Mel Trotter Ministries receives an additional $200,000 for storage bins for the unhoused, which makes them an accomplice in the criminalization of the unhoused

On Tuesday, Grand Rapids City officials approved a resolution that will give Mel Trotter Ministries up to $200,000 to continue their personal storage program. This is according to the Agenda Packet (pages 31 – 33) for the Fiscal Committee meeting for September 19th.

The $200,000 that the City of Grand Rapids is giving to Mel Trotter Ministries for personal items bin storage, will go into effect on October 1, 2023 and continue until September 30th, 2024. 

Now, to those who have not been following the issue of how the City of Grand Rapids and faith-based non-profits have been responding to the unhoused, providing storage bins to people might seem like a compassionate response. However, if we look at the totality of why people become unhoused, we can clearly see that entities like Mel Trotter Ministries are in no way interested in eliminating the housing crisis, especially for the unhoused, in Grand Rapids. In fact, as GRIID has written before, we refer to entities like Mel Trotter Ministries as part of the Homelessness Industrial Complex in Grand Rapids.

Mel Trotter Ministries has been around for more than a century and they have always only practiced charity work and in no way are interested in addressing the root causes of the current housing crisis. Like many faith-based groups, particularly Christian groups, they practice a form of White Saviorism, where the often refer to “helping the homeless as helping Jesus, since Jesus can be scene in the homeless.” 

Mel Trotter Ministries does not want to address the root causes of the current housing crisis, since that would require them to challenge the market-driven for profit hosing system that put profits over people. This is why Mel Trotter Ministries CEO signed on the letter last December, in support of the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce proposed ordinance, which would criminalize the unhoused.

If by chance Mel Trotter Ministries would address the root causes of the current housing crisis, they would also likely lose most of the current funding, especially from the large family foundations. For example, just within the most recent round of 990 document disclosure from numerous local family foundations, there has been……..Here is a list from the most recent 990 foundation document contributions to Mel Trotter Ministries.

• Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation – $25,000
• Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation – $5000
• Cheri DeVos Foundation – $25,000
• Jerry & Marcia Tubergen – $525,000
• David and Carol Van Andel Foundation – $1,500,000
• Jandernoa Foundation – $187,500

Just with these few local family foundations, all of which are part of the Grand Rapids Power Structure, Mel Trotter Ministries received over $2 Million in one year. If Mel Trotter Ministries suddenly decided to challenge the for-profit driven housing market system or began to advocate that people earn $25 – 30 an hour for their work, then the money from the above foundations would dry up. 

Lastly, it is important to note that one of the ordinances adopted by the City of Grand Rapids in late July, has to do with unhoused people who have their possessions with them. Yes, Mel Trotter Ministries has bins for people to store their possession, but not everyone trusts that their possessions will be safe with Mel Trotter Ministries. The ordinance also states that people will not be fined up to 30 days, as long as they reclaim those possessions. Not everyone, especially the unhoused have the means to reclaim said possessions, especially if those possession are not easily accessible. 

More importantly, since Mel Trotter Ministries benefits from public funding (through this contract with the City) they have little incentive to see these types of contracts end. In addition, the very fact that Mel Trotter Ministries is a link in the system that criminalizes the unhoused, they are clearly an accomplice to the criminalization of the unhoused. The only way for Mel Trotter Ministries to not be an accomplice in this instance, would be to make it a goal of their to confront the root causes of the housing crisis, with the goal of closing their doors, since if there are no unhoused people, then they would have no reason to exist.