May Updates and Events

May Updates and Events

Hi Friends,

May is Mental Health Awareness month. We are all familiar with the profound role mental health plays in our community's struggles with housing security. And as activists, advocates, organizers, mental health burdens can weigh particularly heavy. It is our challenge to care for our own well being while extending ourselves to care for others.

Some questions to reflect on this May:

For yourself

What can I do to prioritize some care for my mental health every day?

What are signs that my mental health might be struggling?

What is my action plan for when I recognize these signs?

For our community

What are the gaps in mental health support in our community?

What mental health services would I like to see added to our area?

How can we create a mental health system that is aligned with our values?

When I think on these questions as a survivor of both attempted suicide and psychiatric abuse, it stands out to me how much our area needs a program like North Carolina's Retreat @ the Plaza, a peer-supported respite facility that functions as an alternative to psychiatric hospitalization. Here’s an article from their opening in 2021.

A service like that would have been unquestionably life-changing and trauma-averting for me at my darkest moments and would have directly impacted my ability to maintain housing security. Beyond the personal aspects, hundreds of thousands of dollars that Medicaid and other government-funded resources spent on preserving my life could have been saved. Here In Michigan, Oakland County’s Common Ground Crisis and Resource Center is doing similar work with voluntary alternatives to inpatient care, though from a clinical rather than peer standpoint. Make sure to check them out as well. I’m eager to see Washtenaw county mobilize around similar efforts, and I would love to hear how your own stories and experiences impact your perception of our area’s unmet mental health service needs.

Despite the gaps that at times feel glaring, I am grateful for wonderful services that are stepping up to meet the wellbeing needs of our housing insecure population, such as FedUp and Care-Based Safety’s collaboration Thrive, offering both group and individual therapeutic services to meet the needs of the recently housed/employed. Please let others know about this new opportunity for community, growth, and fantastic food.

Grievewell's programming also comes to mind. They are currently seeking volunteer peer grief counselors - I’m hopeful that we can find some folks with lived experience of homelessness who are willing to take on this role, as loss can be so prevalent in this community, and dual peers would be particularly well equipped to navigate this potent combination of traumas.

Additionally, Packard Health is seeking vounteer Black Men’s Mental Health Ambassadors this season - I appreciate that some among you might be called to take up this role.

And of course, as I reflect on Mental Health Awareness Month in Washtenaw County, my thoughts must turn to our county’s upcoming Mental Health and Public Safety millage.

While the millage was not anticipated to be up for renewal until 2025, we will see it on the ballot this fall. Many voters who supported this initiative prior did so in order to fund our community’s urgent mental health needs, but we have found that funds allocated by this money have been spent by the sheriff’s department on such unrelated equipment as patrol rifles. Because this is a ballot initiative, there is no ability to modify the defining language. It must pass or fail as it stands - funding programs such as the Student Advocacy Center and elements of Avalon Housing together with the sheriff’s discretionary budget, or voting it down and leaving our community organizations in a dire funding crunch. Over the next couple months, we must determine how we can best live our ethics and support our community in regards to this vote, as well as help others to realize that vision. I will be working with Network members like Care-Based Safety and community partners like WeRoc to dive deeper into this issue, and hope to hear from you the solutions that you envision.

In Partnership,

KJ

P.S. Please take some time to check out the Network Member and Community events calendars, with lots of new additions of exciting upcoming happenings. To keep this space tidy and make room for other content I’ll be featuring an abbreviated selection of events in each correspondence, but will be adding to our calendars continuously through the month.