Advocacy for fair housing policies and personal experience with homelessness will serve Patrese Griffin well in new role as head of Kalamazoo County Continuum of Care.

The events get rolling Wednesday, June 1. The 71st Annual Kalamazoo Institute of Arts Fair will be back at Bronson Park. Art on the Mall will be back and bigger on the Kalamazoo Mall on June 4. The Do-Dah Parade will be do-dah-ing along downtown roads that day. And everyone will be showing their pride in person at the Arcadia Creek Festival Place for Kalamazoo Pride 2022. Concerts in the Park and Beats On Bates -- which were in-person last year -- will be back, too.

LISC-Kalamazoo will be the conduit for hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding through the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Section 4 Program. “HUD Section 4 is a specific pool of money to increase nonprofits’ capacity to do their work in specific areas,” says Beth Romeo, the assistant program officer at LISC Kalamazoo.

If you're a middle school or high school aged student in Three Rivers, the distance between where you attend school and a place that provides mental health services has never been shorter. Thanks to PAWS (Prevention and Wellness Service), a school-linked community adolescent health center, Three Rivers teens and tweens simply have to cross the street.

If all continues as planned, spaces for at least 60 unhoused individuals will be open by late June. The studio apartments in The LodgeHouse are intended for those with extremely low incomes currently living in a place that is not fit for human habitation,  outdoors, in their car, or living in a hotel that they can’t afford.

So you feel depressed or anxious or stressed, and think mental-health counseling would help. But you also have an insurance plan that requires you to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars before coverage kicks in. Perhaps no surprise, cost is the No. 1 barrier to obtaining mental-health care, according to a 2018 federal survey of 5,000 Americans. But instead of giving up, it’s important to explore your options -- and there are a surprising number for people worried about the cost of mental-health care.

Loy Norrix High School teacher librarian John Kreider was honored with an OutFront Kalamazoo #AlwaysOutFront Award in April for his work as the advisor for the school's Gender and Sexuality Alliance. Kreider said they were humbled to receive the award because they know of so many other teachers and staff who have worked to support students.