Homelessness Task Force Report
For the last year and a half I, and a team of other concerned citizens, have been investigating the homelessness crisis in Hillsdale County. This is what we learned.
Below is the report produced by the Hillsdale Homelessness Task Force created by Mayor Adam Stockford in February of 2023. I was the primary author of the report but the members on the Task Force unanimously approved the document. This report deals with conditions that are specific to southern Michigan but they reflect a wider reality. Our conclusions: that effectively addressing homelessness requires effective enforcement of the law and using a disciplined approach to offering aid.
Homelessness Task Force Report
May 7, 2024
Compiled by Secretary Josiah Lippincott
The homelessness crisis in Hillsdale is a choice.
Choices at the individual, city, county, state, and federal level brought us here. The good news is that because political choices exacerbated this crisis, political choices can significantly reduce it.
The only answer to the worsening homelessness crisis in our city is discipline. We need the political will to put the requisite solutions into practice.
Law and order are the necessary foundations of any attempt to reduce homelessness. Until the City of Hillsdale is able to consistently punish drug dealing, antisocial behavior, and petty criminality, there is little hope of any meaningful reduction in homelessness.
The population of homeless in Hillsdale can be divided into two groups: those who want to get help and those who reject assistance, whether due to significant mental health problems, substance abuse, or because they enjoy the freedom from social norms that living on the streets provides.
Without an aggressive use of the city’s police power, this antisocial homeless faction will continue to degrade the quality of life in our community by dragging others into the same cycle of despair. To have public order, we cannot allow this element to engage in public misbehavior like trespassing on public and private property, loitering in public spaces, littering, public drunkenness, drug use, and sex trafficking. These crimes make life much worse for the impoverished and the middle class alike.
Any solution to homelessness must focus on making Hillsdale a good place to live for the upright and decent people who call this city home. Hillsdale citizens, both poor and rich alike, deserve to have clean parks, safe streets, and orderly public spaces.
As it stands, the crisis of drug addiction and homelessness is especially harsh on the poor. Prostitution is an endemic feature of the drug dens within Hillsdale’s city limits. The victims of sex trafficking are often homeless, and the lack of law and order deeply harms the individuals victimized by these predatory criminals.
Moreover, the positive aid given to the homeless must actually help them. Aid that provides temporary relief without directing the recipient to become a productive and stable member of our community is a moral hazard that harms instead of helps. Instead of empowering struggling individuals to better themselves, this kind of aid softens the blow of bad decision-making. It is all too easy for the safety net to become a hammock.
It is good that individuals in our community feel charitable toward the homeless. It is imperative that we ensure that such aid, however, is being used in a maximally effective way.
Recommendations
In light of this reality, the task force recommends a two-pronged approach to the problem of homelessness concentrating on public order and effective assistance:
Public Order:
1.) Dramatically expand jail space at the county and, if need be, the city level in order to effectively punish antisocial behavior, especially drug dealing and sex trafficking.
2.) Revive the Drug Task Force to aggressively prosecute the illegal drug trade and shut down "drug dens" within the city.
Effective Assistance:
1.) Allow the creation of a full-time, transitional shelter, PROVIDED that it is not in a residential area, that it serves the citizens of our own community, that it works to address the underlying causes of homelessness, that it has a community service work or employment requirement, and that it maintains strict rules against misbehavior.
2.) Hold taxpayer funded social service organizations that operate in the city accountable for the effectiveness of their policies. We need clear metrics for success and a more aggressive approach in collecting much needed information on homelessness within the city.
History of the Task Force
We, the members of the Hillsdale City Homelessness Task Force, came to these conclusions after more than a year of investigation into the nature and scope of the homelessness crisis within the city.
Mayor Adam Stockford created the Homelessness Task Force in January of 2023. The first meeting was in February at the Community Action Agency headquarters. The Task Force began with 16 members; by the spring of 2024 only five individuals remained: Stephanie Stockford (Chair), Josiah Lippincott (Secretary), Jacob Bruns, Elizabeth Schlueter, and Casey Sullivan.
Below is a timeline of the Task Force’s meetings with public and private groups within Hillsdale City that deal directly with homelessness.
February 2023: Community Action Agency
March 2023: Penny Meyers of Share the Warmth
April 2023: Shannon Clevenger of Lifeways
August 2023: Pamela Cobb of the Salvation Army
September 2023: Missy DesJardins of Hillsdale Thrift Store and Sheriff Scott Hodshire
November 2023: Hillsdale County District Attorney Neal Brady
February 2023: Share the Warmth Shelter visit
There are other organizations involved with homelessness within the city beyond those listed here. Indeed, every non-profit and government entity that is involved in anti-poverty efforts, mental health, substance abuse, sexual violence, and crime generally will inevitably encounter homeless individuals.
In the course of our research, the Task Force has gained enough information to present a snapshot of homelessness within the city.
Understanding the Problem
First, what is homelessness? The federal government uses several technical legal definitions in order to determine who should receive federal aid.[1] We, however, will use a simple, encompassing, common-sense definition. A homeless individual is an impoverished person who does not rent, own a home, or otherwise have a consistent and stable living arrangement. An individual who sleeps on the street is obviously homeless, but so is a person who stays night to night in a hotel room paid for by a local charity or lives in a shelter. These latter persons might have a roof over their heads, but their situation is still precarious. A hotel room is not a home.
By this definition, there are, by our estimate, around 80 homeless people within Hillsdale City. Roughly 30-40 of these individuals are receiving some kind of aid and will work with those who want to help them. Another 20 are drug addicts who cannot be in a shelter environment without causing serious problems. Another 20 individuals will refuse all assistance simply. We should note here, that there are a number of homeless families in Hillsdale and that this number is growing. There are probably around a half dozen or so families that have been in a state of homelessness in the last year within the city. We must qualify these assertions by noting that getting an adequate census of the homeless population is not easy due to the lack of any kind of centralized record keeping among the various organizations and government entities dealing with the homeless in the Hillsdale area.
What we do know is that the homelessness problem in Hillsdale has skyrocketed in the last decade. By the summer of 2023, the number of encampments within the city had grown so large and were in such bad condition that a major community effort was launched to try and clean up these sites. That effort produced good results but it, in and of itself, could not solve the fundamental issues facing the city.
Drug addiction, economic problems, and the collapse of the American family are the leading causes of homelessness. In Hillsdale County, many of the factories that once served as the backbone of economic prosperity in the region have been outsourced to other parts of America or to foreign countries. The loss of those jobs did serious damage to the blue-collar and working-class community.
Poverty alone cannot explain the homelessness problem, however. A deeper spiritual crisis accompanied the economic decline in places like Hillsdale. Many Americans feel a loss of identity and authority. The older legal, social, and moral frameworks that defined American life are either gone or lack authority.
A sense of alienation and uprootedness, combined with poverty and violence, easily leads to despair and personal chaos. For individuals already near the fringe of society, the addition of this chaos is backbreaking and leads to a cycle of poverty and bad decision-making that make even the hope for a better life difficult to imagine.
Drug use, in particular, is a leading symptom of our spiritual and social chaos. Neal Brady, the District Attorney, reports that methamphetamines are as common today as marijuana was two decades ago. Brady estimates that 70% of crimes in Hillsdale are drug related. Brady also reports that most of the crimes committed in Hillsdale are by residents of the county. There is a consensus among law enforcement and aid workers that the overwhelming majority of the homeless here in Hillsdale are from the local area. At the very least, we can state that homelessness in Hillsdale is an organic problem.
Sheriff Scott Hodshire estimates that 15-20% of the inmates in the jail are homeless. Hodshire has room for 67 inmates in the jail for the entire county but averages 10-12 inmates over this limit. Moreover, he estimates that there are 450 open warrants by the Sheriff’s Department and another 450 by the State Police.
Some of the homeless that we have spoken with indicate that there are as many as 6 to 12 drug dens within the city limits. These “trap houses” are epicenters of drug addiction and sexual abuse. Addicts who cannot afford drugs often turn to prostitution, both male and female, in order to feed their habit.
A particularly horrific example is that of a young homeless woman in the city who was pimped out by her own family to a local drug den in return for drugs. This young woman has serious cognitive deficits as well as mental health issues. This individual and others like her are easily taken advantage of by predatory drug dealers and criminals.
What Has Been Done So Far
There is an entire complex of entities and well-meaning individuals that work with the homeless in some capacity in Hillsdale. These include, but are not limited to,
• Lifeways (a mental health education and behavior health care provider that predominantly receives federal funds from Medicaid)
• Salvation Army
• Drop-In Center (a Lifeways provider)
• Share the Warmth homeless shelter at Sozo Church
• Thrift Store homeless encampment
• Community Action Agency (predominantly federally funded)
• McKinney-Vento (a federally funded entity that works with homeless students)
Other organizations like King’s Kupboard (a food bank based out of Trinity Lutheran Church) and Key Opportunities (an organization that provides vocational training for individuals with disabilities) also have some contact with the homeless. All of these organizations collectively spend millions of dollars on anti-poverty, mental health, and homelessness projects within the County.
The Share the Warmth shelter operates on less than $50,000 a year and provides a place for as many as two dozen homeless to sleep at night during the winter. Share the Warmth does receive a subsidy by being able to use Sozo Church facilities at low to no cost. Share the Warmth has one paid employee: director Penny Meyers, who makes $15,000 a year. It also has several dozen volunteers who watch the residents of the shelter at night in order to ensure there is no misbehavior. Share the Warmth operates off of local donations.
The Salvation Army (SA) in Hillsdale has an annual budget of $1.2 million, with two full-time staff and two part-time staff. Salvation Army has a national structure, an effective fundraising operation, and receives corporate grants. SA does help pay utilities for some individuals during the winter and also provide direct food aid to the poor. They generally hand out about 150-175 boxes of food a month; during COVID that number went as high as 300. They also provide daily lunches. About half of the individuals who come in for those lunches do so every day. Kroger donates fresh produce three times a week. Pamela Cobb is the director.
The Community Action Agency, a federally funded entity engaged with, among other things, providing anti-poverty programs in Hillsdale County, has an annual Permanent Supportive Housing grant that pays $100,000 for rent and utility support to 11 households in Hillsdale on an annual basis. This grant provides another $80,000 in funding for security deposits to help impoverished individuals get into housing as well as funding for a full-time “Housing Advocate” who helps “offer intensive housing-focused case management to all in the program.” Another $8,500 dollars is spent on administrative costs associated with the grant.
CAA also receives another grant, the Hillsdale Emergency Solutions grant, which it uses to pay the bulk of the $41,000 per year salary of a “Housing Specialist” who does case management for the program. This grant provides $9,100 for individuals facing immediate risk of eviction and rapid rehousing funds of $15,200 for the literally homeless. It can fund 6 months of rent for four families. CAA also has a grant that provides housing assistance for 9 veterans in Hillsdale County.
The Hillsdale Thrift Store operates a homeless shelter that hosts roughly 10-20 individuals at a time. Missy DesJardins, the manager of the store and the encampment, reports that she has a work requirement for her facility and that she tests for drugs. She also reports that she works to have the homeless people in her charge acquire needed legal documents.
Activities Recovery Empowerment Inc. of Hillsdale and Jackson is a local peer-to-peer counseling and therapy non-profit whose goal is “helping people with mental health diagnoses attain their recovery goals.”[2] According to their most recent publicly released Form 990 filing with the IRS, the organization has an annual budget of $1.05 million. The organization’s CEO, Ann Monroe, made $38,000 that year. The organization made $880,000 in government contracts and another $150,000 in non-profit grants. ARE Inc. operates the Drop-In Center at the corner of Monroe and Hillsdale St. They also operate a similar facility in Jackson. ARE Inc. is closely allied with LifeWays which recognizes it as an official mental health provider.[3]
Lifeways is arguably the most important entity in regard to mental health in the county due to the size of its budget. Lifeways is a mental health provider service that operates in Jackson and Hillsdale counties. Lifeways, in FY2022, brought in $115 million in revenues.[4] The bulk of this money comes in the form of a “capitation” payment from Medicaid—money paid out by the federal government, based on population numbers, in anticipation of expenditures for mental health services. Lifeways also receives money from the state of Michigan’s Healthy Michigan program ($8 million) and from the State General Fund ($2.4 million). That is not all. In addition to this federal and state money, Lifeways also receives $800,000 a year collected from Hillsdale County residents due to a mental health millage that passed in 2018. LifeWays most recent report on its activities can be found at the following footnote.[5]
Ongoing Problems
Our current solutions to homelessness are not working.
Despite all of the non-profits, government entities, and individuals ostensibly engaged in combating poverty, mental illness, and substance abuse in Hillsdale County, the homelessness crisis continues to grow.
Stock’s Park continues to be an epicenter for misbehavior by the homeless. Needles, weapons, beer cans, bedding, and trash from Salvation Army food distributions have been found in the park. During the summer, a number of homeless individuals like to loiter in the park, especially in the main gazebo, where they can charge their phones, get drunk, and hang out in the shade.
The Drop-In Center is another serious problem. In theory, the Drop-In Center provides a space for homeless and other down-and-out individuals to congregate and engage in “peer-to-peer” mentoring in order to help one another get off of drugs and find community. In practice, the Drop-In Center is a vector for drug use, loitering, and other antisocial behaviors. Individuals have been seen “tweaking” and getting high on a near-daily basis outside the building. Many of these individuals are clearly homeless or close to it.
Though the no-camping municipal ordinance passed by Council last June to prohibit encampments on public land has been moderately successful, homeless encampments remain an ongoing problem in and around the city. The Share the Warmth shelter is only available during the winter. Outside of those months, the individuals who live there must seek housing elsewhere. This generally means encampments. It can also mean living in a “trap house,” a house where drugs are sold.
Based on accounts given by Hillsdale homeless directly, homeless people living in a drug den generally will generally end up prostituting themselves in exchange for drugs and housing. The homeless individuals interviewed for this report generally put the number of drug dens in Hillsdale at around 5 to 10.
Solutions
If the City of Hillsdale wishes to get the problem of homelessness under control, it should follow the two-step plan spelled out below.
First, the City needs to strengthen law and order.
When it comes to reducing crime, punishment is more important than policing. Hillsdale has plenty of police officers, and the response time to calls is very good. The problem lies in what happens after the police arrive. Without adequate jail space, there is no way to punish criminals for misbehavior. At most, these criminals might have to go through a laborious process of paperwork and court hearings. In many of these cases, however, they simply don’t show up. This is clearly evidenced by the hundreds of unfulfilled warrants that hang like a dark cloud over the county.
The City needs to shut down drug dens, keep addicts from getting high in public, and put a stop to loitering and trespassing. Our children and families deserve to use our parks and public spaces without worrying about finding needles, knives, bedding, and trash in these places.
The City should either come up with the funds itself or work with the County in order to conduct a large-scale jail expansion for low-level offenders. From observation, about 1% of the adult population in Hillsdale County is responsible for the vast bulk of crime that occurs here. Putting the operators of the dozen or so drug dens in Hillsdale City in jail would put a major dent in crime within the city. It would also reduce some of the leading abusers of the homeless and impoverished.
The County arguably needs another 150 to 200 jail beds beyond the 67 it has now. A lack of space should never be an argument against punishing criminals with jail time. If we do not enforce the law then the very foundation of government legitimacy goes away. What is the point of taxes if taxes cannot provide law and order?
Where will the funding come from for such a program? Right now, the County has a mental health millage in place that gives nearly a million dollars a year to LifeWays, an organization with a budget over $100 million. If that money were instead used to fund a jail expansion for low level offenders we could, arguably, build as much jail space as we need.
The money Hillsdale County is spending on mental health measures isn’t working as evidenced by the explosion in homelessness and mental health issues among the populace. That money would be better spent on strengthening public order. Law and order should be the priority. Though County spending isn’t the purview of the Hillsdale City Council, our local leaders can and should make an effort to work with the County in whatever way possible to come up with the funds for a jail expansion. It should work to do so without raising taxes by redirecting existing funds from secondary functions of the local government.
Second, the City should also allow the creation of a full-time homeless shelter by a private charity under specific, non-negotiable conditions.
Namely, any full-time shelter within city limits should have a community service requirement in addition to rules against misbehavior. It must be located away from residential areas and the downtown in order to minimize conflicts between the public and the residents of the shelter. Individuals who want to get help should be able to get help. However, individuals who violate the rules in such a facility should be punished.
This full-time shelter should provide a safe, warm, and clean environment. It should not, under any circumstances, turn into a drug den in its own right. It should not, under any circumstances, become a vector for sexual abuse or any other kind of violence.
It is necessary, therefore, that such a facility have rules against drug use, alcohol consumption, and harassment of staff and other residents. To this end, it should segregate residents by gender and mandate a daily hygiene ritual.
Share the Warmth currently has rules along these lines. The difficulty they face is that, as a private organization, they have no way to enforce these rules save by expelling unruly residents. These rule-breakers end up right back on the street. However, with additional jail space, these individuals could be punished with misdemeanors and public disorder charges for disturbing the peace.
Once a full-time shelter is in place, there will be zero excuses for individuals living on the streets. The no-camping ordinance can be even more effectively enforced in these circumstances. At no time should anyone be allowed to sleep on the streets within Hillsdale City limits.
Again, any homeless shelter that operates within Hillsdale city should meet non-negotiable requirements in order to operate.
1.) It must be located in a non-residential area and serve our local residents only.
2.) It must be "Treatment First:” and constantly working to address the underlying causes of homelessness by actively connecting residents with the agencies and help they need to better their condition. This means consistent records collection on the homeless population as a whole.
3.) This shelter must come with a community service work requirement for residents in order to ensure that residents are contributing in a positive way to the town.
4) It is an imperative that any shelter maintains strict rules against misbehavior.
It Is Time for Change
It would not take a superhuman effort to dramatically improve the quality of life in Hillsdale. We can meaningfully reduce the homelessness crisis and the attendant spread of petty criminality by making moderate and intentional changes to the City and County budget and by more aggressively cracking down on the drug trade, especially.
The resources to effect meaningful change already exist. The County could easily redirect funds toward law and order. We could spend our tax dollars differently. Our current situation is not inevitable or unalterable. We do not have to live this way.
The massive increase in mental health care spending in Hillsdale County has been followed by an increase in mental illness and homelessness. Something is not working.
It is time for a change.
We need to prioritize our resources by rstrengthening law and order and providing a place for the indigent homeless to seek meaningful shelter in a way that is good for them and the rest of society. If we do these things, we will go a long way to meaningfully reducing homelessness and improving the quality of life for all Hillsdale citizens.
[1] https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ecd/homelessness_definition.pdf
[2]
https://www.arepeerservices.org
There’s Billions$$ of middle class bureaucrat and NGO incomes in homelessness.
Many cities have lost all economic purpose and seek homeless and migrants to justify their budgets, NY State hands them a $10,000 ATM card. The bill will be sent to DC, who will pay.
An appeal to the very people whose power and livelihood depend on the “crisis” is pathetic and more insane than the policy itself- which is evil but sane .
This is a useful study. I largely concur.
Re the community service requirement for entering the shelter, how about also having (legitimate) private employment count? One of the single most valuable steps the homeless can take is to start becoming self-supporting. Becoming self-responsible and productive is more useful than all the counseling or even job training in the world, and it requires the individual to be active in reversing his/her course. Community service is fine, but gainful employment better. So both.