Foremost Insurance Partners With Western Michigan Housing Program…
to rehab older mobile homes for Michigan families on the brink of homelessness.
The availability of affordable housing has reached a critical stage for many hard working, lower income families, throughout the country – particularly in urban areas. The growing reality is that many families make too much money to qualify for low-income programs, but not enough to afford the high rents in many cities. The result is that many of these families are falling through the cracks in today’s ultra expensive booming housing market, without a safety net to prevent becoming homeless.
Proactively addressing what has become a national crisis, a program initiated nine years ago in Grand Rapids, Michigan targeting needy families is thankfully “gaining traction nationwide,” according to Wood TV 8.
Homelessness is expensive
According to Cheryl Schuch, executive director of Family Promise of Grand Rapids, who helped pioneer the Partners in Housing program in 2008. “We have families who are spending more than 90 percent of their income on their housing. Most of us use a 30 percent threshold as affordable and balanced. So that shows you the disparity and the difference in our thinking about housing and the reality of what’s happening these days,” Schuch explained.
Routinely witnessing the financial struggles of Michigan’s families, she has observed parents – frequently single – are gainfully employed, but are teetering on the edge of homelessness thanks to increases in their monthly rent, Schuch noted.
“We often say it’s really expensive to be poor, and it’s even more expensive to become homeless. When you start sliding into that crisis, the cost of moving into a hotel or not having a place to cook your meals or transportation to get to and from work or daycare for your kids all start adding up.”
That’s when she typically meets the families that come through the Family Promise’s intake center, where they find a place to get back on their feet.
Homeless to Homeowner in nine months!
The next step in ending the crisis is the Partners in Housing program. Family Promise partners with Foremost Insurance to find older mobile homes and manufactured homes that show potential for being rehabilitated and put back into use. Then a family with no place to live can move in.
The family must pay the lot rent, which typically is $450. In nine months the mobile home becomes their property.
“Most people couldn’t imagine going from homeless to homeownership in a period of nine months. Once they own that home, there’s a different element that kicks in. It helps them build assets in a way families can actually move out of poverty,” Schuch explained.
Foremost Insurance, based in Western Michigan, the largest insurer of manufactured homes in the United States, was founded shortly after the end of World War II and was the first insurance company to insure what was then “mobile homes’. Foremost Insurance is credited by many as a catalyst that spurred manufactured housing production and ownership in the U.S.
Florida, Colorado, Minnesota: W. MI idea provides hope across country
Calss Ehlers with Family Promise’s national office says the Grand Rapids affiliate identified the unique opportunity. Foremost Insurance was already in West Michigan and has a bigger understanding of manufactured housing and what you can do with it.
Ehlers says it is important to know which mobile homes can be rehabbed, and that’s where Foremost Insurance comes into play. “It allows the volunteer base to do a lot of the labor. Park owners also benefit because they have a detriment on the property that suddenly becomes a viable unit, which families then get to enjoy an asset,” Ehlers explained.
He is so impressed with the program, he’s helping to expand nationally with pilot programs in Gainesville, Florida, Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Minneapolis, Minnesota.
“Different markets have different pressures, that’s why these pilot programs are so valuable. At the end of the year they can say, here is what works, here is what doesn’t — depending on your geographical location,” Ehlers said.
