Hannah Wescott | February 13, 2026
On the first Monday in May 2025 our
city closed the Pines. City Police, State Police, Sherrif’s Deputies, and SWAT swarmed the area around 6:00 am, clearing out those still camping there despite many warnings. The City had promised $1 million to support Safe Harbor’s operations through the summers of 2025 and 2026. Bolstered by this advancement, they rushed to close the encampment, determined to quell growing anger over the abysmal living conditions there. The City insisted that backup options had been secured for Pines residents. With ~270 people experiencing homelessness in the five counties and only 194 shelter beds, the math didn’t add up. The Police Department’s Quick Response Team had indeed tried their best, but the truth remained: if folks had other options, they would not have been living there in the first place.
Since that morning, there’s been no feasible legal camping alternative for unsheltered people. The nearest state land for free camping is on Supply Road, a 4-hour one-way walk down dangerous roads and far from essential resources. For the first time in its history Safe Harbor began operating on a waitlist, routinely turning away multiple people. The Goodwill Inn has always had a long waitlist.
For Jubilee, too, the impact was immediate. Summers were once a period of respite for us when guests spent time outside, occasionally dropping by for coffee, showers, and laundry. That peace ended immediately after the Pines closed; sign-in averages hovered between 80-100 people per day all summer. Safe Harbor couldn’t offer meals, so we purchased an average of 200 microwaveable meals each month and served them from early May until mid-October, when Safe Harbor returned to normal operations. New anti-camping ordinances kept us from offering our usual camping supplies, since giving a tent would be like giving a ticket they can’t pay. Sleeping bags and tarps are easier to pack away each morning, but they’re quite useless in cold weather.
Everyone in our community is feeling the pressure. Our police officers have been instructed to move unsheltered folks along—but to where? If the temperature isn’t cold enough for Code Blue and both shelters are full, what can they tell those they find huddled in snowy crevices? Similarly, our “campers” are now unwilling to call for emergency aid or tell their housing workers where they’re camping, lest they be found by law enforcement instead. Workers now struggle to find their clients, which significantly sets back efforts to house those most at risk of dying in the cold. A winterized campsite requires lots of materials—many blankets for insulation, palates to lift bedding off the frozen ground, firewood/propane, and food stashes—which are not easily portable. Unsheltered folks wishing to stay near lifesaving resources are forced to survive with only the supplies they can carry.
Sheltered individuals feel the tension too, especially those staying at Safe Harbor. Their spot at Safe Harbor is only reserved if they return on time every night; if they miss one single check-in their bed will be given to someone on the waitlist. Where previously we would see some circulation when guests spent nights with family or friends, they are now too concerned they’ll become unsheltered to engage in other options. The waitlist, therefore, remains quite static. Those in housing are faced with an impossible conundrum: their friends are struggling to find shelter, but their leases only allow a guest to stay two weeks. How can they turn them away, when they know full well how it feels on the other side? They cannot. So, they welcome them in, jeopardizing their own housing in the process.
On the heels of the Pines closure, the Housing and Homelessness Task Force was formed. Led by the Coalition to End Homelessness and comprised of service providers, representatives from government, housing development, law enforcement, and others, our goal was to develop a feasible strategy to end homelessness in our region. Three work groups collaborated to identify gaps in our system, barriers to housing, and shared goals across the three central facets of homeless care: safety net services, emergency shelter, and housing solutions. The most important element, of course, is the advocacy toward deeply affordable housing. Without housing there is no end to homelessness; we would just end up building bigger shelters. As a member of the emergency shelter work group, I represented Jubilee through months-long discussions concerning the future of shelter in Traverse City. We did our best to balance homeless guests’ needs with the desires and limitations of our community, while considering the projected nationwide floods of homeless due to the continued dismantling of American social systems.
After all that work, our group finally settled on a recommendation: a single 365-day 24/7 shelter which would be housed at what is now the Goodwill Inn. Unifying shelter services would significantly reduce costs for our community, as shelter is the most expensive piece of homeless care. There are still numerous details to be ironed out, concerns to be addressed, and years of organization and construction to be done—and that’s only if our community decides this is how we want to move forward. In the meantime, current shelters and services would have to be maintained.
We are at a vital crossroads. It’s the perfect time to get involved! It is up to us, the residents of the five counties, to support the Task Force in its advocacy towards solutions to homelessness. We can write letters of support to local newspapers and to county and city representatives, vote for funding millages when they come, and support the maintenance of emergency shelters until plans are realized. Above all, we can show grace and kindness to our homeless neighbors living in such uncertainty and cold. An unhoused existence is never easy. It is within our power to make them feel human, not just here at Jubilee House but all over the community. Because “truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these siblings of mine, you did for me.”
