Part of my job as the Marketing Coordinator for the Center for Community Leadership is to coordinate monthly leadership forums. This open event series is designed to stimulate community involvement as well as engage current and emerging leaders in dialog and action. I am part of the Alumni Engagement Committee which decides what topics to focus these leadership forums on and for our first one of the program year we chose homelessness in Grand Rapids. The Grand Rapids Area Coalition to End Homelessness is now working under the name "Roofs to Roots" with it's focused on making systemic changes to reframe the the response to homelessness. Their mission is to put housing in the forefront of the solution to solve the overall problem of homelessness in Kent County. In 2004, the Grand Rapids community came together and decided that homelessness would no longer be a way of life for our residents. Over 600 people responded to the call for a new set of priorities for how Grand Rapids would prevent homelessness, re-house those in the midst of crisis, and transform the housing system. Their vision is to put housing first and eliminate homelessness as we know it by 2014. Our Leadership Forum panel included Mayor George Heartwell, Janay Brower, Executive Director of the Grand Rapids Area Coalition to End Homelessness, Betty Zylstra, Director of The Salvation Army Booth Family Services and Laurie Craft, Program Director for the Grand Rapids Community Foundation. All of these four panelists passionately believe in the ability to eliminate homelessness within our community. They recognize that changing a system is not a simple task and that it takes tenacity and patience but it is do-able. The number of people in Grand Rapids who entered into the homelessness system last year was 15% lower than it was in 2008. That is an incredible decrease, yet that still leaves a remarkable 5,118 people. Of those, 38% are families, 24% being children.
The Vision to end homelessness was designed around a core understanding: homelessness simply means an individual or family lacks housing. Here in Kent County the fair market rent for a 2 bedroom apartment is $749 a month. 44% of renters in Kent County are unable to afford that. You would need to be making an average of $14.40 per hour, requiring a person who makes minimum wage ($7.40 / hr) to work 1.9 full time jobs (or 78 hours per week) to afford fair market rent. Pretty incredible.
So today I didn't get any sob stories about particular individuals caught in the homelessness system. I didn't hear the classic reasons for homelessness being blamed strictly on substance abuse and mental illness. I learned about the system as a whole and I learned what was being accomplished. I learned about the individuals, my colleagues and my peers who are out there making a difference and shifting the questions around what homelessness means and what needs to be done. Housing first. You need affordable housing and stability before anything else. Those are the things I learned today and I am excited to do my part where I can to help keep the conversation going and encourage others to learn more about Grand Rapids' Roofs to Roots initiative!
