and other community members to form the Kent County Eviction Prevention Task Force.

Gustavo Perez is a task force member, director of Kent County Community Action, and former coordinator of the ERA program at Heart of West Michigan United Way. He says ERA resulted in "a lot of great things," particularly "the ability for several organizations to partner to get funding into the hands of people that need it, and do it efficiently and effectively." He says the task force sought to "jump back in" and try to do similar work without ERA's federal funding injection.

"How can we make this system better, more efficient, and also look at things that were more upstream?" he says, summarizing the task force's main goals. "... Can we capture those folks before they get to that eviction status? Because once they get to an eviction, then you have a short window of time to even try to help them."
Kory KearneyGustavo Perez.
The task force began meeting in 2022, convened by Heart of West Michigan United Way and Housing Kent. Its membership grew, including representatives of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, the Salvation Army, the Urban League, the city of Grand Rapids, Kent County, Mel Trotter Ministries, North Kent Connect, Meaning in Colors, The Source, Family Promise of West Michigan, Legal Aid of West Michigan, the Grand Rapids Housing Commission, Dwelling Place, Senior Neighbors, Health Net of West Michigan, AYA Youth Collective, ICCF Community Homes, and the Grand Rapids Area Coalition to End Homelessness. Their work has been funded by the Michigan Health Endowment Fund, the Wege Foundation, the Siemer Institute, and other private foundation and donor support.

The first major result of their work is a Heart of West Michigan United Way pilot program called the Family Stability Program, launched last summer. The program, funded in part by a $149,978 grant from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund, aims to prevent evictions by addressing the underlying conditions that render families unavailable to afford housing. The task force approaches housing as a crucial factor in county residents' wellbeing.

"We know that housing stability and your environment is a big social determinant of health, both mental and physical health," says Alyssa Bryan, eviction prevention program manager at Heart of West Michigan United Way. "So being able to keep people stably housed is a critical part of that."

Long-term case management

One of the key strategies behind the Family Stability Program's eviction prevention strategy is long-term case management for families who enroll in the program. Families will receive case management for up to a year either from Mel Trotter Ministries staff or a new United Way staffer, to be hired soon. Bryan says this approach was informed in part by lessons learned from the ERA program. She says many ERA funding recipients "were getting thousands of dollars out the door very quickly" without "any sort of follow-up or ongoing education about ... what other resources might be out there if they get in this situation again." 

"Having some kind of supportive service that can walk alongside you to help stabilize and help you work towards what you feel is important for your family when you're in that crisis situation has been one of the critical pieces that was listed as one of the things we need to do if we have something like this again," she says.
Kory KearneyAlyssa Bryan.
Bryan says case management may involve simply walking program participants through their budget and finding ways to "get creative with the money that they do have" or helping them find a side hustle to supplement their income. In other cases, participants may be struggling with either losing a job or losing hours at their job. Case managers may work with those clients to help them find new, better-paying jobs. 

Bryan notes that many families facing the threat of eviction are what the United Way describes as asset-limited, income-constrained, and employed (ALICE). They also often face multiple household challenges that pile up and leave them unable to cover their housing costs.

"They're oftentimes working, but just not making enough to sustain all of their bills with the cost of rent," she says.  

United Way took point on securing funds to allow the Family Stability Program to pay for long-term case management. Bryan says that case managers begin their relationships with new clients by conducting a needs assessment that seeks to "understand more about what else is happening in the household."

"We see a lot of basic needs – food needs, some mental health needs," she says. "And so we connect families to the appropriate resources for some of those needs, but also just try and help them get connected to anything to help offset costs through basic needs."

Flexible resources

The second key element of the Family Stability Program's approach, and the way it offsets those costs, is by connecting families to flexible funds that can be used to address whatever needs are rendering them unable to pay rent.

"When there's flexibility in how assistance can be used, folks have more autonomy and are empowered to make decisions because they know what's best for their family and what their family needs," Bryan says, noting that families may need money for everything from utility bills to vehicle repairs.

Bryan says the Family Stability Program fills gaps in some existing housing assistance programs, which may be more restrictive in how recipients can use funds. Perez agrees, adding that flexible assistance dollars help to promote families' overall wellbeing.

"I think health is like the last thing you think of when you're worrying about getting food on the table and making sure that you're able to have a roof over your head and you have all these stresses," he says. "And so I think when we're able to alleviate some of those stresses and alleviate some of those emergency needs and be able to have someone that they can talk to, ... it also plays a role in just making sure that the family has a little bit more room to breathe and worry about some of the other things."

Bryan and Perez both say the Michigan Health Endowment Fund grant has been particularly crucial to funding this type of flexible assistance. 

"Sometimes just a little bit of funding helps mitigate a big issue down the road," Bryan says. "We've used [grant funding] to support rental assistance, utility assistance, and other areas to really help stabilize so that the family going forward is set up in a position for success."

Preventing more evictions

Since launching last July, the Family Stability Program has served 94 households, and its goal is to help 100 households per year for three years. 

"We are seeing a lot of successes with folks being able to remain housed," Perez says.

Bryan shares the story of a single mother of three, referred to here as "Martha" to protect her privacy, who was behind on her rent due to being laid off. Martha received some rental assistance, but because she hadn't reported her job loss in a timely fashion, she still owed back rent and a water bill to stay housed. An MDHHS staffer met with Martha at her first eviction hearing and referred her to the Family Stability Program. MDHHS, Mel Trotter Ministries, and the Buist Foundation were able to cover the full cost of Martha's back rent and water bill, and she's now working with a case manager as she continues to stabilize.

Bryan says Martha's story is an example of how the Eviction Prevention Task Force has "increased buy-in and awareness of just what we can do together as a system."

"The task force has improved overall coordination for providers of direct service of eviction prevention," she says. "Without task force members aligning and communicating about their available resources to resolve situations of high overdue rental balances, Martha ... may not have gotten the help needed to prevent eviction."

As task force members look to the future, they hope to expand services and help more families. Perez points out that the number of evictions in Kent County still hovers around 11,000 per year, far more than the Family Stability Program's case managers can reasonably tackle right now. 

"We've been operating a pilot for a bit of time and have been seeing some successes," he says. "I think now we want to elevate those outcomes and show our community that this works and how we can scale it. And that is going to take more partners. That's going to take more funding and resources."

Bryan agrees, noting that she and other task force members are already seeking funds to serve more households.

"We know that the demand for this type of service far exceeds what we have the resources for right now," she says. "Eviction prevention is one of the lower-funded housing and homelessness response system resources in the community. So we want to continue to leverage resources to be able to provide more assistance to households that are reaching out."