This article is part of State of Health, a series about how Michigan communities are rising to address health challenges. It is made possible with funding from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund.
In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, eviction filings in Kent County plummeted by about 50%, thanks to a national eviction moratorium and the COVID Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERA). But in the following two years, as the moratorium and ERA both ended, eviction filings steadily climbed from the 2020 low of 5,645 to 11,590 in 2023, topping even pre-pandemic numbers. That led a coalition of housing services organizations, people with lived experience of homelessness, government offices, landlords, and other community members to form the Kent County Eviction Prevention Task Force.
Gustavo Perez is a task force member, director of Kent County Community Action, and former coordinator of the ERA program at Heart of West Michigan United Way. He says ERA resulted in “a lot of great things,” particularly “the ability for several organizations to partner to get funding into the hands of people that need it, and do it efficiently and effectively.” He says the task force sought to “jump back in” and try to do similar work without ERA’s federal funding injection…