Michigan’s homeless population has been left out in the cold during a time when federal and state governments spent millions to house illegal immigrants.

Now, housing and homeless advocates are sounding the alarm after the recent deaths of two young children in Detroit. The children died in their family’s van, where they were staying due to homelessness.

The Detroit community paid final respects to nine-year-old Darnell Currie Jr. and his two-year-old sister A’millah Currie at Triumph Church in Detroit on Thursday, Feb 20. Their mother, Tateona Williams, reached out to the city for help before the children died.

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The siblings were found unresponsive in the early morning hours of Feb. 10, after sleeping in a van in a Detroit casino parking structure. The family was using a van for shelter, which either ran out of gas or suffered a mechanical failure that night.

Detroit officials are now helping find a place for Williams and the surviving siblings to live. The mother Tateona said she previously sought help from the city’s housing help line at least three times but never received any sort of follow-up, Bridge Michigan reports. The last recorded time was November 2024.

Under Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s watch, homelessness is on the rise in Michigan, with rates rising just slightly over 8% in the last four years, according to the most recent state data. Skyrocketing housing costs and other complex factors such as extended unemployment, addiction, and untreated mental health issues contribute to homelessness.

Experts say Michigan’s homeless and housing services are overtaxed, leading to gaps in services and people falling through the cracks despite the state’s commitment to “end homelessness.”

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“Part of the heartbreak of the story is, we don’t make it easy for people to navigate the system, to get help when they need it,” Lisa Chapman, director of public policy with the nonprofit Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness, told Bridge Michigan.

According to the state’s Campaign to End Homelessness, housing needs assessments and service referrals are done through a single, centralized Housing Assessment and Resource Agency in every community.

“For those experiencing homelessness, we are committed to quickly connecting them with high-quality housing and services tailored to their unique needs to help them achieve housing stability,” the website states.

Perhaps the most glaring barrier to getting homeless and transient populations into stable housing is a dire need for affordable housing or year-round shelters.

In some parts of the state, like Missaukee or Wexford counties, there are no homeless shelters, Bridge Michigan reports.

Traverse City also has a growing homelessness problem. The unhoused set up camp in a place known as “The Pines” during the summer months and then it is cleared out in the fall when the homeless shelter opens.

Officials began cracking down last October, telling people they can’t camp in the pines since there is a shelter for people to go to, according to MidMichiganNow.com.

The homeless encampment is on city property near the former Traverse City State Hospital, which, ironically, formerly housed many homeless and mentally ill patients before it closed in 1989.

In recent years, The Pines has become ground zero for drug use, theft, assaults and other lawlessness, according to this MichiganNewsSource report from December.

During the summer, locals find themselves staring at tents and makeshift shelters at the busy intersection of US-31 and 11th Street, according to the article. The city trimmed the trees for fire safety, added lighting and security cameras, and provided portable toilets and sinks as well as solar- powered charging stations for people living there.

The encampment is near Veterans Memorial Park, which also experienced vandalism and graffiti this year. The caretakers decided to remove the picnic tables and benches off the property, and a puppy was thrown into a trash can.

Historically, the Traverse City homeless shelter Safe Harbor operated from mid-October to April, forcing residents to find alternative housing and camp during the summer. In September, city officials approved year-round operations for Safe Harbor shelter, UpNorthLive reports.

Sarah Hughes serves as the homeless programs director for the Northwest Michigan Community Action Agency, which oversees services for residents in 10 upstate counties, including Antrim, Charlevoix, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska and Missaukee.

Hughes told Bridge Michigan it’s hard to know how many people are actually homeless in Michigan right now because state data lags one year behind. Rural areas are hit even harder due to a lack of resources, including social services and actual housing units.

“Where we’re seeing the largest increase in homelessness is in those rural — really, really rural communities, without a whole lot of shelter or supports,” Hughes said, adding that over the last three years, her organization has seen a 45% increase in rural area homelessness.

About 33,226 Michiganders experienced homelessness in 2023, the most recent year for which statewide data is available. That was an increase of about 2%, or 521 individuals from 2022 and an even larger jump from 2020, when the state reported 30,746 people experiencing homelessness.

According to a local count, homelessness continued to rise in Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park in 2024. There were 1,725 people experiencing homelessness there as of January 31, up from 1,482 the prior year.

On the west side of the state, a Grand Rapids-area count found 403 people experiencing homelessness in late 2024, up from 317 the prior year.

On the whole, inquiries for housing-related assistance programs increased by 56% in the 2024 fiscal year, according to a recent report submitted to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

“Even if you’ve got $700 million sitting in the bank, if you don’t have the units to put the people in, it’s just as bad as having no money,” William A. Willnow III, housing navigator for the nonprofit Housing Help of Lenawee, told Bridge Michigan.

“I don’t think we are funding homeless response at the scale needed,” Chapman added.

In Ann Arbor, last year nearly 7,000 people applied for 20 affordable housing units. That demand was “one of the most dramatic cases I’ve seen in nearly 20 years in the affordable housing field,” Aaron Cooper, executive director of Avelon Housing, wrote in a blog post about the flood of applications.