ESCANABA, Mich. (WZMQ) – A group of Escanaba residents is advocating for the creation of a homeless shelter. However, due to zoning restrictions, City officials say the chosen site may not be the right fit for their proposal.
Local resident Laurie Kaski-Hammar is the president of nonprofit Hope on the Horizon 906. She says her late son, John Karl Hammar, opened her eyes to the toll homelessness can take on a person’s life.
“His senior year of high school, my son developed cannabis-induced psychosis, so he had an eight-year battle in and out of mental health situations, had seven hospitalizations,” she said. “Before he died, he told me he learned that if he looked away first when he was walking near somebody, they didn’t have to feel uncomfortable, and he didn’t want them to feel that discomfort that he created in them. When he was in psychosis, he went to Room at the Inn and the Salvation Army in Marquette, and he fed people. He said, ‘Mom, I had you and dad that if I needed help, you were there. These people don’t have anybody.’ He said, ‘I can’t understand how that would feel.'”
In memory of her son, Kaski-Hammar set out to help those in her community facing homelessness. Now more than 80 volunteers strong, Hope on the Horizon 906 is advocating for an ordinance amendment to establish a transitional facility for the unhoused.
“We want a facility where you meet people where they’re at, determine what their barriers are, and make an individualized plan with them so that they have the opportunity to develop permanence in housing and job security,” Kaski-Hammar said. “You would need a building about 8,000 – 9,000 square feet that would have room for job skills training, life skills training, social skills, beds. You need places for people to shower, to clean up. You need meeting rooms, you need counseling rooms, you need kitchens, a feeding area. Inside, you need just space for people to exist without stress on them, and then you need outside green space for people to get away by themselves for a while. Then, you coordinate with the many services that are already here. There are a lot of people in this area doing a lot of good, but there’s not a bridge to get where they’re trying to get to.”
The site the nonprofit selected is the former Bertrand’s property on the corner of South 10th Street and 1st Avenue South. That’s where the City comes into the equation.
“All [this ordinance] would do is alter the boundaries of our multi-family C zone, which you can see in pink on the map here,” said City of Escanaba Planning and Zoning Administrator Joey Walker. “The parcel in question is this blue square in E—that’s our commercial zone. Essentially, it would just be wrapping that into our multi-family zone.”
According to Walker, a homeless shelter would be allowed without approval within that multi-family zone. Because the proposed amendment would rezone a commercial site, it has to go through the City. The Planning Commission recommended that the City Council deny the proposal, citing Escanaba’s master plan as its guiding document.
“In our downtown district, what we describe is refilling the storefronts with added retail, mixed-use,” Walker explained. “We’re looking for some added density of more permanent housing solutions up on the second floor.”
Walker describes what the master plan does call for regarding homeless shelters as a “grey area.”
“In our public input process, homelessness was brought up,” he said. “It was one of the things that our citizens really wanted us to deal with, but [the master plan] doesn’t give us any land-use guidance on where to put services for things like that or where to allocate those resources. If I’m not given the land-use guidance, I have to go by what I am given in the downtown. I didn’t think it exactly fit what we were going for in the downtown, but ultimately, it comes down to the Planning Commission and the City Council’s interpretation.”
Although there are properties available in the permitted multi-family zone, Kaski-Hammar says none of the individual buildings would accommodate Hope on the Horizon’s plans for the facility.
“We talked to six other shelters, and they said, ‘Here’s things that you need,'” she said. “This facility, we’ve looked at it three times because of the size, the location. It needed to have one floor because 50% or so have mobility issues. It needed to have parking space. We looked at many buildings, and this one fits everything. It’s in a price range that’s affordable for what it offers, and it has the added caveat of a suppression system, which many buildings don’t have.”
If the proposal fails, Kaski-Hammar acknowledges that purchasing a building in the multi-family zone might have to be the next step.
“We’ve already made an offer on one house; we’re looking at another house,” she said. “If that’s where it’s allowed, then I guess that’s where we have to start because there’s a need, and we need to meet that need. We need to help our neighbors.”
Despite the Planning Commission’s recommendation against the proposed ordinance amendment, Walker believes transitional housing is a much-needed resource.
“We absolutely need it somewhere,” he said. “If it is that property or not, that’s up for the Planning Commission and City Council to decide, but I would like to see those kinds of services in our community.”
Walker encourages those in support of the proposal to “keep going.” He says while the former Bertrand’s site may not be the place for their planned facility, one can be found.
“Some of the suggestions I gave to the Planning Commission and to the City Council were that, possibly, we could open up more of this map to them and maybe they would have more options. If we can make more land available to them, I think that would help. Ultimately, I think there’s a solution for them somewhere.”
This Thursday at 6 p.m., the City Council and Planning Commission will host a joint work session on the issue. The second reading and public hearing of the amendment are set for October 1.
