A key part of our mission at Rocket Community Fund is protecting homeowners, which centers on residents being able to stay safely in their homes long-term. This should be simple. But in Michigan this goal is becoming increasingly difficult for many families. It’s a big part of the reason we invest in programs and research to better understand the issue – and how we can help solve it.

Michigan has a variety of programs to help, but do they work together? To find out, we invested $50,000 in the State-Level Home Repair Landscape Report, conducted by Public Policy Associates with the Michigan Municipal League Foundation as fund administrator. The study maps the state’s home repair landscape and asks how it could better serve homeowners and the organizations that help them.

An estimated 520,000 owner-occupied homes across the state, about 17%, likely need free or subsidized repair or preservation. Nearly 75% of owner-occupied homes are at least 30 years old, and 61% were built before lead-based paint was banned. For households with low or moderate incomes, a failing roof or furnace can quickly become a crisis.

What we learned

Michigan has eight active statewide homeowner rehabilitation programs, funded by nine streams across four federal agencies, the state, and utility ratepayers. Each comes with its own rules, applications, and reporting requirements.

For the 57 housing leaders who shaped this report, the result is a system that is hard to run and harder to navigate. One housing leader shared that a homeowner had to enter information into nine different databases to apply for help. Another described families applying for weatherization when what they really needed was a new roof.

It is our hope that the report will be used to offer practical recommendations for state policymakers, from stronger coordination at the top to the building blocks of a more unified system. It also highlights local efforts in Detroit, Kent County, and Ingham County that are already showing what better coordination between policymakers, funders and local partners looks like in action – to support the homeowners who need resources for home repair.

Dive into the full report below to see the findings and recommendations.