West Michigan's Morning News
Mel Trotter Ministries 100 in 100 Campaign
Adrienne Goodstal, President of Mel Trotter Ministries joins WMMN to discuss a campaign to end homelessness in Grand Rapids hoping to house 100 people in 100 days.
More information can be found here: https://100in100kent.org/
- Duration:
- 5m
- Broadcast on:
- 28 Jun 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
I'm Victoria Cash, and I want to invite you to a place called Lucky Land, where you can play over a hundred social casino-style games for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. So what are you waiting for? The best way to discover your luck is to spin, so go to luckylandslots.com, that's luckylandslots.com, and get lucky today! At Lucky Land! No purchase necessary, VGW Group, Boyd were prohibited by law, 18-plus terms and conditions apply. Yesterday, Grand Rapids Area Coalition to End Homelessness announced a collaborative campaign to house a hundred individuals experiencing homelessness in a hundred days. This is West Michigan's Morning News. Steve Kelly and Brett McKeeta, we are joined by the President of Mel Trotter Ministries. Adrian Goodstall, thanks for doing this today. Hey, good morning. Happy Friday. And it feels really good. And it had to be rewarding to be in that collaborative press conference yesterday. That's sort of what Mel Trotter has been doing for 125 years, but talk to us about now those partners that will help walk alongside. Yeah, so this is really exciting. You know, we say it all the time that homelessness is such a complex issue. We cannot do it alone. It's going to take all of the community, private, public, partnerships to really start moving the needle on homelessness. So yesterday was just a kickoff and a great example of West Michigan. West Michigan comes together when there's issues to be solved. And so yesterday was a wonderful opportunity for the community to really see that in action. We've been talking about the economy in a couple segments partially because of last night's debate. And though the Dow Jones is nearing record points and unemployment is getting better, homelessness is getting worse. Talk to us a little bit about the need before we get into some specifics about how we can pull off a hundred and a hundred. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, for our agency, I mean, we've been serving people experiencing homelessness for 124 years. And every year we continue to see those needs rise. Last year alone, we served 500 of 5,500 unique individuals that came through our doors, which was up by 11 percent from the previous year. And we're seeing the trend for 2024 only to pass that. So that's just our agency. There's many other agencies that are also serving this population. So while Kent County is doing great with all of the, you know, the new initiatives that are happening, we certainly are seeing homelessness continue to rise in our community. And the stats are there, Adrian. I mean, just for safe, for people to keep them alive, the mortality rate for persons experienced homelessness three times higher than when you go into the fact that, you know, persons experiencing homelessness are three times more likely to access an emergency department for their medical needs. I mean, this is going to help everybody. Yeah, it's straight on our whole system. And I think that people often don't think about that. But, you know, those that are experiencing homelessness certainly have complex challenges where they are utilizing more of those community resources. And unfortunately, what that means is that makes it more challenging for, you know, people like you and I who might need some of those resources as well. So yeah, it's going to be great for the whole community. I mean, certainly, you know, it's about getting those that are the most vulnerable off of the street that have been living, you know, unsheltered for decades, some of them. And so that's what this initiative is about. It's about looking for ways to get the most chronically homeless individuals, the most vulnerable, and to a path of safe and stable housing with those support services that are so necessary for their success. We've done interviews with Degas J Ministries and talked to dwelling place and great organizations before that are kind of in the same field. But talk to us about how good it was to have somebody like Al Vandenberg there and Mayor Rosalind Bliss to be part of this announcement too. You know, it is great. When we look at other communities, we see that the city and the county come together. And so, you know, to see that happening in our community where there is a will, you know, from the government end of it to say we're not okay to allow people to remain in homelessness. And we're going to come together as the city and the county and we're going to support these efforts of the nonprofit and to be on the stage with them and hear their heart and passion and desire to make sure that this gets across the finish line successfully was a huge win for our community. We're going to put a link to 100 and 100 can't .org. That may be hard to remember but we'll get it in the podcast section at woodradio.com because believe it or not, you're invited to help as well. Adrian Goodstall, president of Mel Trotter Ministries. Thanks for your time this morning. Thanks very much for having me on.