JANUARY 13 • 2022 | 21

to renting hotel rooms and 
providing meals to our shelter 
clients, and equipment and 
logistical support around those 
initiatives,
” Hertz said. “We were 
very lucky to have a community 
surround us with support to 
make all this happen.
”

A LONG-TERM APPROACH
On any given night, Lighthouse 
is serving four times the num-
ber of households with emer-
gency shelter services during 
the pandemic. 
Lighthouse is also in the 
midst of renovating a building 
to create the only homeless 
emergency shelter in Oakland 
County specifically designated 
for families.
“The way I describe it to our 
staff and board is we’re building 
a plane in the air, and now we 
have to build the landing gear,
” 
Hertz said. “We need to figure 
out more sustainable approach-
es, moving out of crisis mode 
into a longer-term approach to 
continue to zero in on the most 
acute needs in our community.
”
Starting to run out of hotel-
ing dollars and 2020 campaign 
funds, Lighthouse had to figure 
out its longer-term plan for 
families. The answer was adapt-
ing one of its legacy transitional 
housing facilities into an emer-
gency shelter facility.
“The rationale was that we 
took the grants for transitional 
housing and worked to convert 
those to transition-in-place 
grants, meaning instead of peo-
ple coming into our building 
for two years and then moving 
out, we work with them to 
secure an apartment in the 
community, provide them with 
rental assistance and supportive 
service for two years, and then 
they can transition-in-place and 
take over their lease at the end 
of the program so they’re not 
displaced,
” Hertz said. 
That decision opened the 
way for the legacy transitional 
housing facility to be con-

verted into an emergency shel-
ter program for shorter-term 
crisis situations, with 18 apart-
ment units and 54 beds, all 
designated for families. 
Hertz said he believes it’s 
going to be a long community 
conversation to figure out, not 
just at Lighthouse, but global-
ly, how to address issues that 
were there pre-COVID more 
sustainably for the long haul. 
“One thing I’ve come to 
learn in my 13 years of being in 
homeless services and anti-pov-
erty work is society is willing to 

accept, in most 
cases, quite a lot 
of folks going 
without, with-
out necessarily 
taking action 
and resolving 
those problems,
” 
Hertz said. 
“The pandemic 
changed that; it 
was a real wake-
up call. People 
in fairly well-
off communities, regardless of 
financial situation, felt very vul-
nerable. And in feeling that level 
of vulnerability, I think it creat-
ed a level of empathy for others 
who have been vulnerable and 
were now even more so.
” 
Hertz believes that’s part of 
why they saw such an influx 
of resources allowing them to 
meet more needs than ever 
before. 
“So coming out of this and 
into the future, the question 
becomes: ‘
Are we going to be 
able to sustain that?’ That’s 

where we’re at, trying to solve 
for that,” Hertz said. 
 
Lighthouse has worked 
diligently in the housing assis-
tance side of things as well. As 
a partner in the COVID-19 
Emergency Rental Assistance 
program, Lighthouse has pro-
vided more than $7 million 
in rental assistance to prevent 
more than 800 evictions in the 
local community since March 
2021, the end of the eviction 
moratoriums.
 
Lighthouse has also contin-
ued to work on the systemic 
side of the problem and solv-
ing the problem at its source, 
such as how to address 
affordability so there are 
fewer people facing eviction 
in the first place.
Like most nonprofits, fund-
raising efforts are critical right 
now to address the dramatic 
increase in the communi-
ty’s needs. For ways to help, 
receive help and further info, 
visit lighthousemi.org. 

Lighthouse CEO Ryan Hertz

BELOW: Lighthouse volunteers 
work on the holiday Adopt-
a-Family program, which 
helped more than 500 families 
celebrate the holidays with 
some level of normalcy, warmth 
and joy.

“WE WERE VERY 
LUCKY TO HAVE A
COMMUNITY 
SURROUND US WITH 
SUPPORT TO MAKE 

ALL THIS HAPPEN.”

— RYAN HERTZ

PHOTOS COURTESY OF LIGHTHOUSE

