Homelessness in Kalamazoo

The beeping alarm slices through the silence at 6 a.m. and the family of five awakens after another night in the shelter of the Kalamazoo Gospel Mission.

Latana Barns, 32, wakes up her two children, 10 and 6, sleeping three feet away from her in a bunk bed.

In addition, her 1-week-old baby sleeps in a portable crib in the middle of the small room. She shares her bed with her 1-year-old son.

Barns and her four children have lived in the mission for the last nine months. They sleep in one room, and share a living space and kitchen with two other families. Barns, a Kalamazoo native, was laid off in July from her job as a certified nurse’s assistant at the Veterans Administration Medical Center. She quickly fell behind in paying her bills.

Barns’ situation is not uncommon in the city of Kalamazoo, where 38.8 percent of residents live below the poverty level compared to 24.3 percent in 1999 — an increase of almost 6,400 people, according to a report by Western Michigan University’s Lewis Walker Institute for Race and Ethnic Relations.

On Feb. 21, the Kalamazoo County Commission voted along party lines not to place a property tax millage on the ballot this fall that would have created a fund to assist families such as Barns with housing. The nine Republicans present voted against the measure and the commission’s seven Democrats voted in favor.

Nancy VanderRoest, the Director of Development at the Kalamazoo Gospel Mission, has seen not only the number of homeless people rising in the city of Kalamazoo, but the profile of the kind of people who are homeless is evolving as well.

“The face of homelessness is really changing to women and children,” VanderRoest said.

Latana Barns made $15.89 and worked an average of 40 hours every week earning about $2,540 a month before taxes.

In comparison, the monthly cost of living for a single parent with three children in Kalamazoo is $3,814, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit think tank created in 1986 to broaden

discussions about economic policies.
“What brought me to a point was that I lost my

job, and I had a good job. But after I lost my job, I lost my income and that made me behind on my rent and my car so I lost my car,” Barns said. “I lost everything as far as being stable for me and my kids.”

By the end of July, the then 3-months pregnant Barns and her three children were evicted from their home on Briarcliff Lane in Texas Charter Township.

With no family members able to financially able to support them, Barns made the decision to go to the Kalamazoo Gospel Mission for shelter.

“I had a lot of fears. I was prideful, shamed, embarrassed. You know, because I had always taken care of myself.

“I had to get on cash assistance and I haven’t had any help from the government since I had my first child ten years ago,” Barns said. “Having to lean on other people is very humbling for me. I have to stay focused on getting myself together and remember it’s only temporary.”

Barns wants to find a way out of poverty for her children while they are young, but research shows that a lack of a stable home is a major factor in the continuation of poverty through generations, says Timothy Ready, the Director of the Walker Institute.

“We think of ourselves as the land of opportunity but children growing up in a low income family are more likely to be in poverty as adults,” Ready said.

The fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Kalamazoo County in 2010 was $683. A little more than half of renters in the county spent 30 percent or more of their income on housing, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. It costs nearly twice as much per month to house a family in an emergency shelter in Kalamazoo than it does to provide transitional or permanent housing, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“Living in a shelter is hell for more than a week or two at a time,” Kalamazoo County Commissioner Jack Urban said in an interview.

“One cannot get one’s life together while putting up with those conditions. Foul language, using and dealing drugs, fights, noise, dust, having to be on the street by daylight and having to stay out until curfew in the evening. If one misses curfew,

one must sleep somewhere else. I don’t know who could get his life together under such stress.”

Urban was among the seven Democrats on the commission voting in favor of a property tax for the Local Housing Assistance Fund, which would cost the owner of a $100,000 home about $5 a year.

The original fund was depleted in 2010. It was created in 2007 by the cities of Kalamazoo and Portage and several private donors. The $1 million fund helped more than 600 individuals afford subsidized homes and apartments as well as fund homeless prevention programs, according to the HOMES Coalition.

“In today’s economic environment, asking tax payers to support any additional amount on their property taxes is unreasonable,” Kalamazoo County Commissioner Brandt Iden, a Republican, said in an interview. “Just like the government, many households in my district are facing difficult financial times and this extra tax, albeit small, will take yet another financial toll on many families throughout our county.”

Homelessness affects everyone in a community, not just those in shelters, says Ready of the Walker Institute.

“When there’s a big segment of the population growing up without housing, it’s a big problem for the whole community, just thinking about it in hard, cold dollars, they’re going to be costing the community more money through health costs or greater costs related to criminal justice.” Ready said. “It’s really not in people’s best interest to allow the kinds of gaping inequalities that exist and end up plaguing people of low income that are disproportionately, but by no means limited to, people of color.”

Currently, Barns has saved enough money to move out of the shelter, but it unable to move into a subsidized apartment because she’s still trying to pay off the debt of her previous home and is affected by her low credit score. She was offered a job with Lifespan, a hospice in Battle Creek that’s partnered with Bronson Hospital, but was eight months pregnant and unable to take it.

In April, she will be able to place her baby in the mission’s daycare and then plans on finding a job, with hopes of moving her family into a permanent home by July.