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A weekly show from the folks at East Lansing Info breaking down all the news and happenings in East Lansing, Michigan.
WDBM East Lansing.
Speaker 2:This is East Lansing insider brought to you by ELI on impact eighty nine FM. In this show, we break down all of the news and happenings in the East Lansing community. And now, today's East Lansing insider.
Speaker 1:Hi, everyone. I'm East Lansing info's deputy editor, Annalise Nichols. And on this week's episode of East Lansing insider, we're going to be talking about conversations happening right now in East Lansing city government. A city council has been considering for weeks bans on camping and loitering that numerous residents, researchers, and local advocates have railed against, decrying the proposed bans as cruel policy that would disproportionately impact unhoused residents and effectively create a citywide ban on poverty. During the most recent city council meeting, members of the public spoke for more than two hours about their concerns for the proposed ordinances, which if violated, we carry up 30 of incarceration and hundreds of dollars of fines.
Speaker 1:Amongst these community members standing in opposition of the band, executive director of the Tenant Resource Center of Mid Michigan, Khadija Erickson, has been a frequent speaker at city council meetings. And so I'm happy to have Khadija here on East Lansing Insider, and I'll yield the floor to you, Khadija.
Speaker 3:Actually, I would like to let you know something that I haven't really seen people talking about, but I know they say that they introduced these specific ordinances in December, which is true. You got the language of that. But actually, they were brought forward in November at a downtown planning commission meeting
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:Where Jen Brown talked about that. I feel like that's, like, actually really important component of the story because that shows you that it's also, like, coming in tandem with the changes towards pretextual stops and and the noise ordinance as well. All of those work together in such a way that, you know, it's it feels very targeted, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:It it does given the the things you and others have talked about at city council. And I Yeah. Feel free to Yeah. Explain that to listeners.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, when you consider the the three of those things together and then you think about, like, just the history of East Lansing and who is going to be impacted and most affected by these types of rules, I mean, quickly see how it spirals out of out of control and when you have a police chief who makes comments about minorities bringing crime and things of that nature and and doing all sorts of all sorts of really, in my opinion, strange and untoward things for someone who's supposed to be the chief of police, knowing that currency, their main currency is the trust of the communities that people are willing to call to rely on you to respond when they need help. And to have this camping ban coming as a recommendation from chief Jen Brown in addition with the pretextual stops and and a few other things, it just it feels not great to put it politely.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So back in early November last year, ELPD chief Jen Brown presented these findings to the Downtown Development Authority. They were from a group of city leaders that convened to come up with solutions to what they considered the city's safety problems. And amongst those ideas that were presented to the DDA was the idea of repealing elements of the city's pretextual stops ordinance, which basically bans law enforcement from initiating a traffic stop for matters that don't pose a danger to the public or grossly violate the law. Local governments across the country in recent years have implemented restrictions on pretextual stops as there is research and tragic news stories where people of color are subject to these stops at disproportionate rates, these interactions with law enforcement can turn lethal.
Speaker 1:Brown brought this and several other measures to the city council following the DDA meeting, including now what we're dealing with, these camping and loitering bans.
Speaker 3:It felt odd to have especially this most recent city council meeting, just to hear them refer to the the two day meeting that East Lansing hosted with service providers who are mostly from Lansing to talk about how to tackle the the homelessness and housing crisis. And if you can imagine, not a single one of us ever suggested a camping ban.
Speaker 1:I was gonna ask because I've I've heard from the Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness, the reality of at these city council meetings, I have not heard a single organization helping organization with housing or homelessness say that they have greenlit this these ordinances, which coalition and homelessness iterated the same thing that this is not something that any organization they know of in in in helping, you know, the issue of of homelessness would would recommend?
Speaker 3:No. Because when you criminalize homelessness, you actually put people further away. When you criminalize homelessness, you actually put people, like, further away from housing because when landlords do background checks, when they do when they look into you as a potential tenant, they're able to see all these things. And if there's a gap in between the last rental you have and applying for this one, I mean, it's does it's not rocket science to put two and two together to see that you're getting nuisance violations. That's what I call ticketing someone for lying or sleeping down, trespassing people from public parks, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3:Those are nuisance violations. Those are punishments for someone engaging in in in conduct that they need to do to survive. You can't walk twenty four seven. You need to be able to sit down and rest yourself. You cannot be awake twenty four seven.
Speaker 3:You need to be able to lay down and rest your eyes. Rest is so important because it allows your brain to repair, your body to rest and repair so that you can get up and go about the next day. People also need to be able to have the freedom of choice to remain in their community. Right? I feel like one thing that we do not talk about is that because none of the resources are in East Lansing, anybody who finds themselves unhoused in East Lansing and isn't able to just immediately go into, like, another form of housing, they have to exit East Lansing, their community, where their support system is, where their people are, in order to seek out these resources.
Speaker 3:And I think that's totally unfair. That's totally unfair. You should be able to seek out the resources you need within the community that you live, the place that you choose to be. I think that I think naturally people tend to believe that their communities just have this abundance of resources and infrastructure in place in order to care for the people around them, and that is generally just not the case. And even when that infrastructure was built at one point, it's likely underfunded.
Speaker 3:For instance, Haven House is a wonderful organization. I think they're great. I I always love seeing their progress updates online, but they only are able to support, you know, about seven families or so at a time.
Speaker 1:Families too as well. They're not that's one of the Yeah. Big points is it's not catered towards individual residents. It's a family shelter.
Speaker 3:Exactly. And that that's a huge gap in East Lansing, the fact that there are no general use emergency shelters. There are emergency shelters in East Lansing, but they are for specific populations, which is okay. Those people need to have their, you know, a space that's set up for them, and thinking about their situations so that they can move through that. But also, they're a general population of people who also need a space to be where they can access resources potentially and just not be exposed to the elements.
Speaker 3:And so, again, I just no one who does anything with housing, no one who is involved in housing advocacy, Anyone who's experienced homelessness themselves is never going to say, yes, please ban public camping. Because we all understand that that's not an appropriate approach, especially if the goal is to actually house people. We have to be doing things in a way that's housing centered so that we can get people into a place to stabilize. We're always talking about how people need to get a job. They need to go to treatment.
Speaker 3:They need to get a hold of their mental health. And how can you do that when you don't even have a stable place to lay your head each night? A place to go to that is your own with a door that you can lock and secure yourself and belongings behind and decompress, wash the day off your body, all the things that house people take for granted or and are able to engage in, generally speaking, so that they can get up and do it the next day. When I was unhoused, my mental health was terrible. I was all over the place, emotionally dysregulated, really having a hard time maintaining connections and things of that nature.
Speaker 3:Once my housing situation stabilized, I was able to think about, well, what kind of mental health programs are actually available to me? I know I can't do inpatient hospitalization. It's not gonna work for me. What other programs exist? And so then I was able to go to a doctor and tell them that I'm having these issues, and they were able to point me in the direction to go for a partial hospitalization program so I could get the mental health care I needed and also go home at the end of the night or at well, it wasn't nighttime.
Speaker 3:In the afternoon. But that wasn't something I was able to ever consider without a stabilized housing situation. My focus was primarily focused on how can I get through the day, how can I make sure that where I'm at is gonna be alright for me and be here tomorrow? Those those take priority and precedent. I cannot it's hard to explain just how much tends to fall into place when you do have just your own space.
Speaker 3:Whether that's in a co op, whether it's your own apartment, whatever it is, just having a space that is yours really changes the game for people and how they're able to prioritize their everyday life. They can consider those things. And I know that this isn't East Lansing, but I think that this is really illustrative of the point I'm trying to make. When they displaced the fallen angels encampment in East or it's not East Lansing, in North Lansing.
Speaker 1:Which is our neighbor. Like, the Yeah. It's I know it and I I don't mean to interrupt you. Yeah. But there's this conversation of, like, oh, like, there was there was listed resources of of of who law enforcement and and responders are going to refer, unhoused individuals to to vacate public premises to to go to.
Speaker 1:Only one of them, as we've said, is in East Lansing. The rest are Lansing. Exactly. It's the same population. So sorry.
Speaker 3:It is the same. And so when they displace those people, you know, we are sad that their community was broken up in that way. Their possessions destroyed and removed from from where they were. But on the flip side, they were most of them were able to transition into a hotel where they've been at for roughly six weeks now. And in that time, all of those people have used it to do all sorts of things.
Speaker 3:You know, it took a couple weeks for people to, like, kinda settle in and it to sink in really that they were gonna be here for a little bit and that people were working to extend that time beyond the six weeks because, obviously, if we could have found them housing in six weeks, we would have done that so long ago. But everybody has used that time to prioritize differently. Rather than being solely focused on how to get through the day, people are going to doctor's appointments. Some of them have sought out employment. Some of them, you know, have tried to reconnect with family members and see what that is like, you know.
Speaker 3:Not everybody is from the Lansing area, and they wanna return back to, you know, the city that they're from. And so when we allow people stabilization in the way of providing housing that is theirs and insecure, then we can see humans make different decisions. And please do not hear better or worse. All I'm saying is different decisions because everybody's journey is different. My job is to support them in achieving their goals.
Speaker 3:Right? It's not to coerce any certain type of behavior. It is just to help create the conditions for them to have the opportunity to make a different choice. That is the whole crux of harm reduction, is just being able to make a different choice because the resources are available to you to do that. And one of those resources is housing.
Speaker 3:The closer we can get to housing actually being a human, right, rather than just like this kitschy phrase we throw around every now and again, the better. We need to be looking back into socialized housing. I know it's a big scary word, but I would put forth to everybody, we have never ever done public housing correctly, appropriately, with dignity and respect that the people who would live there deserved. It was always intended to be a punishment for people. That's why the project housing in Chicago looks like a prison.
Speaker 3:If you've ever looked on the inside of those places, they are they look remarkably like a jail or a prison. So what I'm saying is that we've never done it correctly. We've always had the idea, the theory behind, like, what social housing could be, but we've never actually put it in practice because we've always been dealing with racism, bigotry, xenophobia, worry that my slice of the pie is gonna be slightly smaller, even homeowners. As a homeowner myself, I am imploring you all to consider socialized housing. Will my property value go down a little bit?
Speaker 3:Yes. But what is the trade off? My neighbors are inside. That is worth it. I'm still gonna be able to sell my house.
Speaker 3:I'm not going to sell my house and move into socialized housing and that's not the expectation that people would then sell their property and all move into the apartment complex on the block. That's not that's not realistic. And it's not realistic that everybody that goes into socialized housing is gonna stay there forever, but it should be an option for the people who do want to be there because they found community there. That's where they want to be. It's affordable for them, you know.
Speaker 3:Encouraging people who are of mixed incomes to live amongst each other is the way that we break down all of these barriers that we see. This is a pathway to neighborhood stabilization. This is a pathway to stabilizing our community as a whole, you know. I'm a kid of the nineties, so I remember what it was like, you know, just seeing kids playing in the neighborhood. And while that's not disappeared, I think that that's like a crazy myth that people keep saying that there's no kids playing in the neighborhood.
Speaker 3:That's not true. I will say that it's much more displaced than it used to be. It used to be like we're traveling like, you know, two, three blocks maybe further to go to our friend's house that's still in the neighborhood, and you knew these kids all throughout your elementary years, maybe even middle school and sometimes even in through high school, but we've seen a shortening of that. And some of that is linked to people not being able to maintain stable housing. I have five children who are all in the school system.
Speaker 3:None of them have been able to keep a friend throughout each year of school because people keep moving. They have to go switch to a different school district or they're moving out of state because where they need to go for affordable housing just isn't here. Right? And that's a huge problem. What kind of impact is that going to have on this next generation of children and what it means for making friends?
Speaker 3:How are they experiencing permanency in their friendships and relationships when the people that they're building all of these experiences with are gone. You know what I'm saying? That affects adults. When an adult is, quote unquote, abandoned in a way that they don't get closure on, some of us spiral. It really deeply affects us.
Speaker 3:And so what what how is that impacting our own children? So the impact is so much more than just than just the ban, you know what I mean? Or even just the displacement, like, the impact on our community really does ripple. You know, people go in and out of homelessness. I'm someone who has gone in and out of homelessness.
Speaker 3:And so, you know, I got lucky, I guess, in that the places that I experienced homelessness, Sacramento, California, and Lansing, Michigan had the resources in the community that I was in to help me get out. Right? So I didn't have to leave. But there are plenty of people, and it's not just East Lansing, I'm thinking of the folks in DeWitt, the people in Diamond Dale, Bath, Eaton Rapids, Charlotte, you know. Where are they having to go?
Speaker 3:Some of these people are having to travel an hour. And if you're car camping and we and that I don't even think that's come up in the camping ban situation. How many people are going to their only mode of transportation to get to the shower where they're able to maintain a gym membership so that they can keep their job and their whole life is in their car? How many of those are gonna get towed? And then those people, where are they supposed to go?
Speaker 3:How do they maintain their job and their life to get themselves back on track? That's what they were trying to do and it was taken from them. And now they have a misdemeanor and a fine on top of that? Like, we really are not considering like how impactful these things are. $200 is nothing to me because I have an income.
Speaker 3:And I know that I will be able to replace that $200 in the future. These folks don't have that because they can't even guarantee that their camping spot will still be there when they come back from the appointments that they have to go to in Lansing and then come back to East Lansing. Right? They have to hope that the police didn't discover their camp spot and destroy it in their absence. And now they have nothing that they need to survive the night.
Speaker 3:No tent, no sleeping bag, no blankets, any vital documents they had in there are gone, medication. People have mentioned ashes, photos. One time I've gone through and I came across somebody's collection of Elvis DVDs, you know. I feel like people have this idea that the folks outside are there because they want to and I just I cannot tell you enough, every single one of them intends to go back inside. It may not be back inside the same four walls you and I recognize, but they certainly intend to be inside to be stable, to have a life in which they're able to enjoy things again.
Speaker 3:Every single one of them. Every single one of them. Even the ones who are like, I basically wanna become a homesteader, you know, if you could just please help me get some land, can build my own spot, just let me be. Those people are telling you that they intend to go inside. They are not telling you they intend to just be in the camps forever.
Speaker 3:They're in the camps because that's where safety exists, and right now, that's where they can be. If we made it easier for folks who want to exist in a way that is more like homesteading, a path for them to exist that way, that would be wonderful. There would be singles and couples who take that up because that is how they want to go. Not everybody finds the same luxury luxury. You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 3:And so there are lots of ways to get people towards housing, is what I'm trying to, I guess, get across to everybody. Everybody. Everybody deserves to be inside. All of them want to go inside. And it's incumbent upon us as community members to ensure that we're working together collaboratively to establish those pathways.
Speaker 3:Right? Because if we wanna go to Downtown East Lansing and, you know, drink and have fun and not feel bad because we see someone panhandling because now we're forced with this discomfort of the fact that not everybody is economically prosperous in East Lansing, then you need to make everybody prosperous in East Lansing. Right? If the problem is visibility, don't push them to Lansing, provide the housing and get them inside of there. There are service providers from Lansing who will service the folks in East Lansing.
Speaker 3:We will come to their home. Let's provide it. Right? And so, you know, I feel like everybody has said a lot about the camping ban and everything's really great, especially about the the legal aspect of things and the fact that this, you know, East Lansing again is just I mean, I think they just enjoy being sued. Maybe they like the legal fight.
Speaker 3:I don't know. But, yeah, I really don't know what else to say because it just to me, it feels very obvious that we would not have a camping ban. It's almost insulting that they would consider it at all as an option to bring forth. I understand that they have their own policies and procedures. This is not the time in which you keep your mouth shut.
Speaker 3:Right? You're talking about displacing and turning some of these people, like, if this camping ban goes through because people just don't have a place to go, the shelters are full in Lansing, right, they're gonna have to come back, they're gonna get multiple violations, sometimes these rack up into felonies. And then what? Like, what are we asking of our unhoused folks? Like, what are we really asking of them to continue to give up?
Speaker 3:We keep taking and taking and taking. It's not like, you know, we're dumping tons of money into fixing the problem. We're dumping a ton of money into new developments for WorkForks housing because we want new people to come in. We don't want to take care of the people that are here. I think about the MSU students who are working so hard to get their degrees and how they can't stay here and give us their talent, give us their time, give us their effort, make our community better and stronger because they're sharing with us their talents and their and all of that, they have to go elsewhere.
Speaker 3:What are we doing? We talk about brain drain, but what about our young folks? Right? We're developing housing that has all of these, like, coffee shops and, like, little boutique spots in it And those folks who would live there can't afford to be here. So, like, who is moving in?
Speaker 3:I'm so curious to know. The folks from out of state who are not the young professionals you're trying to attract, I just I'm so confused about everything that's happening there. I am so confused. I'm confused about how you know, and I could talk about this for hours, honestly, but I just like, there's so many ramifications for this, for the unhoused MSU students. Right?
Speaker 3:Where are they supposed to go? Right? If you ship them to Lansing, how are they getting to classes? We are impacting people's ability to do what they're trying to do. They are they are registered to classes
Speaker 1:and still thugging it out while they're unhoused. That's an interesting point because even though we've had MSU students come to these meetings, because there's been several meetings about this. Sorry. This is such a random point.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:There's on campus, like, you can see there's web pages at MSU dedicated for unhoused students. So much like, the university has web pages of, like, how unhoused students can get resources. And you and I think a lot of the people coming into these meetings talk about all the misconceptions we have about, unhoused individuals. Something I don't think I've actually heard at a city council meeting since we talked about this despite the presence of the MSU students is the fact whatever image you have, it can also be a 20 year old individual seeking a higher education degree.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's just that's just one type of person that has found themselves to be unhoused. There's all sorts of of people that they just you mentioning them, like, I've seen the web page of like, here's the resources for unhoused MSU students.
Speaker 3:So it's just, you know, everybody anybody could be homeless. Anybody. Everybody. And so, you know, the impact will be felt across the board. It'll be it'll impact our young people and their ability to continue their education.
Speaker 3:It'll impact our working people and their ability to maintain their jobs, which means they're no longer paying local taxes because they lost their job. They were a contributing member. They were doing everything they could. They just could not afford the housing around them. That's not a crime.
Speaker 3:That is not a crime.
Speaker 1:Can I ask about what some of the recent work has looked like for you at the Mid Michigan Tenant Resource Center? It sounded like you had mentioned that you all or or just this, you know, nebulous of of housing advocates have been very involved in the fallen angels encampment, getting people connected to resources. What is recent look recent work look like for for you and other housing advocates, especially in the context of and as many have mentioned at the city council meetings, camping and loitering ban comes amidst a particularly harsh winter in Michigan.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So over the last, I don't know, three weeks or so, it's been a lot of showing up at city council meetings, having meetings with other, like, service providers to try and, evenly distribute resources and a lot of direct outreach to the camps themselves, not just in Lansing, trying to find them in East Lansing, Okemos, Diamond Dale, you name it, and making sure that if they if they wanted to go to a warming shelter that we could get them a ride there just so that, you know, it's you're making the decision now. Let's go, you know, while you're still there. Or if they chose to stay, which some people do for a myriad of reasons, was to make sure that they had the resources that they needed to survive. So that was sub zero, like, I think it was they were rated for, like, negative 20 degrees, sleeping bags, wool blankets, socks, gloves, hats, hand warmers, foot warmers.
Speaker 3:We brought out hot food. We would go out at night. So, you know, between, like, eight and I think one night we were out there until two in the morning looking for folks. But, yeah, it I mean, it was just, like, what can how can we resource them in this moment right now to keep them alive? We know that they are gonna need, obviously, survival supplies like the things I I I listed, but also they need carbs, they need calories because shivering burns a lot of calories.
Speaker 3:If you're burning energy, you know, that's not really great. Trying to get them tarps and stuff so that you can try and insulate and things of that nature. So that's really what the work has looked about and also trying to, like, have conversations more directly with the powers that be. Because Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness and the ACLU have been able to make contact with city council, I feel like they have that pretty well wrapped up. And so I have been able to focus a lot of my conversations with the folks here in Lansing and how we can better operate.
Speaker 3:I feel like, you know, from Lansing's perspective, at least in the conversation I'm having, we're thinking more broadly about, like, how can we have more cooperation? How can we be working together to better respond in coordination when code blues happen so that it's not like a last minute scramble to make sure we have enough space for everybody who may or may not be coming to Lansing to seek out warmth. And, you know, one of the things that we had talked about, you know, not extensively, but it came up very briefly because of how long the cold snap was long lasting was, you know, what if we experience a grid failure and now we have all these house people that also need to get to a warming center and all we have really is let's at the time. And like, you know, the regular I think Holy Cross was also operating as a twenty four seven warming shelter, which was would have been great to know from the beginning. It just wasn't heavily advertised.
Speaker 3:And so but and not just Lansing, but like how can we encourage like more pro activity from East Lansing? It's great and wonderful that they were able to put folks up into hotel rooms during the code blue over there, and I think that's that's great. I hope that that's something that they consider to do the next time. I think I heard Elaine Hardy say that it cost the city $7,200 to house, what was it, 33 individuals? I don't remember the number precisely.
Speaker 3:It was something like that. But that's great. That seems like a very small price to pay to make sure that people are surviving and aren't being mutilated through exposure to the cold. Because that's the other thing. Even though people don't die necessarily in our region because thankfully there are enough people taking the time to resource the ones who will not go.
Speaker 3:You know, we mostly see cold injuries of frostbite on the feet and hands and, you know, other extremities like the nose and the cheeks sometimes. But even that's too high of a price to pay. And again, you know, I I know I'm being really repetitive, but the answer really is very simple. The way to end homelessness is to provide housing.
Speaker 2:East Lansing insider is brought to you by ELI on Impact eighty nine FM. We are on the web at East Lansing info news and impact89fm.org. Thanks for listening.