WHA Takes Shared Housing to the State Stage

Washtenaw Housing Alliance’s Shared Housing Program Coordinator, Danielle Bryant, had the privilege of co-presenting at this year’s Building Michigan Communities Conference (BMCC) in Lansing, Michigan's largest annual gathering of affordable housing professionals, with over 1,200 attendees from across the state.

Danielle was joined by Janet Hunko, Executive Director of Housing Bureau for Seniors at Michigan Medicine, and Lana Payne, Director of Grand Traverse County Commission on Aging, who joined by video from Traverse City. Together they walked through how WHA built its Shared Housing Program, what has been learned from the first matches, and what it would take for other communities to do the same. You can review their presentation slide deck here.

Lana being part of the presentation was not by accident. Over the past several months, Danielle has been working directly with Grand Traverse’s office as they explore launching their own shared housing program. That has meant sharing WHA’s intake forms, matching questionnaire, participant screening process, and the lessons learned in the first year. Seeing another community take this seriously and start building something real is exactly what WHA hoped for when first designing the program to be replicable from the start.

And Grand Traverse is not alone. Since the conference, Mason County and Kalamazoo have both reached out wanting to learn more. That is genuinely exciting.

It makes sense that interest is growing. Empty bedrooms and housing insecurity are not problems unique to Ann Arbor. Communities all over Michigan are dealing with rising rents, older adults living alone, and not enough affordable options. In Washtenaw County, you need to earn $30.90 an hour just to afford a two-bedroom rental, compared to $24.46 statewide. Nearly 60% of older adult renters here are cost-burdened. This is not a niche issue.

Shared Housing does not require building anything new. It requires coordination, a good matching process, and community trust. WHA started with a community survey to understand local need, secured funding through the Thome Aging Well Innovation Grant and the Michigan Health Endowment Fund, and built a five-step process that takes participants from inquiry all the way through ongoing support after a match is made.

If you are a housing professional, policymaker, or organization thinking about what this could look like in your community, Danielle would love to talk. And if you are in Washtenaw County and have a spare bedroom or need an affordable place to live, start here: whalliance.org/sharedhousing.