The Central Michigan Local Planning Body, a community partnership whose mission is to end local homelessness, will be participating in the national Point-in-Time (PIT) Count of the homeless population on Wednesday.
The annual survey will include a count of the sheltered and unsheltered homeless population within the counties of Montcalm, Ionia, Gratiot, and Isabella counties. We ask that the public please assist us with the unsheltered homeless count by sharing the PIT Survey accessibility information with anyone who may be living in a place not meant for human habitation such as: a car, a park, a camper or tent, an abandoned building, etc.
When the word “housing” comes to the forefront, the direction a conversation can go will likely head in one of several specific routes.
Is it a buyer or seller’s market? Should one rent or own? Where can one find affordable housing?
However, for Esther Combs of the Alternative Counseling Center in Stanton, the subject of housing is looked at through a completely different lens — the absence of a home altogether.
A 10-year-old Chris Bean sits in his mom’s car, on the way home from a Chinese restaurant. This is the point when most kids would be buried in an iPad, focused on another world on the way home.
Not Bean, he was observing the world around him as it passed by — that’s when he saw a homeless person on the street corner. He asked his mom, Paula, what homeless folks do in the winter to stay warm.
A homeless couple trying to stay warm was the cause of an early Thursday morning fire in an abandoned shed on railroad property in Greenville, according to police.
Escaping homelessness during COVID-19 is a battle. At Have Mercy it was first an issue of physical safety. But now, it has changed into more unexpected issues over the last year.
Thank you so much to the Wabasis Shores Condominium Association for their donations of household furniture, kitchen items and bedding/towels to the homeless and hungry of Montcalm and Ionia counties.
