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Kalamazoo County presents draft housing framework, pledges implementation plan and community engagement

Kalamazoo County Board of Commissioners · November 19, 2025
AI-Generated Content: All content on this page was generated by AI to highlight key points from the meeting. For complete details and context, we recommend watching the full video. so we can fix them.

Summary

County housing director presented a high‑level draft framework to coordinate homelessness response through affordable homeownership, citing $33 million allocated from the county housing millage and 1,492 funded units; commissioners pressed for more detail on township inclusion, low‑income benchmarks and HMIS integration before implementation planning.

Mary Balkema, Kalamazoo County housing director, presented a draft county housing framework on Nov. 18 that she described as “a blueprint for aligning resources, partners, and strategies across a full housing continuum from emergency shelter to affordable homeownership.” The high‑level document, sent to commissioners in advance, is intended as a working framework to guide a later, data‑driven implementation plan with measurable outcomes and broad community engagement.

Balkema told the board the county has allocated more than $33,000,000 across four funding rounds from the housing millage approved in 2020 and has supported about 1,492 housing units, about 74% of which are under construction or occupied. The county’s proposed organizational…

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