Grand Rapids’ emission reduction goals are the floor, not the ceiling. They can only be met with meaningful policies and adequate funding. Officials may turn away from these to save money in the short term or embrace the familiar status quo. But we can not wait any longer. Our representatives must make good on their promises.

Making sure our representatives know where we stand on the climate crisis is necessary now more than ever. Our City Leaders are most likely to act when the public exerts pressure on them.

Climate chaos is no longer just a specter on the horizon. It is here. It’ll get worse if we don’t act fast. Extreme heat and weather will increase cost of living and leave those who are already struggling with high prices even farther behind. We must not leave individual residents to solve the problems caused by systemic injustice and policy failures.

The GR Climate Coalition recently kicked off Beyond a Number with an Open Letter to the City Commission. The GRDSA is proud to have signed on to that letter. Now it’s your turn to take action and send a message to City Leaders to prioritize reducing greenhouse gas emission.

The post Tell Grand Rapids City Leaders the Time is Now for Bold Climate Action! appeared first on Grand Rapids Democratic Socialists of America.

Update: At the morning meeting of the Committee of the Whole, the commission voted to approve both tax exemptions to Perrigo.

Generic pharmaceutical manufacturer Perrigo is building a new North American headquarters on Grand Rapids’ Medical Mile. This international company (based in Ireland, for tax purposes) with $5 Billion in annual revenue is seeking two 12 years of tax exemptions valued at $4.1 million. Of that money, Grand Rapids itself will lose out on $797,000 property tax revenue.

Please consider adding your voice to the movement of people demanding big business pays their fair share of taxes. Grand Rapids’ City Commissioners are planning to vote on the twelve year tax exemption. The Commission has complete control over granting these exemptions.

Call into Tuesday’s City Commission online meeting at 7pm to ask for our representatives to bargain for their community!

In his presentation to the City Commission on January 12th, Perrigo’s Executive VP, Ron Janish, explains Grand Rapids was selected over Chicago and Southwest Florida due to our proximity to their manufacturing operations, our tremendously skilled applicant pool, and our robust life science and healthcare community. We have something valuable to them. They don’t need a tax incentive. They want Grand Rapids!

“What Grand Rapids has to offer, frankly, is going to allow us to easily tap into a whole array of healthcare and innovation thought leaders that are right here in our own backyard.”

Only 50 of the 150 jobs will be newly created positions, the rest are current employees of Perrigo. Over the course of the 15 year lease, the workers of Perrigo will contribute $1.5 million in income, while Perrigo would only pay $1.1 million in property taxes.

Now, when many families are struggling, is not the time to be giving a multi-billion dollar business a tax break. The city has invested in making the city attractive to business. When a business selects the Medical Mile for their pharmaceutical headquarters, it’s time to cash in on that investment. Not give handouts to elites and shift the tax burden onto working people.

The post Call in to Tell the GR City Commission “Make Perrigo Pay It’s Fair Share” appeared first on Grand Rapids Democratic Socialists of America.

As should be expected, the city’s government has joined in on the conversation. Of course, these issues are not new, and the city’s past inaction is to partial blame for the current state of housing. However, in great thanks to the voices of local groups and coalitions, addressing the housing crisis appears to be on the city government’s agenda. Now, the push continues for action.

Housing Next Report

This past year, the City of Grand Rapids hired Housing Next to join a group of public, private, and independent organizations working to address the city’s housing problems. Housing Next is a west-Michigan initiative that is “focused on supporting housing solutions for all income levels in our community.” As a part of the contract, Housing Next generated a 40-page report titled Housing Needs and Opportunities. The report details the housing needs within the city and the financial, environmental, political, and social forces that have led us here.

The city paid for the Housing Next contract with funds from the affordable housing fund, which contains an estimated $1M and is currently on indefinite hold by the lead of City Manager Mark Washington. The Grand Rapids DSA Housing Working Group and other organizations would like to see the housing fund re-activated and used immediately for emergency relief. The end to the federal moratorium is imminent, and an unhoused community proliferated  in Heartside Park until it was torn down by city leaders and the Grand Rapids Police Department. Our community is in dire need of support, and the $1M will go a long way for those facing homelessness.

Takeaways from the Report

The Housing Next report begins with an acknowledgment of the Great Housing Strategies meeting conducted in 2015. More than two-hundred people from the community, including city commissioners, non-profit representatives, and private development stakeholders, identified eight goals and thirty-five actions to confront current and future housing issues. Housing Next cites Great Housing Strategies – Addressing Current and Future Housing Needs  as the framework for their assessment.

The Great Housing Strategies workgroups—and subsequently, Housing Next—identified the following eight goals for housing in Grand Rapids:

1. Provide a Variety of Housing Choices
2. Encourage Mixed-Income Neighborhoods
3. Create and Preserve Affordable Housing
4. Support Low-Income and Vulnerable Populations
5. Support Employers and Workforce Development
6. Encourage Alternative Transportation and Parking Options
7. Change Public Perception of Affordable Housing
8. Advocate for Change to State and Federal Policies

Housing Problems in Grand Rapids

The eight housing goals laid out in Great Housing Strategies put an uncanny spin of positivity on the life-altering problems Grand Rapids residents are facing. Housing Next defines the following issues as the three most pressing in the Grand Rapids housing market.

Market Demand

The demand for housing units is at levels near unmanageable, particularly in amenity-rich areas. According to Bowen National Research, Grand Rapids requires 5,340 additional rental units and 3,548 for-sale units by the end of 2025.

The market is doing little to keep pace. Consequently, high-income households are pricing out low and moderate-income households, forcing them to move, rent at unsustainable rates, double-up in single-family homes, or face homelessness. This displacement will continue with increasing consequences unless the city “preserves” the affordability of existing units and ensures that more for-sale housing will be available soon (pg. 6).

Cost Burden of Renting

The cost of renting in Grand Rapids is pushing households into financial instability. In 2018, an estimated fifty-two percent of renter households in the city spent over thirty percent of gross income on housing expenses; this is considered a “cost burden.” These households are at the highest risk of eviction due to non-payment.

According to Housing Next, the city must implement “stop gap measures” to avoid housing instability as long term solutions—including livable wages, an adequate supply of housing at all price points, and accessible childcare—are put into place.

Racial Inequality

“Black, Indigenous, and People of Color have experienced much higher rates of housing instability and have faced steep barriers to homeownership. As investment in City neighborhoods continues, these households are least likely to benefit from the economic growth without market interventions.”

Housing Next report, pg. 26

Due to generations of systemic racism, the rate of homeownership among Black households in Grand Rapids is nearly forty percent  below the rate of homeownership among Whites. And, while the number of “cost-burdened renter households” affects all races, Black households and those headed by a person of color are thirty to forty-five percent more likely to be impacted by cost burdens than White households.

According to the report, the city must prioritize homeownership and wealth creation for Black households and households of color. “Wages, education and racial bias in hiring practices are also critical areas of focus to solve for this discrepancy” (pg. 7).

Actionable Tasks

Following the city’s housing needs, Housing Next presented seven actionable tasks for immediate consideration:

1. Preserve existing affordable housing wherever possible.
2. Support tenant-based rental assistance and eviction prevention measures.
3. Support more LIHTC (low-income housing tax credit) development.
4. Leverage city-owned property to support new housing supply.
5. Deep community engagement.
6. Re-calibrate economic development incentives to support more affordability.
7. Begin work to create a dedicated source of funding for housing.

The city will need to carry out these or similar short-term tasks as a safe-guard while they move forward with more long-term goals.

Holding the City Accountable

There is justifiable concern that the city will take very few steps past paying for the Housing Next report. Change does not occur overnight, especially when it comes to development. Yet, the Great Housing Strategies document is five years past, and many of the eight goals presented at the meeting have not been addressed, or the situations have regressed.

Take goal six, for example: Encourage Alternative Transportation and Parking Options. On August 1, 2020, The Rapid—the city’s central public transportation system—eliminated free transfers for riders paying cash, eliminated charge cards for riders paying without exact change, and eliminated the fare-free zone on the Silver Line and Route 19/Michigan Crosstown (source: WZZM13). These actions make alternative transportation less accessible and are therefore a direct contradiction of the coalition’s goal.

The Grand Rapids City Housing Commission cites several accomplishments of the past five years that are in line with the goals from the Great Housing Strategies, including creating affordable housing and supporting low-income and vulnerable populations. As of December 2020, however, the Housing Commission has long waiting lists for all of the agency-owned properties. They are not accepting applications for the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program for the same reason (source: GR Housing FAQs).

While the Housing Commission is not the only branch of city government responsible for improving housing market conditions, the lack of availability indicates that the city is already behind on demand. The undersupply is largely due to the commission’s intentional neglect of the very apparent needs of the city.

Immediate Need

We hope that the city will take this crisis seriously, but local groups know better than to wait for action and carry on with their work.

Kent County is fixated on giving money to the police for surveillance instead of addressing the root cause of violence: poverty. The cycle of poverty is rooted in housing injustice. More than community coalitions, Grand Rapids needs leadership unbeholden to profit and willing to hold large corporations accountable and implement taxes that help every Grand Rapidian thrive. In the long run, homelessness is more expensive than housing the unhoused, and poverty leads to more crime.

That said, support from the community has been, and will always be, invaluable, especially when voicing dissent with the status quo. If you’d like to support the housing efforts in Grand Rapids, please consider volunteering or donating to the following organizations:

• Together We Are Safe: Facebook
• Grand Rapids Area Mutual Aid Network: Facebook
• Grand Rapids Area Tenant Union (GRATU): Facebook
• Grand Rapids Homes for All: Website, Facebook
• Healthy Homes Coalition West Michigan: Website, Facebook
• By Any Means Necessary: Website

The post Takeaways from the Housing Needs & Opportunities Report appeared first on Grand Rapids Democratic Socialists of America.

In This Issue

• Takeaways From the Housing Needs and Opportunities
• Book Club Report: Are Prisons Obsolete?
• Ranked Choice Voting
• Your Voice is Louder on a Local Level
• Grand Rapids, ShotSpotter, and the GRPD
• History of the IGE – Part One – IGEGR.org
• A Rose By Any Other Name

The post What’s Left – Issue #2 – January 2021 appeared first on Grand Rapids Democratic Socialists of America.

This blog originally appeared in the November 2020 edition of What’s Left; the GRDSA newsletter

Rather than financing private development with no interest in the community, several local nonprofits have proposed a new approach to the city’s imminent housing crisis: community land trusts. In Grand Rapids, the need for homes is barrelling towards levels unmanageable. According to a recent housing study, the city requires 9,000 more housing units by 2025 to satisfy demand. Yet, the city housing commission has been apathetic to the issue, and lower-income residents are being displaced as a result.

A community land trust is a city-invested development controlled by the city and its constituents. A plot of land is purchased by the city for low-income housing, and the homes—not the land—are sold at an affordable price with low down-payments and without private mortgage insurance. The homeowners save on property costs while building equity.

Home equity is a lucrative strategy for building wealth but is unattainable for individuals who cannot afford a home, thereby perpetuating the cycle of poverty. When the home is sold, the homeowner receives a portion of the profits to reinvest, including 100% of the equity from their mortgage. The housing remains affordable because the low-income requirements are contracted.

Price is the most significant barrier for homeownership and a major driving factor in the housing crisis in Grand Rapids. Housing prices have risen with demand, but wages and economic opportunities have not adjusted on the same scale. Those at or near poverty are affected most, especially as the wealth disparity in the United States widens. The federal minimum wage has not increased from $7.25 since 2009 despite the sharp increase in the cost of living.

In 2017, the median income in Grand Rapids was $44,369, and the median property value was $121,800 (datausa.io). Twenty-five percent of the population lived at or below the federal poverty level ($24,600 for a four-family home). Today, the average property value in Grand Rapids is about $181,000 (zillow.com).

The GR Housing Commission has only exacerbated the issue. Due to mismanagement, the commission has been neglected while the manager sold many remaining properties for profit. They’ve swindled public funds and fermented a crisis in which they will not address.

In the past five years, the commission’s primary focus has been increasing Section 8 Project-Based housing. According to the GRHC 2020-2024 Five-Year Plan, the commission funded the development or improvement of rental housing only in the past five years, including $2.5 million in improvements to two retirement communities and $1.4 million in low-income housing tax credits (LIHTC) in support of a planned 50-unit development. For the next four years, the commission plans to increase Section 8 Homeownership program participation by 30 households.

The commission’s response shows a complete lack of concern for the hundreds of individuals it will leave homeless. Rental housing can be predatory and supports private investors, not the community. A renter has no opportunity to build wealth, and low-income developments often displace individuals from the area. In the long term, rental housing magnifies the issue of poverty and housing inequality.As people of color are most impacted by wealth inequality, affordable homeownership is also necessary if we are to confront systemic racism in our community.

The historic prevalence of racism in Grand Rapids homeownership—specifically through redlining and generational wealth—has evolved, but prevails nonetheless. Although initiatives have formed to address the city’s current housing crisis, the underlying racial disparity remains largely unaddressed.

Take, for example, Grand Rapids’ Third Ward, located in the Southeast portion of the city and with around a third of the population, many of whom are black. According to the city supported private development projects dashboard, from 2012-17 the area received 1.5 percent of the $1.29 billion in private investments supported by Grand Rapids’ economic development programs, or about $19.4 million. The First and Second Wards received $750 and $560 million, respectively. In 2017 alone, the Third Ward had no private investments, which equated to zero new jobs or housing. In total, thirty-six housing units were built in the ward in five years compared to the 2,743 in the First and Second combined.

In 2017, the unemployment and poverty rates in Grand Rapids were highest among black and Hispanic communities. A plan of action to solve a housing crisis can take many forms; however, without addressing racism—the root cause of housing injustice—the crisis will persist. Housing equality is more than placing individuals into homes. The social and economic factors must be a focus as well.

There are over two-hundred community land trusts across the nation, such as Champlain Housing Trust, which was established over thirty years ago. In addition to affordable homeownership, community land trusts aim to equip the homeowners with the necessary skills and a community to rely on.

With nearly $10 million in private grants and investments, the Inner City Christian Foundation (ICCF) purchased 248 homes in 2017-18 to build a Community Homes Land Trust in Grand Rapids over the next ten years. However, the non-profit corporation’s platform is inadequate as nearly all underlying issues of housing injustice are ignored. Their website states, “The dynamics in today’s hot housing market are very different than they were in preceding decades, when urban neighborhoods were too often characterized by disinvestment and discrimination. Today, the chief concern in urban neighborhoods is not disinvestment but displacement caused by rapidly escalating prices and rents.” The idea that racism does not still affect homeownership is untrue. While the initiative points in the right direction, the ICCF must be more assertive to be successful. Currently, the plan is meek and lacks substance.

The Grand Rapids Entire Community Housing Trust Organization (GRECHTO) is another local organization with plans to build a housing trust in the area. The initiative is in the early stages and welcomes suggestions from the community.

Community land trusts keep wealth within the community. The city receives a return on investment, and the homeowner profits from paying a mortgage. Similar to many socialist-leaning projects, supporters of community land trusts acknowledge the systemic issues lending to poverty and community destitution and denounce capitalist exploitation. It is important to note that land trusts act as an intermediary in a state of crisis, but the end goal includes the complete renovation of city planning, as housing should not be a for-profit enterprise. For more information on community land trusts, please visit the GRECHTO website.

The post The Pursuit of Housing Justice in Grand Rapids appeared first on Grand Rapids Democratic Socialists of America.

This blog originally appeared in the November 2020 edition of What’s Left; the GRDSA newsletter

A concept has been inserting itself into national conversation. This concept aims to combat the ever growing, violent police state that some of us are only beginning to find ourselves in. It is presented as one of the vital answers to dealing with the overt militarization, and thoughtless—unneeded—spending of U.S. workers’ tax dollars. The concept is simply this: defund the police.

The idea of police defunding has been around for a while. And its underlying message is simple. Take money away from the police departments and use it to create or improve specialized services that specifically help the local community. Constituents of cities such as Los Angeles, CA and New York City, NY have been trying to put a rein on yearly increases in police spending (the latter of which is now up to ~$6 billion in police budget).

Grand Rapids has also had a large community coalition formed on the stance of defunding the GRPD and using those funds for community development. Groups such as Defund the GRPD, Justice For Black Lives, Family Over Everything (FOE), Bimose Ode, Together We Are Safe, I Am Deeply Rooted Inc. and more have been on the front lines of making change. The People’s Budget GR is another organization that seeks to change the way public money is being spent in our city.

Currently, the Grand Rapids city commission created a budget for the 2020 fiscal year that allowed for a ~39% share of the city’s General Fund to go to law enforcement. Community personnel such as The People’s Budget GR have been fighting to take the police’s share of the fund down to 32% by FY 2021, which is codified in the Grand Rapids City Charter as the minimum share of the General Fund that can be spent on law enforcement.

On the night of July 7th, 2020, a city commission meeting went underway to bring up a vote on whether to defund the Grand Rapids Police Department (GRPD) from 39% to 32% for fiscal year 2020. The vote to defund $9 million from police to our communities almost advanced until the Grand Rapids legal department, in extensive language, had two main points of contention. The first is that a change to the budget on that level would need to be approved by the city manager; involving specifics of where the money would be coming from as well as where it would be going. The second is that it was also suggested to not be “a legally sound decision” to put the issue of defunding the police to a vote when the Grand Rapids city manager does not agree with the item to be cut from the budget. Since our city manager, Mark Washington, does not have solidarity with the movement, our police have yet-again been given the people’s taxes to oppress and harass the public instead of helping to build the local communities.

Some people balk at the concept of defunding the police. They fear that if the police were defunded, their safety would be compromised! Thousands of gunshots would ring through the air and beloved local businesses would be broken into and looted all day and night! All this because the police would not have the resources needed to actually prevent a crime. This is false for many reasons. One of which is the fact that the police are not a method of crime prevention. They are a resource that can only mitigate crime and its effects. Their argument is a bad faith reduction of the concept of defunding the police. Not only would the aforementioned level of chaos not occur; actual crime prevention measures that stem from economic and social investment in local communities would flourish. Incidents involving mental health distress would be moved from the responsibility of the police to groups that are trained to deal with people in these highly specialized situations!

The city of Austin, Texas has one of the most recent success stories of defunding their local law enforcement and, in turn, creating new opportunities for their community through public services. Citizens set out to organize and educate effectively enough to cut their local police force’s budget by one third, roughly $150 million dollars. This isn’t happening without a fight from opposing forces. Texas Governor Greg Abbot has since threatened to freeze increases to property taxes in Texas cities that defund the police. A reactionary group local to the Austin area even put up a billboard warning incoming traffic of the fact that police were defunded. The dramatic measures taken by the opposition show that their ideologies are being effectively challenged. Their actions are a direct retaliation to the national attention that the campaign continues to achieve.

Individuals who feel that the national problems concerning police can go away through reformative measures are mistaken, and usually hold these views in order to directly oppose any form of defunding the police. Reformism is the political philosophy of change that tries to improve or amend an existing political structure. Defunding the police, on the other hand, is a form of abolition that seeks to replace major portions of the policing system with a new system that is more passionate, and more economically viable. Reformists will always find new ways of spending money on the police that never reach the intended results of progress. These individuals find the act of training or even hiring more officers to be an acceptable response to the unaccountable violence that affects minorities and poor people every day. “An officer on every street corner, no matter the cost!”, they say. Ignoring the devastating toll such police budget increases would take on our already struggling community.

These funds almost always come out of the budgets of community development projects in poorer neighborhoods, or our public schools. Systemic racism has guaranteed that Grand Rapids’ third ward, which has the highest percentage of African American population within the city, is consistently given an order of magnitude less funding than other city wards. Corruption and hard-headedness in our governing body has allowed Grand Rapids Public Schools (GRPS) to revise their FY 2020-2021 budget and cut an extra $10.6 million dollars from their operating costs. These cuts include a $300 per pupil reduction in the budget in addition to the $350 per pupil budget reduction of the year before. Did GRPS even think to cut the police officers they use in public schools? No. They would rather use their busses to shuttle loads of police to protests. Reformative measures applied to the policing system will not work, and have created the violent state-sanctioned gangs that the working class deals with to this day. We must take the route of abolition.

Of course there are reasons to apply the same amount of pressure to the GRPD as much as other cities have done to theirs. The GRPD are like every other police department, in that they retaliate with judicial force anything that is different from what they consider as “illegal”. That sentiment was undoubtedly shown during the most recent string of protests in Grand Rapids, as officers have riled up crowds by showing up in militarized riot gear, and performed overt methods of force on the public such as shooting a peaceful protestor in the face with a smoke canister.

Policing in the United States of America is simply a system designed to uphold the inequalities that are considered as hot-button issues in public sentiment. Household inequality, wealth inequality, and civil inequality will never see improvement when we, as a country, try and fix it with violent forces that are trained to treat each one of us as enemies. We will never see progress in trying to reform a policing system that, from the start, was built on racial and economic oppression. Defunding the police is the abolitionists path towards liberation from the oppressive state regime and the abhorrent violence and suffering it causes on our communities.

Editors Note (11/27/2020): Updated to add Black and Indigenous led organizations that are working towards defunding the GRPD

The post An Address on Defunding the Police appeared first on Grand Rapids Democratic Socialists of America.