Housing was chosen again at the ISAAC Issues Convention on October 26, 2017, after a hiatus of two years.  All these housing experts spoke asking for housing to be chosen:

• Open Doors KalamazooDeputy Director Stephanie Hoffman
• Housing Resources, Inc.Program Director Jennifer Welles
• City of Kalamazoo Community DevelopmentManager Dorla Bonner
• Kalamazoo County Public Housing CommissionChair David Anderson

These experts said that ISAAC‘s way of working is needed again on housing. There is a gap of 3000 affordable units in our community, and there were 176 children at the Gospel Mission one night last summer!  ISAAC is needed because we bring people together to discern and support new solutions to create equity and build the Beloved Community.

The new Housing Task Force educated itself on which agencies do which housing work and which bodies have power over which housing policies, then began having one-on-one conversations with the housing experts they need to know. They began giving out “Landlords Needed” information, to find more rental units for families funded by the successful “Vote Yes for Kids” millage. They researched and began giving support for Inclusionary Housing—which means giving incentives to developers who include some Workforce Housing units in their new market-rate housing developments. Inclusionary Housing is successful in 500 communities at reversing the long history of federal housing policies that have caused concentrated poverty, housing segregation and inequity, across the US and in our community.