by David Alexander

WALKING ACROSS A makeshift bridge that straddles Malletts Creek, there’s not much to see in a 2.5-acre section of woods behind 3501 Stone School Road; there is little more than scrub, bushes and trees. But the members of Michigan Itinerant Shelter System Independent Out of Necessity (MISSION) of Ann Arbor see more than that.

They have a vision.

Behind the grape-colored Mercy House, a haven for Ann Arbor’s homeless population, Tate Williams and the other MISSION members envision more comprehensive housing for a segment of the population they see as largely marginalized. Plans to erect a tent city that will eventually evolve into a tiny house community are in the works. Before that can happen though, the city council would need to rezone the area as a planned urban development district (PUD), something Williams said has come before the council and MISSION could see movement on soon.

The tiny house movement has gained traction in recent years. The homes are similar to camping cabins, having floor plans with a couple hundred square feet. Mercy House and the area MISSION members plan to use for tiny houses is an iteration of Camp Take Notice, a Wagner Road tent city shut down by the city in 2012. Like any democratic enclave, Mercy House has rules.

According to a 2011 report from the Washtenaw Housing Alliance ($276,000 in public contributions, according to most recent federal tax return), substance abuse is the No. 1 reason people fall into homelessness. Mercy House policy bans alcohol and drugs from the grounds. Williams said MISSION works to remove the stigma from being homeless, striving to make people realize that most homeless people do not revel in their status.

“There is a point where enough is enough. Your body doesn’t hold up to being homeless,” Williams said. “Sooner or later you are going to realize this isn’t a retirement plan.”

Williams, 47, is far from the mentally ill alcoholic that has become the go-to stereotype for many who do not understand homelessness. A former Marine, Williams came to Ann Arbor in 2008 with his family to study medicine at the University of Michigan. He remained here to fight for custody of his now-14-year-old daughter. Without a support network, he was forced into homelessness. After his daughter’s mother died of breast cancer, he gained custody of his daughter, Amanda. She now lives in Monroe with Williams’ mother.

Although he rents an apartment through a voucher program, Williams said he still considers himself homeless.

A Tyvek curtain hangs over a section of the house Williams is working to convert into a kitchen. Having picked up some building trades skills earlier in life, Williams does a lot of the infrastructure work at Stone School Road. Another portion of the home is going to be a shower area.

The plan is to provide a central area where those living on the property behind the house can come and shower and get fed in a timely manner. On a given day, Williams said between six and 10 people call Mercy House home. On Sundays, the house is the site of a dinner and meeting to discuss issues facing Ann Arbor’s homeless population.

According to a 2013 report conducted by the Washtenaw Housing Alliance and Washtenaw County Office of Community and Economic Development, the number of chronically homeless people doubled between 2011 and 2013. On average, each year there are between 3,000 and 4,000 homeless in the county.

MISSION is a non-profit, and the organization does not accept public money. Williams said doing so would place too many restrictions on what the group can accomplish. Its main goal is to provide peer support and organize the homeless population to make it easier for other groups to provide services. MISSION also has plans to offer substance abuse and psychiatric services.

Part of the problem with service organizations in the area, Williams said, is that once an organization agrees to aid a homeless person, that person become what he called a captive client — meaning other organizations are unable to provide that person services. With MISSION acting as the case worker, it could be a bridge between homeless people and service providers, taking on homeless people as clients and allowing them to avail themselves to all the services available to them.

“We as MISSION fill a niche that affordable housing can’t,” Williams said. “Nobody want to live in a tent.”

As with any pervasive problem, money is always an issue. In June, the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded Washtenaw County $2 million in grants to help alleviate homelessness.

Jennifer Hall, executive director of the Ann Arbor Housing Commission, said although that grant money, which averages between $50,000 and nearly $67,000 per homeless person in the county, is enough to buy every homeless person a house, doing so isn’t a viable solution. First, there is simply not many homes for sale in Ann Arbor, she said. Buying homes for the homeless does little to alleviate the underlying cause of homelessness.

“As a homeowner, I sink a nice chunk of my paycheck into maintaining my home every year,” Hall said. “If a private philanthropist wanted to go out and buy up all these houses and give them out to people who are homeless, I think you would find that  housing would not be able to maintained over time.”

Getting a handle on the true cost of homelessness in the county is difficult, Hall said. When a homeless person has needs, it isn’t always groups specifically devoted to helping the homeless that addresses those needs. The police department and sheriff’s office spend money dealing with the homeless, as do hospitals.

Aubrey Patino, director of tenant programs at Avalon Housing ($1.22 million in public contributions, according to most recent federal tax return), one of the organizations that receive HUD grant money, said homelessness is a symptom of the larger issue of poverty. However, that said, the system often overestimates the amount of help homeless people need, she said. Roughly 20 percent of the homeless population use 80 percent of the resources, she added.

“It’s not easy to be chronically homeless. A lot of things have to be really messed up in your life for that to happen,” Patino said.

And then there’s the politics of homelessness. Not everybody agrees on the best solution on how to deal with homelessness. Next door to Mercy House, a yard sign expresses support for Stephen Kunselman’s vie for mayor. Kunselman, D-Ward 3, sits on the Ann Arbor City Council and is one of four candidates for the open mayoral race August 5. Around the house, Kunselman’s name isn’t exactly music to at least some of the residents’ ears.

At a mayoral forum on affordable housing July 15, Kunselman and the other Democratic candidates—Sally Petersen, Ward 2, Sabra Briere, Ward 1, and Christopher Taylor, Ward 3 —expressed their thoughts on how to best address the issue of homelessness and affordable housing. The forum was standing room only at St. Clare’s Episcopal Church/TBE. Dozens of attendees wore stickers that read “End homelessness now.”

Despite grumbling from the crowd, Kunselman repeatedly expressed his desire to strike a balance between laws that preclude the homeless from living on public land — something homeless advocates refer to as criminalization of status — and the stigmatization of the homeless.

“As mayor, I am not about to point fingers and tell the police department what to do,” Kunselman said. “When people are camping on city property, that is not something we can look the other way on … we cannot go back to a day and time when people were living in substandard conditions.”

Briere said the problem has to do with a lack of money for support services for the homeless, adding that if we as a community don’t put money into the areas we claim are priorities, those areas are not really priorities. However, Briere said a dedicated funding stream requires a dedicated revenue stream, which is subject to political climate. She suggested that a small millage could provide the needed money, but she added that as mayor she couldn’t promised dedicated funding unless the city can come up with a more innovative way of generating money. She did not elaborate on what she means by “innovative.”

Conversely, Petersen said she believes the best solution to homelessness is job creation. She suggested that public-private partnerships could allow private money to fund people taking homeless people under their wings for a year or so in order to allow the homeless person to gain job skills and build a resume. Both Hart-Petersen and Taylor said they would support an increase in PUD zoning, but Kunselman countered, noting that PUDs are zoning code not building code.

He commented further, saying that several financial endeavors have been bungled and that a lot of public money could be better spent on helping alleviate homelessness. Effort to work harder to turn over properties to Habitat for Humanity would greatly help matters, he said.

Many of the candidates stressed increasing availability and knowledge of public services for the homeless.

The Delonis Center, a county homeless shelter, is one such service. But the pervading sentiment about the Delonis Center at Mercy House is less than favorable. Gordon Smith, 40, sat under a pavilion at Mercy House as the wind buffeted the trees nearby; his face turned sour when the conversation steered toward the Delonis Center. He said because he is not an alcoholic or drug addict, finding places that offer him services is difficult.

“I got more help in the county jail than I did at the Delonis Center,” he said. (Delonis Shelter is known officially as the Shelter Association of Washtenaw County, $2.59 million in public contributions according to most recent income tax return.)

Williams said many of those who come to Mercy House —those like Smith—have negative feelings toward the Delonis Center, but that Mercy House bears the shelter no ill will and works with its staff whenever possible. However, he said, the concerns expressed by Mercy House residents stems from what he called a “cookie-cutter” approach to treatment of the underpinnings of homelessness.

What Williams envisions for the newest iteration of Camp Take Notice is a central place with specialized services where resources aren’t duplicated or wasted. Once a cultural shift takes place, one where the stigma of being homeless is removed and the homeless population work toward their own cause, the real work of addressing homeless can begin.

“We understand that people can’t just do whatever they choose,” Williams said. “They have a social responsibility.”

That cultural shift looms larger than any political maneuvering that might take place, he said. Waking people up to the reality surrounding the issue of homelessness is the real barrier, not the political climate. Until then, all Williams and other MISSION members can do is fight the good fight.

And wait.