At Community enCompass we work with our neighbors to build strong, vibrant, and diverse neighborhoods, in core city Muskegon. Over the last 10 years, Community enCompass has invested over $2 million in developing homes in the core city. We have done this through assisting homeowners with major repairs, rehabbing homes to grow rental housing for working-wage families, rehabbing homes for sale and more recently building NEW homes for sale and rentals on sites where homes once stood.

But why do we care about homes so much? Stable, vibrant communities include a mix of homes of different sizes and affordability. Homes may be small and large, apartments, rowhouses, single-family homes, and stand-alone rental and ownership homes. Successful and sustainable mixed-income communities include both market-rate homes and homes with long-term subsidies or rent restrictions to ensure homes remain affordable even when the costs rise. We believe one of the key’s to vibrant, diverse communities, is vibrant and diverse opportunities to make a home.

Muskegon’s Downtown has much to offer: transportation, libraries, parks and water, excellent restaurants, cultural and faith institutions, and service providers.  All of these are necessary for a community to thrive, and core city Muskegon is thriving with millions of dollars of new investment. As interest grows in downtown living, the cost of homes begins to rise to meet a new clientele of neighbors with expendable cash. 

But where does this leave the historical communities of core-city Muskegon, and how do we ensure that Muskegon continues to be a city for ALL its neighbors?

Over the last ten years, we have watched the demolition of hundreds of homes across the County to remove blight. Over the last 5 years, over 300 homes have been taking down. The demolition, has resulted in creating gaping holes in our city’s blocks, as the number of vacant parcels increases. What’s more, houses are selling quickly and prices are on the rise. For working-wage earners, the historical neighbors of core-city Muskegon, the economics of the housing market are reducing hope of homeownership.  Older affordable homes are being demolished at a high rate, and efforts to replace them aren’t keeping up, leading to both owners and renters spending an unsustainable percentage of their paycheck on home costs.

To guarantee future affordable homes for Core-city neighbors, Community enCompass has taken a two-pronged approach. 

Firstly, we rehab homes. In partnership with the city of Muskegon, we take the worst house on the block, the house destined for demolition, and we rehab it to create a new affordable quality home. With the help of local volunteers, we turn the rehab into a classroom sharing construction skills with local youth, and keeping costs low. The home is sold to local families wanting to invest in their community, for the cost of the materials used to rehab it, or it used to provide affordable, quality rentals. We also help senior neighbors age in place, by offering our rehab skills to fix up their homes so they do not feel forced out due to the cost of the home’s upkeep.

Secondly, we build homes. In 2019 Community enCompass built our first affordable home for working wage families in core-city Muskegon, the Monroe Smart home. The first of its kind, the Monroe smart home was built under factory conditions and designed with state of the art tech to keep costs, and bills low. The Monroe Smart Home, placed on an empty lot created by the county’s demolition program, is the first new affordable home in core-city Muskegon, and the first of what we hope to be many more, creating new affordable homes for working wage families, on the footprint of old demolished homes. 2019 also brought the construction of The Phoenix, a new smart home quadplex built on the footprint of a once historical quadplex that succumbed to a house fire in 2010. The Phoenix provides 4 affordable, quality rental homes (including one accessible unit) for working wage neighbors.

As new development comes to Muskegon, Community enCompass is committed to providing high quality, affordable homes to buy and rent to working wage neighbors, helping to keep the historical neighbors of core-city Muskegon in place and helping to make sure the downtown is a vibrant and diverse community for years to come.