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Caroline MacGregor: You're listening to 89.1 WEMU. I'm Caroline MacGregor, and my guests today are Emmy Award-winner, director and cinematographer, Kameron Donald and Jennifer Hall. She's the Executive Director of Ann Arbor Housing Commission. And Kameron Donald has recently made a film called "The Road Home." And this depicts homelessness in Washtenaw County. First of all, welcome to both of you!
Jennifer Hall: Thank you for having me!
Kameron Donald: Thanks for having us!
Caroline MacGregor: So, I wanted to ask you both, the Ann Arbor Housing Commission. Jennifer, you're the executive director of this organization. You partnered with Kameron. And, Kameron, actually, you also created a letter to the West Side. Your collaboration, though, was essentially to document local housing and homeless systems in Washtenaw County. Tell me how this collaboration came about in the first place.
Kameron Donald: Sure. This collaboration came about starting with the Dunbar Tower groundbreaking. I was there to film the event, create a highlight video, and while I was there, just seeing the emotions that people had at the event and how exciting it was of having an opportunity for the community to have affordable housing in that area. It was a moving moment. So, me and Jennifer spoke about the event, and we had an idea of creating a series of videos around Dunbar Tower and affordable housing in Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County.
Caroline MacGregor: You know, I did watch the trailer, obviously, but the stories in the film offer tremendous insight into mental health, housing insecurity, homelessness, of course, in Washtenaw County. Kameron, I wanted to ask you. You interviewed some people on the street. How did you approach them for the movie?
Kameron Donald: Well, first of all, those that are in the documentary, we worked with some of the organizations in Washtenaw County. Most of the people, they're tenants or former tenants at different organizations like Ozone House and Alpha House. So, they helped us identify who to speak to. And then, we do have some interviews that people that we met out on the street. We spoke to them a little bit, got to hear their story and asked them was it okay for them to share it. Some of them were open to, some of them wasn't, but that was kind of our approach of how we wanted to capture those stories and bring their perspective into the picture.
Caroline MacGregor: And, Jennifer, how did you first approach Kameron to make the documentaries?
Jennifer Hall: Actually, it was Kameron's idea. He recognized that there was a lot of work happening in the community around housing and homelessness. And since I'm in it all day every day, I didn't have that vision that he had of needing to share this information with the community. And so, we actually worked together on a letter to the West Side, as Kameron said, in the Dunbar Tower film. And so, this grew out of that, basically, out of a lot of conversations we had together, thinking about what was needed in the community was a broader conversation and information that could be shared. So, people could have conversations about both what is going on in the community and coming up with solutions because it is devastating to be homeless. Especially if you are a family with children, it's very impactful in a negative way.
Caroline MacGregor: Kameron, I'll ask you first. You mentioned in your documentary that Ann Arbor is basically often touted as the best city to live in for its walkable community, its schools, quality of life, but yet, this is off-limits to so many people. It's kind of a facade, which you refer to. How do we overcome this? I mean, obviously, the movie is going to spur conversations that you, Jennifer, just talked about. Do you really see some actions taking place as a result?
Kameron Donald: I do. I think that Jennifer can best answer this question, but what I can start off with is that another reason why the idea like kind of came to me in that groundbreaking was that people were so emotional. It was, like, the people that were emotional, they were frontline workers. You know, they work for Ann Arbor Housing Commission, they work with Avalon, and that just meant if they're excited about something like this, affordable housing, that meant that this is their purpose, because there's no money in frontline work, there's no fame, nothing like that. And what we wanted to let the residents know like, "Hey, your dollar doesn't only go towards affordable housing, it has further impact," because how Dunbar Tower is being constructed, the supportive services that's within it, the people, the lives, the workers that are also affected because this is giving them a purpose to achieve their calling. So, we want to make sure work like this continued to happen, but it only continued to happened when the voters continue to vote and support stuff like this. And typically, what happens when something has passed, it might have like a fire lifespan. But towards the end of it, the residents might not have heard about it. It probably only came up in a newspaper, and about time they go to vote again, they're like, "You know what? I voted on something like this about five years ago, but I don't even know what happened to it." And they vote "no" next time around. So, we don't want that to happen. We want to educate people, inform people, get them to be active in their community and keep stuff like this going. So, that's that whole inspiration in informing people through powerful storytelling because I think it's kind of unique of people hearing their story, their community, in this type of fashion. But how this will affect the community and policies and stuff moving forward, that's a question better for Jennifer to answer.
Caroline MacGregor: You depicted the human element so well. And there was this one man sitting in his car talking about how he didn't have any intentions to milk off the system, but he just wanted opportunity and desire to just make a better life for himself. It certainly made me feel like, "Gosh! What can we do?" And is this true, Jennifer? Is there a record number of people now seeking shelter due to the housing crisis in Washtenaw County?
Jennifer Hall: That's correct. And in particular, it is mostly single parents with children, like record, record numbers that we have not seen historically. And that's really hard for those families, both in their mental health, their physical health, their ability to succeed in school. So, it's really important that kids have a safe, secure place to live.
Caroline MacGregor: Kameron, as you went about making the film, the stories of the people you spoke to, what inspired you the most as you were making this film?
Kameron Donald: What stood out to me is that, even though we look at the world, we say, "What's going on?" We see stuff on the news. We see the numbers. And in our times, that don't inspire hope for people. But when speaking to executive directors and people that's in the space working on the front line, and then also speaking to the people with the little experience, the people do have a heart for this. People do want to make the system better. But I just think that we're at a point where people might rely too much on the system, but what makes this whole thing special is that the person that you voted in in that 80-year-old or that you hired to do path or whatever, they have something different within them. And we need to, at this moment, allow them to shine and come up with creative solutions because they want to make that system better. So, everybody that we talk to are affected in some way it comes to homelessness, housing insecurity. It might be them that been through before, or they might have a family member that's going through it now. But what I saw was that everybody has a desire and a hunger to make it better. And then, for those with a lived experience, they don't want to be there. They're not trying to live off the system like that one guy said. And when you do see people that are on drugs or on the street, stuff like that, in that capacity, that's like a smaller percentage. And most of the time, they are there because of mental health reasons. They're probably not getting that mental health help, and then, they're addressing mental health with drugs, stuff like that. So, there's a smaller percentage of that that I thought it was going to be bigger than that, but it wasn't. But at the end of the day, everybody has a heart to change this. We just got to enable and find an opportunity to do so.
Caroline MacGregor: Go ahead, Jennifer.
Jennifer Hall: Oh, I was going to say, from a systems perspective, there are many parts of municipalities, governmental entities, that interact and work with people who are homeless, whether it's public health, mental health, sheriff, police, our department, community development, downtown development authorities, the library, the schools, I mean, you name it. There's all kinds of organizations and parts of organizations that interact with people that are homeless. And sometimes, we collaborate very well, and sometimes, we're acting in a vacuum. So, that is one of the hopes of the film is to get all of us talking about what we're doing, what we can do better, how we can work together. But at the end of the day, we need more affordable housing. And so, to build affordable housing, you do have to have community support. You do have to have public subsidy, whether that's land, whether that's funding, whether that's approving of site plans. When Kam was talking about having something passed, he was referring to the City of Ann Arbor's affordable housing millage. And so, the City of Ann arbor's affordable housing millage combined with the city allowing the Housing Commission the ability to develop affordable housing on city owned properties are two critical pieces that's enabling us to do new developments where we can house low-income people, as well as people who are coming off the streets who are homeless.
Caroline MacGregor: In the film, there was a part where one of the city officials was talking about administrative cuts and waiting on funds. And this is essentially creating new holes in the system. Tell me a bit more about this, if you would.
Jennifer Hall: So, at the federal level, there's been a lot of change and chaos in funding sources and how funding is spent and priorities related to housing and homelessness. There's a change in focus on housing from what has been historically proven to be best practices to do housing first and permanent supportive housing, which means that there's low barriers to entry. You don't have to be clean and sober before you're allowed to have a place to live. So, we're seeing a change in philosophy to more of you have to deal with whatever's going on in your life yourself, you have to figure out how to get clean and sober, you have figure out how to figure a job, you have figure how to deal with any mental health issues that may have led to and contributed to your homelessness before you're allowed to get into housing. And so, that's a very different model and one that has not been proved successfully historically. And so, if it gets implemented, I believe you're going to see a lot more homelessness in the future because people who are currently stably housed will become ineligible to continue to get housed with these funding sources if they need substance use treatment to deal with that. And so, it's a different approach that's more of a, I think, humane approach to the problem.
Kameron Donald: And just to piggyback off of what Jennifer said, I've done, like you said, many different jobs and work before. I've won two Emmys. I can make eye candy stuff that looks straight to everyone. But after I won those awards, I definitely felt like I can do more. And with this documentary, this is one of those ones that have purpose and a means to an end. So, our goal with this documentary is to definitely get everybody interested in and activated, honestly, because people have it within them to do more. They want to do better. But sometimes, they just might not know where, when, and how. And hopefully, with this documentary, it could be a catalyst for that excitement, for conversation, to move forward amongst our leaders within Washtenaw County and also amongst the residents. So, I look at this documentary as a tool, as a mechanism, to achieve those things, not just only an entertainment piece. We really hope that people will step in, lead, the county get involved, the different stakeholders and other partners like Michigan Medicine, Trinity Health and other organizations, because, at this point in time, I remember Jennifer was saying, like, we came to a point where we're like, "OK, what is it in Washtenaw County? What do we need to do?" And people need to start looking inside the county and stop not only relying on outside the county for federal resources and help because there's a lot of resources in Washtenaw County to achieve a lot of the goals that Washtenaw County needs to achieve and then also make that system better bringing other people to the table as when it comes to talking about solutions and stuff like that from businesses, schools and everybody else. Make it a system that's inclusive to everyone and to further the future of the residents in Washtenaw County, especially those affected right now with housing, homelessness, prices and mental health issues.
Caroline MacGregor: We've been talking about the documentary, "The Road Home," and you'll be hosting multiple screenings throughout Washtenaw County, I believe, starting with the first two public screenings at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor.
Jennifer Hall: Yes. We have two screenings in Ann Arbor at the Michigan Theater. One is on April 23rd. That's our premiere at 6 PM. It's free to the public, but you do have to register through the Michigan Theater's website. The second is on May 7th at 6 PM. And then we have a third scheduled at EMU's Student Center on May 20th, also at 6 PM. And then, we're having screenings and other locations in the county that we haven't locked down yet.
Caroline MacGregor: All right. Well, thank you to both of you! It's been fascinating. And hopefully, this documentary will spark those conversations and make a true difference with some actions to address this problem further.
Jennifer Hall: Well, we appreciate you having a conversation with us!
Kameron Donald: Thank you!
Caroline MacGregor: This is 89.1 WEMU Ypsilanti.
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