Crain’s Business coverage of the City’s ordinance proposals that will impact the unhoused completely avoids the Class War that is happening in Grand Rapids

On the front page of the July 24th print edition of Crain’s Grand Rapids Business, one headline reads, Tighter public nuisance rules create tension, with a subheading that said, Business, civic leaders torn on latest proposals to curb downtown panhandling.

The article, written by Kate Carlson, was in response to the July 11th Public Hearing on the two proposed ordinances from the City of Grand Rapids, ordinances that target the unhoused. The Crain’s article states early on, “Public hearings on the proposals drew a mix of opinions from residents, business owners and local advocates on how the city should proceed in addressing a rise in claims about aggressive panhandling and public clutter caused by the unhoused population.”

The Carin’s article is framed in such a ay as to suggest that there were equal amounts of people in favor of the ordinance proposals and those against. However, the fact was that there were at least a 5 to 1 ratio against the two proposals. Unfortunately, the business press didn’t communicate that reality. Instead, the Crain’s writer interviewed several business owners to get their take on the ordinance proposals, beginning with Rockford Construction CEO Mike VanGessel, who said, “Our city is at a critical point. As chair of the municipal council, which represents 130 businesses downtown, I’m concerned about our future. Businesses and residents are now considering the value of our city as a proposition where they relocate. This is not a simple issue with the unhoused. … The challenges are complex so the solutions are not simple.”

The article does cite one business owner who opposes the ordinance proposals, but it was the owner of Lantern Coffee Bar and Lounge, which doesn’t have anywhere near the leverage that people like VanGessel or CWD Real Estate Investment LLC partner, Sam Cummings. “This isn’t about where people live,” Cummings said in an interview. “It’s about how people behave. We have a group of folks that are making it difficult for everybody to use public infrastructure because they’re making people feel unsafe, they are threatening and overtaking public infrastructure by camping on it.”

While highly privileged people like Cummings complain about a group of people they can’t even name, the unhoused, the poor, they not only don’t offer any real solution to dealing with the root causes of the issues that the unhoused face, they fail to see that their lust for wealth and their financial backing of local and state policies have actually contributed to the current housing crisis. 

Of course, none of these systemic issues are explored in the Crain’s article, because the journalist does not and will not question the interests and the actions of the business class in Grand Rapids, nor will they try to make sense of why Grand Rapids has the largest wealth gap in the state. What the debate around the ordinances has exposed is the fact that there is a class war going on in Grand Rapids and the Capitalist Class is winning.