The state has announced that the Michigan Department of Civil Rights (MDCR) has received a grant to advance racial equity in Kalamazoo through partnership with the Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) efforts underway in the area.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation's TRHT effort is a comprehensive, national and community-based process to plan for and bring about transformational and sustainable change and to address the historic and contemporary effects of racism.

CMF is supporting the Michigan TRHT effort through a $4.2 million grant from WKKF, which is currently underway in Kalamazoo along with three other Michigan communities: Battle Creek, Flint and Lansing. 

The Kalamazoo Community Foundation is leading the TRHT efforts on the ground in Kalamazoo and will serve as a partner to MDCR in this work.

The grant from the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE) to MDCR is aimed at strengthening “community partnerships and developing a racial equity lens to better analyze and address the issue of fair housing in the city.”

Martha Gonzalez-Cortes, vice president of community investment and TRHT lead at the Kalamazoo Community Foundation told CMF the grant provides innovation seed funding for a separation team that’s designed to focus on issues of segregation. She said the grant allows the team to target the issue of fair housing as their first project.

“Partnership and collaboration are key in addressing root causes of inequality in our community,” Gonzalez-Cortes said. “We are bringing together partners who don’t often have the opportunity to collaborate in a creative and innovative space in search of solutions for systemic problems from both a grassroots and a government or policy perspective.”

MDCR shares that the grant will support the department’s work to:

• Build and deepen partnerships between the city of Kalamazoo, MDCR and community-based organizations focused on advancing racial equity.

• Connect government entities to the community-based process and emerging infrastructure of the TRHT process in Kalamazoo and nationally.

• Assist the city of Kalamazoo to adopt a racial equity framework in both its internal and external operations, including the implementation of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) framework.

“There has been growing concern from Kalamazoo residents about issues related to housing, including quality and affordability, as well as high rates of homelessness,” Agustin Arbulu, executive director, MDCR said. “Looking at this concern through a racial equity lens, we see low rates of home ownership for people of color, high rates of concentrated poverty in neighborhoods where African Americans and Latinos live, and the legacy of redlining and segregation. This grant award enables us to bring together multiple efforts in a comprehensive and sustained way to help foster actionable change.”

MDCR said the results of this work will be incorporated into the city’s Housing and Urban Development (HUD) consolidated plan for 2019-2024.

The four Michigan sites have been providing community programming, hosting racial healing circles and deepening community engagement since their launch last year.

Gonzalez-Cortes said a key meeting will take place on June 1 in Kalamazoo where they will share their vision, structure and focus areas for TRHT’s future work around the community.

Want more?

Learn more about TRHT and the framework.