We are a community collaborative of over 70 organizations. The Coalition is charged with implementing our community’s Vision to End Homelessness, a document that was created through a two-year community-wide planning process and released in 2006.

Often referred to as “the Vision”, this document lays out our community’s plan to reframe the response to homelessness. It focuses on prevention, rapidly re-housing people in the midst of crisis, and transforming the system so more people can find and maintain affordable housing. Click here to download the complete Vision to End Homelessness (PDF).

While the Coalition is its own entity, it is not an independent 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. The Salvation Army is the employer of record for the Coalition, and is a core partner in this effort.

More than 200 organizations have been part of the Grand Rapids Area Coalition to End Homelessness over the past four years, and over 600 individuals participated in the initial planning process that created the Vision to End Homelessness. As the work continues, more people and organizations will need to be engaged to build awareness about this work. If you are interested in learning more or getting involved, please join us.

There are four staff members dedicated to this work: a coordinator, systems analyst, Housing Management Information System administrator, and an affordable housing advocate.

Our work in Grand Rapids is not being done in isolation. In fact, it is highly connected to a national movement that believes ending homelessness begins with putting housing first. Our community’s Vision to End Homelessness is one of over 300 similar plans that have been created in communities nationwide, and many of these communities are connected through the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Furthermore, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires communities to have a Housing Continuum of Care to allocate funds on a local level and conduct planning activities related to homelessness and housing services. The Coalition is designated as the Housing Continuum of Care for Grand Rapids, Wyoming, and Kent County.

The Coalition also acts as the housing sub-committee of the Essential Needs Task Force, a group that has been organized through Kent County for almost 30 years to ensure the essential needs of housing, transportation, utilities, food and economic/workforce development are addressed across our community.

While a significant amount of work has already been done, there is much more needed to help create broader awareness and momentum for the mission of ending homelessness. Recognizing this, the Coalition created Roofs to Roots as an identity and umbrella under which it could implement the remaining years of the Vision.

Through Roofs to Roots, the Coalition will engage service providers, business and community leaders, and others in reframing the response to homelessness. This next phase of work will build awareness, provide education and training, share success stories, and help make connections that influence funding and decision-making surrounding the homeless system.

The short answer is housing. It may seem like an obvious response, but it is one that has a big impact on how Kent County’s homeless system works. It’s a system that has an annual budget of over $28 million, of which only 5% was historically spent on homeless prevention and rent assistance, but we are working to change that.

Our system is essentially shifting from managing homelessness to housing people. Traditionally, people in a housing crisis found a one-size-fits-all approach when they came to the homeless system. They might have been placed in a shelter, in a short-term program, or provided one-time financial assistance. While this help is right for some households, it is not for others.

In fact, in many cases a household’s roadblock is affordability. On average, people entering the Kent County homeless system can pay more than 50% of their income toward housing, while only 30% is considered affordable. In 2009, only 18% of people entering the homeless system required temporary shelter—meaning the majority needed assistance to find or maintain affordable housing.

Therefore, our homeless system is going beyond emergency response and also focusing on affordable, quality, permanent housing. Not only does this approach help end homelessness, it is a better use of our system’s resources and is healthier for people. Affordable, quality, and permanent housing does more than put a roof over someone’s head. It empowers them and ensures they have the stability needed to grow strong roots in our community.

With the old approach, a household in crisis would have entered the homeless and had limited options, including shelter placement, housing counseling, or access to one-time prevention assistance. In many cases if the household went into a shelter, they did not leave for permanent housing after 30 days.

Our system continues to get stronger as the Vision to End Homelessness is implemented. Today households in crisis are directed to a central point of intake called the Housing Assessment Program. Housing Assessment Program staff provide the coordinated and centralized intake, as well as assessment and referral for all individuals or families who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless in Grand Rapids and Kent County. The staff assesses the individual household's situation and housing-related needs, then refers them to resources or services in the community as appropriate or as they are available.

The household is sometimes connected with resources to remain in their current housing, sometimes they are assisted in being re-housed in a more affordable place, and only when they have no other options, they are connected with a shelter or safety net for a temporary stay. Following changes in how our homeless system works, less than 18% of households required this last option in 2009.

Please contact the Housing Assessment Program at (616) 454-5840. You can call for an appointment or walk in during business hours: 8:30am-4:30pm M-F. After hours, please call 2-1-1.

There are many opportunities to get involved with the Coalition and our partners. To learn more and take the first step in getting involved, please complete this form.

The Coalition’s primary goal is to reduce the number of people who enter the system as homeless. We are working to achieve this by making the shift from simply managing homelessness to housing people. This involves prevention efforts, rapid re-housing of people in the midst of a housing crisis, and long-term changes to the structure of the system itself.

Coalition partners are engaged in all of these activities, and they also share data about the local homeless population and how they are being assisted. Using this data, the Coalition evaluates its success based on the following indicators:

• Increase the number of people who are prevented from becoming homeless due to prevention or early intervention assistance
• Reduce the number of households that re-enter the homeless system (using measures of within 12 months, 24 months and 36 months) post-assistance
• Reduce the length of homelessness for households in the system (i.e., those in safety net, emergency shelter, transitional housing, or those with a housing crisis)
• Increase the number of households that exit the homeless system without an extreme housing burden (less than 50% of income spent on housing)
• Increase the number of households exiting homelessness into affordable, sustainable, permanent housing
• Maintain housing for six months or more, with the long term goal being to maintain housing for 12 months or more

In addition to these general indicators, the Coalition pays special attention to three sub-groups of people with special needs as it relates to homelessness: the chronically homeless, homeless Veterans, and homeless families. Each of these groups is monitored, with the goal being to reduce experiences of homelessness in each category.

The Coalition is its own entity but it is housed within The Salvation Army. We are located at 1130 Monroe NW in Grand Rapids.