Residents widely oppose ModPods at community meeting

Speakers lambast perceived lack of transparency during public comment

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 3 — There was a line out the door last night as about 150 people attended a meeting about the city’s plan to establish a pod community as transitional housing for residents who are homeless.

In a packed room that hit the Foster Community Center room’s occupancy limit, 45 people spoke in near-unanimous opposition to establishing the NOVA Lansing Housing Initiative in a public park. Residents said it could upend the services and activities at the parks.

“The NOVA project would supplant and diminish the robust use of this by neighbors,” said retired Allen Neighborhood Center executive director Joan Nelson, who spoke.

“I’m ordinarily more of a YIMBY —  ‘Yes, in my backyard’ — than a NIMBY, but this proposal indicates that we have not learned the folly of concentrating poverty and dysfunction in a small geographic space,” she said.

Residents critiqued one or all of the five finalist locations for the project, four of which are or are within parks. Nearly all opposed the project. Some argued that establishing transitional housing for homeless residents could increase crime rates and devalue property. Others said they wholeheartedly supported the effort but believed the site location decision had been made too fast and without enough community input to offer their support.

“This plan was brought forward with no plan, no vision and absolutely no leadership,” said Jody Washington, a former city council member.

Lansing purchased 50 ModPod housing units from Kalamazoo nonprofit Housing Resources, Inc., which purchased them for $1 million in 2021 with plans to build a pod community as transitional housing. The project was announced in November 2021 with the expectation that it could open within months, but after years-long delays with funding issues and community opposition, the nonprofit put them up for auction.

Lansing purchased them for $640,000, a steep discount, but it came at the cost of planning time. After reviewing 48 potential locations, five made it as finalists: Reasoner Park, Hunter Park, Comstock Park, the former warming house in Debbie Stabenow Park, and the former Shabazz Academy.

A few did speak out in support of the pods despite the overwhelming opposition. One was Ivan Droste, a city council regular and member of the Lansing Rent Is Too Damn High tenants’ union.

“The social contract obliges us all to make sacrifices for each other,” Droste said, including that any of the five locations were suitable if it meant saving homeless residents’ lives. He bemoaned what he called “a citywide game of hot potato with these ModPods.”

Opposition to the project took many forms: Homeless residents’ input had not been adequately sought, some argued; it would just be cheaper to house homeless people the usual way than to set up the ModPods, others said.

Some said the city’s Human Relations and Community Services department’s consideration of any park location was a failure to respect the city’s parks millage.

But on all sides, nearly all speakers agreed that the project had moved too quickly and without enough community involvement. Many expressed frustration that their neighbors had not even heard of the project, much less been asked for input.

“I do not know what community engagement you have been doing, but it does not seem to have reached the community,” Jamie Moriarty said.

“Residents are a lot more receptive to solutions that are planned, that are centralized,” said Val Magee, co-owner of Devil’s Day Tattoo downtown. “We need a proactive, strategic and compassionate approach to this.”

Mike Dombrowski, the chair of the Lansing parks board, said he was speaking on his own behalf, “because the parks board has literally never had a conversation around this topic.”

Dombrowski said he believed parks were on top of the list because they are easy solutions, rather than good ones.

“The decision seems to have already been made,” he said.

The meeting ran well past its scheduled end time of 7:00 p.m. As people filed 50 minutes later, they filled out little slips of paper asking them to select one of six options for their preferred NOVA location: one of the five finalists or “None of These — Please write your suggestion below.”

It was clear which option most were choosing.