welcome to the bright side, the show wherewe shed light on people, places and stories that make michigan great. in this episodewe will explore housing throughout the state, from apartments for people living with disabilitiesto workshops for new homebuyers. i'm scott woosley, the executive directorof the michigan state housing development authority, or as it is better known, mshda.mshda's mission is to create and preserve affordable housing for low- and moderate-incomeresidents throughout the state. we accomplish this mission by providing low market ratefinancing for single-family and multi-family owners and developers. come with me today as i show you some verysuccessful housing projects throughout the
state. even before we actually saw the house, wewere pretty excited about it just based on the pictures. i purchased this home in 2010 from grandmontrosedale development corporation, which is a nonprofit in the neighborhood. they buyhomes that get foreclosed and then they renovate them and they put them back on the marketto try to draw new families into the neighborhood. yeah, this is our latest project and anotherforeclosed property. we had to rebuild this porch. this was quite a wreck. this househad a lot of water damage. the floors were all buckled. you can see they put a wholenew floor in the kitchen and nook area. this
house is, was in worse shape than most ofthe ones we buy. but by the time we're done, it's going to look good as new. we tackle all kinds of problems. no houseis too difficult for us to try. we are in my home in north rosedale park inthe city of detroit. amazingly, it was pretty much everything we could have been lookingfor in a home. the kitchen was the only piece where we were kind of, you know, if we couldchange it we would. so we did. there was a wall here, cabinets that werestretched around all the way to the wall. these are the original cabinets here. and we don't always put in a new kitchen.they remodeled their kitchen. they've invested
a lot more in the house since they boughtit from us. we have a lot of variety of homes in our community,and grdc has done all shapes, sizes, prices. this is one of the more unique homes and we'vereally enjoyed doing this project. you can see, it's got windows on three sides, naturalfireplace, hardwood floors. we have a buyer lined up and probably before the end of themonth we're going to have a new family moving in to this house. part of making a home affordable is cuttingdown on the repairs and things that the homeowner is going to have to do once they move in. this is our kitchen, and when we bought thehouse one of the appealing things was that
grandmont rosedale development corporationhad redone our kitchen so it's pretty much brand new. we don't have to worry about anythingin the kitchen. they redid the floors. they put in new cabinetry, a dishwasher, and amicrowave. this used to be two rooms and there was avery small dining room with a very small kitchen. so they took down the wall and made it onebig room, and they put in this island. all of our counters are brand new, dishwasher. you know, even within detroit a lot of peopleare thinking there's no interest in moving here or buying here, but we really are seeingfor the homes in our community that there is a strong demand if you can provide a reallyhigh quality home for people. and we already
know we have a high quality neighborhood,so. the first day we bought the house we get aknock on the door and my wife and i looked at each other and we were like, "we didn'ttell anyone where we live yet." and i opened it up and it was our neighbors from acrossthe street and they had brought us flowers hand picked from their garden. when we moved in here our next door neighborsto the south of us, they actually wrote us a letter and put it in our mail box. thatwas pretty awesome. they wrote about the neighborhood and how long they've been here and how muchthey're looking forward to being our neighbors. one of our contractor friends found this sack.he was reaching inside of the heat register
and the bag had various effects from the previousowner who apparently was in the military, served in wwii. had love letters from pastacquaintances and even had his discharge letter from the military and things of that nature. homes in our community are all unique, andthat's one of the things people really like about grandmont rosedale. next we will visit palmer pointe townhomesin pontiac, a new affordable housing development with 24 units. nine of these units are supportivehousing units for people with disabilities. i wasn't always homeless, but i went to thedoctor one day. i couldn't walk at work for some reason and come to find out that i hada heart problem and type ii diabetes and...
make a long story short, i got behind on myrent and my wife was working as much as she could. during that whole time, chn had embraced me.when i would call there i dealt and first spoke with a lady named michelle goodnough.she said, "well listen. we have a project called palmer pointe. you might be interestedin it." now i have my own home. i'm a resident ofpalmer pointe townhomes. it still seems like a dream for me and my family, my wife, mytwo sons. we just moved in about a week, been here abouta week. it's great. oh my gosh. my mom and my dadcame out and his mom and dad came out, and
they love it, i love it. it's like... it'slike a blessing for real. every day i wake up and be like, "thank you." right saniia?say yeah! hee! yeah, we can't believe we made it in here. when i started at community housing networkeleven years ago, i was taking calls in the housing resource center and i was thinkingto myself, "we've got to find a way to create more housing for folks." because we just...there wasn't enough. people would call and i just didn't have resources to give them.i mean, there was such a limited amount. we've always specialized in providing housingfor people with disabilities and people who
are homeless, and so we've created a lot ofscattered site housing throughout the years, but we've never been able to actually do awhole community like we have here. this is our kitchen, the kitchens in the townhomes,which are wonderful nice cherry wood for a full sized kitchen, which we're excited about.all energy star appliances. we have our tankless water heaters and energy star furnaces. this is a two bedroom unit and all of thetwo bedrooms, they have two full baths upstairs and then we have a half bath downstairs. inthe accessible units, the three bedroom accessible units, one of the bedrooms is on the firstfloor and so it's fully accessible with a roll-in bathtub and shower.
and we're going to have some fencing stillneeds to go in. we're going to have some wrought iron fencing come up in the front. there'sgoing to be a nice sign. and then we also have some vinyl fencing that's going to beinstalled in the back of the property along the back side over there, just to kind ofdelineate that this is palmer pointe townhomes. so when i wake up, i kind of forget that i'mstill in this beautiful home, and i go outside and i look in the inside of the same windowthat i used to look in hoping that that place would be mine, realizing that i'm now livingin it. we already feel it. it's amazing, like, wakingup to them every day. i would have to work, get up early, so i never got to see them.but now it's... i feel like we're really a
family. say high five! so now i'm at the top of the mountain andit's because of great people that was at chn, palmer pointe, and any other organizationthat helped get palmer pointe off the ground. thank you for giving me and my family a placeto call home. there are many resources in michigan for homebuyersand current homeowners. the center for financial health presents a homebuyer education programin the next video. the center for financial health is a hud andmshda approved housing counseling agency delivering a wide variety of housing and financial counselingand education services to homebuyers, homeowners
and renters. so today you're going to experience our liveclass. it's a homebuyer educational workshop. this is a class that is often required formany of the affordable financing programs that are available, not only in the lansingcommunity, but across the country. and through that workshop we go over and walk consumersthrough the home buying process from ensuring that they're credit ready and emotionallyready to take on that responsibility of homeownership, to helping them build the right home buyingteam from a realtor and a loan officer, inspector, appraiser, etcetera. ...we talk about. your scores go down everytime you apply for a credit card. the reason
why your scores go down... we talk a lot about credit, so if they'renot quite credit ready in order to get a mortgage, then we talk about the services we offer asfar as prepurchase counseling. the client came up to me right before class-- the student -- and she said, "you know, i have my masters in finance, and i reallydon't feel that i need this class. can i just get my certificate?" and i said, "well, is this required by yourlender?" "yes." and i said, "well, then we can't waive it.you're going to have to take the class."
and at the end of the class she pulled meover to the side and said, "maria, i just want to let you know that at the beginningof the class i thought i knew everything about buying a home because i did have my mastersin financing, and now i realize i knew nothing. and i'm so glad that i took this class." by attending a homebuyer workshop and enrollingin our homeownership club, consumers are entitled to a free one-on-one housing counseling session. so they come in and we look at all differentaspects. they understand what their down payment assistance, what they would qualify for basedon household size and how much income is brought in. if they don't have a lender i give themat least three lenders to choose from, and
then if they don't have a realtor, i givethem at least three realtors to choose from. ones that know the products that i know they'regoing to go out and get. and then i also build what's called a recommendedaction plan. so they know what they have to do in order to get into that home that theywant to be in. for homeowners, we do offer several differentstrategies that help them keep their home and maintain their home, and probably ourmost busy service these days is helping people stay in their home with foreclosure preventionmethods and opportunities. so homeowners who are facing foreclosure arebeing bombarded by notices, not only from their lenders, but often times from companiesand sometimes scam artists who are trying
to take advantage of them at an unfortunatetime. we like to give folks advice. if you're facingforeclosure, the number one thing is communicate with your lender. number two, seek help froma housing counselor that most likely is going to offer their services for free. some organizations in michigan help new homebuyers.others help existing homeowners repair their homes. at home repair services in grand rapids,homeowners can take classes or can find materials for their homes. a woman named christie in wyoming about ayear ago came to us with a manila folder, and in that folder she had been collectingfor years pictures from magazines of kitchens.
and she had one particular image in mind andshe says, "this is the kitchen that i want to have in my house. can we do this?" this organization spends more than half ofits budget on taking care of emergency situations for low-income homeowners. so we'll send plumbersinto homes, we'll send carpenters into homes, we'll send mechanical contractors to workon furnaces into homes. we'll also have professional counselors who can deal with foreclosure problemsand mortgage issues. and we're very interested in addition to helpingpeople with their roof problems and their furnace problems and their mortgage problemsto be able to help those who'd like to do something themselves to significantly improvethe livability of their home and their equity.
what happens right here is our classroom.saturdays we teach a series that we call rookie renovators, and this series focuses primarilyon the skills that you would need to have to do a significant do-it yourself projectin your own home. so we're teaching basic plumbing, basic electrical, cabinet installation,dry wall, floor coverings, maybe ceramic tile. and we repeat that series every six weeks.today we're teaching a plumbing class. so sometimes someone's remodeled, and thenyou've got a pipe and you see a pipe down there that's like this. that's a problem.chances are you're going to have a clog in that pipe. so you kind of inspect to see thateverything is falling quarter inch per foot all heading toward the drain.
and this first valve is what you shut off,and that shuts off the water. this one here shuts the water off to the house too. so eitherone. sometimes you only have one. that's it, and release it. so you just hadyour first successful pex connection. what also happens here right behind me isour kitchen showroom. this particular style of cabinets is one we buy from a local wholesaler.we can sell to a lower income homeowner for $858. on the other hand, over here are cabinetsthat we've actually built in our own wood shop right there with volunteers. there's a third option, and these are cabinetsthat are given to us that are used. all of these cabinets were taken out of theherkimer hotel when, as part of their renovation
project, they were given to us by the dwellingplace. we'll be able to clean these up and put them out in our showroom and make themavailable again to lower income homeowners who are ready to do their own kitchens. andfor a typical set of 12 cabinets, these will probably go for $250. but our mission is not to try to sell product.we're not a retail store. our mission is to encourage and equip and stimulate do-it-yourselfhome improvement. and christie, we were able to supply her withcabinets that we had built here in our wood shop. christie, with the help of one of ourcoaches, completely tore that kitchen apart, put it back together, and when it was allover took our the picture that she had cut
out from the magazine years before and heldit up next to the real kitchen and, i need to tell you, they looked a lot alike. next we'll tour a retrofit cohousing communityin lansing, where cohousing members are using existing homes to create an intentional communitywith a shared community house, community garden, weekly potluck, and other activities. these were the first four homes that startedour community and we had a whole consensus decision making process around designing thespace, what we wanted. we wanted sitting areas and kids area and garden space and flowerspace and so we just sat down together and we did that process.
we all own our own homes. the only thing that'sa little bit unusual is that there's one house that we're purchasing jointly, which is ourcommon house. that's a shared house and shared space. so we share our outside space and weshare a lot of resources, but the properties themselves are owned individually. there's about ten or so families in cohousingright now. we are on the end of this dead end street. so i'm going to take you up to our communitygarden, which is up here. the places that we work on together is this common gardenarea here and then sometimes that corner garden. other houses that have their own yard space,then they take care of their own yard. these
houses are special in the fact that they sharethis common area here. we actually have a condo agreement to share the space. traditional cohousing involves a group ofpeople getting together where they look for a piece of property, they purchase it jointly,they meet for a long time to decide how they're going to design the space, where they're goingto put the residences, where's the green space, where's the parking. but what we've done iswe're buying existing homes in a densely built downtown and we're part of the fabric of anexisting community, and we're not separate at all. this was a mshda house. it actually stillis a mshda house. we're trying to provide
low-income housing, so we bought this fromthe greater lansing housing coalition that had fixed it up. and they had approached usbecause they knew we were trying to make improvements in the neighborhood and we were fortunateenough to be able to figure out a way to purchase these two duplexes from them. so this is theone and we have a cohouser who lives in here. so we have different committees that do differentthings, so we have a garden committee that plans garden work parties, and then we havea committee that helps organize our buildings and grounds and then upkeep of our commonhouse. everybody pays in to the common house every month to co-own. so we have a workingllc agreement, a limited liability corporation agreement.
we just got chickens last summer and there'sa couple families. what we're doing is we're taking turns with a couple different families.that way if we're out of town, the other family can take care of it. the week that you takecare of the chickens is the week that you take the eggs. this is the artwork that we've been storingfor, oh, probably almost five years now. so we just got a grant to move this art overto the community garden so that people can enjoy it again. i think of it the way my dad described livingin a small town when he grew up. where everybody knew each other, doors were unlocked. youknow exactly how much you can trust the people
around you and what you can ask them to do.and we're in a community like that. you can develop that kind of thing in a neighborhoodin a big city, sure. you buy a house or something and move in, but it takes a long time to getto know folks. when you move in to the cohousing, you start off with a core of twenty-five,thirty people in your immediate neighborhood that you know. you've got that sense of communityright away. in the next video, we visit the upper peninsula,where we'll se a completely handicapped accessible apartment building. one year ago today, we let butterflies goin hopes that they'd bring the wish of a new facility for folks and families that havespecial needs and an apartment complex with
total accessibility. i get to move in tomorrow, and i really lovethe apartment that i got because it's handicapped accessible. and i find it very hard to livein apartments that aren't because the countertops are too tall, you see, and to wash dishesin my wheelchair it's very hard to do. i usually wind up with a lot of water on the floor tryingto rinse them and put them up. and i've seen my new apartment and it's just beautiful.it's just going to make such a big difference for independence. this is a two bedroom. we went with a pocketdoor because obviously there's -- you don't have a swinging door, you still want to havewheelchair access for that use. so we went
with the pocket doors on every unit. eventhe folks that have, i had one come in that has no use of his hands. he's a quadriplegic. he's able to do it. we wanted it easy enough for him to be able to close the door, so. the two bedroom units are designed for residentsthat may have a live in aide or a child as long as the head of the household meets thecriteria for quincy haven. so that's why we have a two bedroom unit. so we do have mostlylive in aides coming in with folks. this is our bathroom. we have washers anddryers in all the units, front loading. and the handicap shower so they can either rollin or sit in. one of the residents that we showed the apartmentto for the very first time, he has a traumatic
brain injury which limits his mobility. andwhen he came in and saw the shower seat and the shower itself and how easy it would befor him to function in that, he lit up like a christmas tree, so that's what makes itall worth it. well i think it brings stability to folks that aren'treally sure where they can live and how they can live with some of the disabilities thatthey have. and having toured some of the rooms, they've certainly have thought just abouteverything to help people do that. these are the reflective top stoves. theyare designed for a person if you are in a wheelchair that when you are cooking a mealor cooking in a pan, that you can see from your wheelchair where you're sitting whatis in the pan and what you're cooking.
you have your work area for if you're in awheelchair -- person in a wheelchair can have a work area here. the sink is the same way.you'll be able to wheel in right underneath. all of your light switches are set to adacode. everything is ada compliant. i can't explain how grateful i am that theytook the time to build something like this for people like me. quincy haven apartments has been a team effort,but without gail's contribution and leadership, the great idea would be just that: a greatidea. this is the groundbreaking butterfly releasethat we did. and during that day it was pouring rain, and for the time that we came out tolet the butterflies out, the sun came out.
so we released the butterflies into the heavensas one would say, and all made our wishes. my wish was for quincy haven apartments tobecome a reality. and it did. over the past 50 years, housing has changeddramatically in michigan. in the next special interview, john duley recounts the historyof housing as it relates to the civil rights movement and how it led to important housingchanges in the area today. well i came here in 1962 when there were problemsin the city about housing for people of color, and they couldn't live in east lansing. sothey'd have to go to the black churches in lansing and say, "well where can we find aplace to live?" so i joined forces with a number of peoplewho were concerned about that issue and we,
with some faculty from the university andgraduate students and campus ministers, petitioned the city council to establish a human relationscommission. they did that, and then we petitioned the human relations commission to recommendto the city council that they pass an open occupancy ordinance so that it would be againstthe law to refuse to rent or sell property to people of color. and we had a fascinating time because we hada board, a commission of nine people. we knew the four people who were going to vote infavor of recommending it to city council. we didn't know who the fifth person was. turnedout to be the one real estate representative on the board, and he earned for himself ashunning from the real estate community for
voting in favor of that recommendation tothe city council. that recommendation was made, and the citycouncil received it and said, "thank you very much. that's very nice. we think that's agreat idea." and they didn't do anything about it. so students got interested and began topetition and show up at city hall when the city council met, to try and encourage them.and one night they showed up in such forces -- numbers -- that the police had to evictthem, and when they evicted them there were 69 of them who sat down in abbott road andrefused to move until the city council did something about this issue. in the interim time, one of the members ofthe human relations commission, robert green,
who was one of the three african americanprofessors at michigan state university at that time. well, i didn't know him very well.i'd been working on this open occupancy thing. but i got a phone call in october of 1964and bob green said, "reverend duley, this is robert green. i just a call from one ofmy students who's down in canton mississippi and wants me to come. you get the money, we'llgo." and all the time we were down there, he keptsaying, "you know, michigan state university ought to be doing something educational forthe movement." in the course of this he said, "well, you're a reverend. call martin lutherking and see if he'll come and launch this program."
well, we did that. we sold tickets at a $1a piece to students to raise money for this project. we filled up fair child -- the auditorium-- and they had to open the curtain between the auditorium and fair child theater to getall 4,000 kids in there in 1965, february, when dr. king came and launched the step [studentstutorial education project] program. so i tell you this story because the citycouncil did not pass the open occupancy ordinance until he was assassinated in 1968. shortlyafter that, some of the people in the community decided it was time to do something positive.so this [edgewood village] was created for low- and very low-income families. all thefamilies that are here, many of them are single parent families. and some of them are unemployed;they don't pay any rent. anybody else who
is employed in any way pays 30% of their incomefor rent. we have a waiting list that won't stop. we closed down our waiting list forfour bedroom apartments because it's three years you have to wait to get in. one of our transitions we help people makeis when they leave here they'll transition form being renters to being owners. last summersix people left here, five of them owning their own homes. we're trying to honor and continue the legacyof dr. king, which is his unfinished dream of economic justice for all. as we've seen in today's episode, housingmeans more than a building to live in. it's
what gives a community its character and makesa place special. to see more of what the state offers, go to michigan.gov/mshda. thank you for joining me, scott woosley, onthe bright side. if you'd like to find out anything more about today's show, submit newideas for the next show, or watch this episode again, please visit brightsidetv.com. that's what we're really trying to createis that mixed-income neighborhood of choice. neighborhood of choice. that's what we're... placemaking! neighborhoodof choice! you hear these stories of people having like,stashes of money in the home. so... i was
really hoping to find that. but we... thathasn't turned up. mshda's mission is to provide... no it's not.[laughs] this is the part i had memorized! bob green had it all set up so he could dosome television filming with dr. king for his classes and the person who traveled withdr. king named bernard said well, "he's too exhausted. he just can't do that. just givehim a cup of tea and let him rest." so i'm standing over there in the auditorium with4,000 people waiting to hear dr. king speak and i hear he's, you know, sleeping! [laughs]