This story is part of a series that highlights the challenges and solutions around housing in Southeast Michigan and is made possible through underwriting support from the Oakland County (Region L) Regional Housing Partnership.
After Malinda Gottschalk was evicted from her home in January due to physical health issues that left her unable to work, she often found it challenging to find overnight shelter in Oakland County. She had a couple of lists of local homeless shelters to refer to, but it could be difficult to determine which shelters had beds available on a daily basis. Each shelter served different populations and had different methods for the public to check bed availability.
"If there would have been an essential website to go to where I could look up the resources that I needed, that would have helped," Gottschalk says.
Fortunately, Gottschalk recently became one of the first people to test out exactly that type of resource. A new website called
Shelter Oakland offers real-time information on the number of beds available at almost all Oakland County shelters, as well as a massive list of resources available to those experiencing housing insecurity in the county. Gottschalk says she was impressed with the new system.
"I think it'll be a beautiful thing, an essential resource for everyone to look at," she says.
Shelter Oakland is the result of a partnership between the Pontiac-based nonprofit
Alliance for Housing (Oakland County's federally designated
Continuum of Care (COC)) and Pontiac-based software company
ReciproCity. In 2023 the Alliance for Housing began contracting with ReciproCity, whose mission is "to build public goods with technology," to develop technological solutions to housing- and homelessness-related problems in Oakland County. Their partnership has been funded by the United Way, the McGregor Fund, the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan, and Oakland County.
In developing Shelter Oakland, ReciproCity has sought input from many local service providers working on housing and homelessness. ReciproCity co-founder Chris Powers says he's grateful for a "groundswell of support" from them.
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David LewinskiChris Powers.
"It is going to be a lot of work on the technical side and on the design side to make sure that we do right by all of our stakeholders," he says. "But ... we're willing to work shoulder to shoulder with the people who are doing the work. And I think that goes a long way for us to be able to build something that's functional for them."
Addressing Oakland County's housing needs
ReciproCity grew out of a college friendship between Powers and his fellow co-founder, Cam Underdown. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, they collaborated on the design of a mutual aid website called My COVID Response. The site served as a shared resource to help thousands of volunteers and over 200 nonprofit staff members deliver over 80,000 emergency meals to about 15,000 people from about 7,400 households. During the pandemic, ReciproCity also partnered with the nonprofit
Lighthouse to coordinate a program allowing people to "adopt" families in need, and with St. Joseph Mercy Health System to launch a vaccination program.
As a result of that experience, Powers says, "We realized that there's a real need to build good software to help nonprofits to coordinate resources for households in need."
ReciproCity has since built custom apps for multiple nonprofits. Powers says he and Underdown learned that with the right software, nonprofits can scale up "more like a tech organization."
"They were able to help more people because they had more administrative capacity," he says. "By helping more people, the nonprofit raised more money. By raising more money, they were in turn able to expand their capacity and help more people. And so the virtuous cycle went."
Powers says he observed significant burnout at many nonprofits as a result of the "explosion of need" that began during the pandemic, with ongoing effects to this day. That led ReciproCity to approach the Alliance for Housing about how the software company might ease that burden. Alliance for Housing Executive Director Leah McCall says she identified four technological solutions that would help local housing service providers: a centralized client data management system, a real-time list of funding available for people experiencing homelessness, a similar list for homelessness prevention funds, and a shelter bed availability resource.
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David LewinskiLeah McCall.
McCall says the Alliance for Housing and ReciproCity decided to work on the last solution first.
"I know what was holding us back," she says. "... I just thought we could do better."
Designing housing solutions
McCall says she and her colleagues had received feedback from clients about the challenge of finding open shelter beds. She says Oakland County's state-designated Housing Assessment and Resource Agency, the Troy-based
Community Housing Network, has been overwhelmed at times by the amount of inquiries about shelter availability.
"It's hard to explain to somebody, like, 'Oh, you have to call this one every day at 10 a.m. Or this one, you need to go wait in line at 4 p.m.,'" she says. "So I knew there could be a better way to see if there's even a bed available."
ReciproCity and the Alliance for Housing began their partnership in 2023 with a six-month consulting contract to examine similar needs and any existing solutions at the local and national level.
"The conclusion that we came to after that six-month period was that the problems that are being faced in Oakland County are being faced in many other areas of the country," Powers says. "And even the established software providers that are helping in some of these areas really are not addressing the core needs or the gaps of the providers that are helping to coordinate these resources."
In 2024 and early 2025, ReciproCity and the Alliance for Housing followed up with an eight-month contract that Powers describes as a "design exercise." He says ReciproCity worked with local nonprofits "to even more deeply understand their workflows" and determine if ReciproCity was the right fit to fulfill their needs. From there, ReciproCity and the Alliance for Housing decided to focus on what has since become Shelter Oakland.
Powers says a crucial factor in ReciproCity's work so far has been "that the majority of service providers in Oakland County seem not only willing to work with us, but excited by the work that we're doing." The feeling seems to be mutual. Lighthouse Director of Emergency Services Jessie Polito says Powers and Underdown "have done a really great job in walking us through" each iteration of Shelter Oakland and "hearing our feedback."
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David LewinskiJessie Polito.
"I'm a clinical social worker. I'm not a tech person, by any means," she says. "And so there's things that I might have suggested that I thought were like pie-in-the-sky ideas. Like, 'Hey, I don't know if it's possible, but could we do this?' And Cameron's like, 'Oh, yeah, absolutely. Let's do it. That's a great idea.'"
McCall says ReciproCity benefits from being "a small group."
"They're not some large corporation who's built a bunch of platforms or done a lot of work, and sort of has their own idea of how it should be," she says. "And they're really working with us to listen to the feedback of the individuals that are using it, to listen to the staff that are implementing the programs and projects, and really are kind of growing with us as we go."
Replicating a model
As Shelter Oakland rolls out, local service providers are upbeat about its implications for both their organizations and the people they serve. Polito has piloted the website with some of her clients at Lighthouse. She says their feedback was largely positive, and that ReciproCity has been responsive to clients' suggestions on how to improve the service. Polito notes that her organization has had over 3,300 inquiries for shelter this year alone.
"I'm excited to see how many folks will be able to connect to this platform, people whose needs we're able to assess and provide services to, because of this added accessibility to emergency shelter services," she says.
Powers hopes to continue expanding and improving Shelter Oakland's list of local resources for those experiencing housing insecurity. It currently includes information on over 600 resources ranging from mental health services to emergency food. He says he hopes to counteract the common frustration of people seeking out resources that turn out to be defunct or unsuited to their needs.
"What we want to do is create a real-time, updated, reliable directory for people who are seeking help and other resources," he says.
McCall also sees potential for local housing service providers to obtain more funding as a result of Shelter Oakland.
"Right know, I think the shelters sort of tally how many people they turn away, but it's not really data that's captured in an ongoing way," she says. "And so I think this will give us the resource to also say, 'Here's the need, and here's where we are short or where we're meeting the need of the community.'"
Beyond Shelter Oakland, Powers and McCall hope to continue building toward addressing the other three needs McCall identified in her initial conversations with ReciproCity. Powers says a crucial goal is making nonprofits' client data "interoperable," so the digital profile a client creates with one organization or resource (like Shelter Oakland) can be utilized across multiple service providers. Polito says that will be helpful for people experiencing homelessness, allowing them to avoid "having to regurgitate their information every time they call or every time they inquire about shelter space."
To accomplish this, Powers and his team will build upon a nonprofit administration program ReciproCity created, which is called Advocate. It allows organizations to manage applications and referrals for services in a single, streamlined platform. This will make it easier for Oakland County service providers to coordinate efforts. But Powers says the primary goal is to allow people experiencing housing insecurity to "get connected not only to more resources, but also to more people and more organizations who have visibility into their situation and can help them out."
Powers, McCall, and other service providers hope that ReciproCity's work in Oakland County will be replicable elsewhere. Powers hopes to first bring the technology to adjacent Michigan counties. Carolyn Robiadek, shelter manager at Pontiac-based HOPE Shelters, says that would be "another way to make things easier for everybody all around." She says people often come to HOPE Shelters from places like Flint, Detroit, and Macomb County communities.
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David LewinskiCarolyn Robiadek.
"I have to give them phone numbers to call other places right now," she says. "People are calling multiple numbers to find shelter instead of having to go to one centralized place."
McCall says replicability has been a key goal in her organization's partnership with ReciproCity.
"I really just hope other COCs can replicate this and use this product and be able to get services to the clients that need it in their community quickly," she says. "... If this is what I think it will be, I just really would like it to be able to be utilized in other communities."
Gottschalk expresses similar sentiments about Shelter Oakland.
"I'm looking forward to seeing it get up and running, and to see how much it can help people," she says.