Rachel Greco

Lansing State Journal

LANSING - It's a Tuesday morning in late November and Mike Karl is in the lobby of the Magnuson Hotel. He’s talking to Patricia Bright, who’s homeless. And, at the moment, broke.

Karl simultaneously plays the role of disciplinarian, mentor, counselor and cheerleader.

He’s used to wearing lots of hats.

"Just take a deep breath," he said. "I know it's hard but focus on the next steps. That's what I want to see."

Karl takes money from his wallet and hands her a few dollars to cover prescription co-pays for anxiety medication waiting at a local pharmacy.

"Don't spend it on anything else," he says. "If you come back to me in two days and say you don't have your medicine then I'll know you didn't spend it on that. Consequences. Everything is a choice."

Bright had been on the streets just a week earlier, evicted from her Lansing apartment.

Her room at the South Lansing hotel could be a stepping stone "to getting a place and being stable again," she said.

It is being paid for through Homeless Angels. Karl, 38, founded the nonprofit nearly two years ago after his own stint at a homeless camp in the midst of a financial crisis a decade ago.

Today, Homeless Angels' presence at the Magnuson, located off South Pennsylvania Avenue just north of Interstate 96, is evident.

Hung on the side of the hotel between two windows on the second floor is a banner that reads "Thank you Homeless Angels."

Inside the lobby there are notices taped to the wall advertising upcoming Angels' events and directing people to the nonprofit's office just up the elevator.

It's in room 217 on the second floor. If you knock on the door at mid-morning, Karl will likely answer. He spends a few hours there every day.

Just inside is a bank of personal care items — diapers, shampoo and deodorant stacked on shelves. Through another entryway boxes of macaroni and cheese, canned goods and soup are stacked. Walk a little further and you’re in a larger room with clothing, including coats and warm winter hats and scarfs.

“This is home, headquarters, right here,” Karl said on a recent tour. “In October we had 391 appointments for food, clothing, diapers or personal care items. This month it’s about 300.”

Karl calls the property "the homeless hotel" and he isn't shy about sharing his plans for its future.

"We can end homelessness right here," he said.

Seeing potential

About 40 homeless families are in rooms at the Magnuson right now. Among them are 20 children. The average stay is between one and three days but some people are there for several months.

Volunteers meet with residents in the office, hold weekend potlucks in the conference room, organize free street stores in the parking lot and plan special dinners there during the holiday season.

But two years ago it was just a temporary solution — the only hotel volunteers could find that would agree to house people they'd found on the streets during Karl's annual week of homelessness, during which he lives on the streets, networking with the people he meets and offering to help them find a way out.

Supporters had donated $700 and Karl was anxious to offer some of the people he’d met that November shelter from the cold.

“We called around to hotels and couldn’t really find one that would help us,” he said. “Then we called here.”

The manager on duty agreed to take payment that night for rooms to house people who had nowhere else to go.

Karl and his group of between 15 and 20 volunteers didn’t hesitate. They called a taxi company to pick up about 25 people and took them to the Magnuson.

Karl had never visited the hotel before that night. When he walked through the lobby doors it left a bad impression. Only 70 of the hotel’s 134 rooms were available for rent. The rest were in disrepair.

“There was garbage everywhere, not a very livable place. It was pretty rough,” he said. “There was a lot of riff-raff in here. It wasn’t a place I’d bring my family to.”

"The police were called there fairly frequently," said Trish Barker, a member of the Homeless Angels Board of Directors. "There was no other place in Lansing that we'd found where we could find a reasonable rate for a room to get homeless off the streets."

So he and his volunteers kept coming back, kept renting rooms for the needy and for six months they were a constant presence there, along with members of the media who were covering the grassroots organization as it took shape.

“The more that I stayed here, the more that we brought volunteers here, it put a light on this place, a light that the bad didn’t like, so those people left,” Karl said. “When they left we started building this place up.”

Yingtao Xiao, the hotel's regional manager, said nearly half of the hotel’s rooms were uninhabitable two years ago.

And at first he had concerns about the nonprofit’s presence there.

“We asked a few questions about how they were going to operate,” Xiao said. “We talked to them and they gave us the answers we needed. We said, ‘Okay. Let’s try it out. If everything works out we can keep working with each other.”

Homeless Angels housed people in a handful of rooms. Volunteers took care of addressing any issues that came up.

One man's quest to help grows into Homeless Angels

But eventually Karl and his volunteers begin to clean up rooms that were empty. Xiao said in the last two years they’ve opened up 20 of them for rent with the nonprofit’s help.

Bob Johnson is the director of planning and neighborhood development for the city and oversees the city's building safety office. He said improvements to the Magnuson are ongoing. In the last year his department has conducted inspections at the property. He said key elements of the building's safety, including its fire suppression systems, have been updated and repaired.

"Yes, it has been improved," Johnson said, of the property. "That will be continuing as they rehab the property."

Volunteers also negotiated a lower room rate, one that would allow supporters to house a small family for $28 a night. It was a $26 drop in the rate.

Barker, a nurse who lives in Olivet, has been with the nonprofit since its start, volunteering on "homeless walks" and then taking a role on the group's board after it became a nonprofit.

She said today the Magnuson is "certainly" not a four-star hotel but she no longer has concerns about going there "day or night."

"Everyone there has a vested interest in making it a better place," said Barker. "We've made a difference there. Just with our presence."

Xiao agreed.

“Personally, I think they are doing a great job,” he said. “Not only the idea but the whole process and how they think about what they are doing. At first, they bring people in and they say, ‘Okay, we’re giving you a start up but you need to help yourself. That’s what I really like about them."

“The homeless hotel" designation fails to bother Xiao.

"The Homeless Angels have spent a lot of time and human resources on this place and so I really don’t mind it being described that way. It’s fine.”

Lansing Police responded to 27 calls at the Magnuson Hotel this year, but said not all of them are criminal issues.

"It does get its share of calls but nothing out of the ordinary," Lansing police Public Information Director Robert Merritt said, adding the department applauds Homeless Angels’ efforts.

"We feel that they do have a positive impact on the community.”

A year ago the nonprofit opted not to renew a lease for office space they'd been using in downtown Lansing. They spent two months looking for a bigger space before realizing it already existed at the hotel.

“We thought, ‘Is there a better place than here, where we put our families?'" Karl said. "This is where the fresh start is for a lot of people, why not a fresh start for us?”

With an office at the Magnuson Homeless Angels volunteers are able to meet with people where they’re staying.

Keeping families together

Not many Lansing shelters accommodate families, said Dr. Joan Jackson Johnson, director of Lansing's Human Relations and Community Services Department.

According to the most recent data, there are about 1,410 children among Ingham County's 5,064 homeless. Only one of the city's eight shelters, Haven House, serves families.

"That makes it tough for them," said Jackson Johnson. Karl said the hotel gives families stability.

“If you think about it, a shelter has 50 beds,” Karl said. “This has 147 beds. It just allows more people to come in.”

City Rescue Mission of Lansing maintains two shelters, one for men and another for women and children, according to its Executive Director Mark Criss. Between them, there are 200 beds and on a nightly basis the nonprofit provides shelter for 151 people.

Even adult men and women struggle to get one of the 336 shelter beds available in Lansing on any given night, Jackson Johnson said.

"The only time you'll find an empty bed in a shelter is if someone it's reserved for doesn't show up," she said.

Jackson Johnson said while the Magnuson isn't a long-term solution it's better than the streets.

"I applaud them because they are getting them out of the elements," she said.

According to documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service last year, the Homeless Angels spent just under $10,000 of its $28,000 budget to house homeless last year.

Clients must sign an intake form agreeing to several stipulations during their stay though – no drinking or drugs, no smoking in their room and no visitors. If any of the rules are broken they're asked to leave.

“We don’t ask a whole lot,” Karl said. “We do room checks. We do make sure these families are doing what they’re supposed to be doing and if they’re not then, ‘I’m sorry. We can’t help you at this time.’”

Today, you’re likely to meet volunteers at a Homeless Angel event who were once homeless themselves or who are still in the program.

The Magnuson has two paid staff members that run the hotel — but another eight Homeless Angels clients who reside there regularly contribute to the building's upkeep. In exchange for a room each night they paint, clean and provide routine maintenance.

“Some of them are really skillful,” Xiao said. “They’ve definitely helped with not only the rooms but the public areas.”

Karl said clients who contribute at the hotel gain a sense of purpose. Some are chronically homeless but at the hotel they’re contributing.

Michael Johns, 41, has been at the Magnuson for a month. It's his second stint there. He was one of the nonprofit's first clients and stayed in the hotel for six months two years ago. When he left it was for steady employment and an apartment — but it didn't last.

"I've been on the streets for over 20 years," Johns said.

Today he completes maintenance tasks and cleans the hotel on a daily basis. "Anything they need done," he said.

Johns doesn't mind the work. "It comes easily to me," he said. "They are doing so much for so many people. I've seen people getting off the streets and getting back on their feet."

Big dreams

“I want to own this hotel,” Karl said. “It’s something to work towards.”

County officials say records show the hotel property is valued at about $1.6 million. Karl said the hotel's owner has offered it to the group for $500,000, but it’s money they don't have right now.

Financial issues at the Magnuson Hotel could impact the nonprofit's efforts though.

The county could foreclose on the property by March 31 of 2017 if the owner fails to pay more than $107,000 in delinquent property taxes from 2013 and 2014, according to Ingham County Treasurer Eric Schertzing.

According to city property records, UN Michigan L.L.C. is listed as the owner of the Magnuson Hotel, formerly Dad's Inn. Kelvin Koh is listed as the registered agent. Attempts by the State Journal to reach him were unsuccessful.

Schertzing confirmed that Alvin Peh of Singapore is the property owner.

The county has sent letters to Peh about the debt but have yet to receive a response, said Schertzing.

Most delinquent tax cases don’t end in foreclosure, Schertzing said. Taxes on about 9,500 parcels in the county become delinquent every year, he added. Of those about 200 eventually end up in foreclosure.

For now, the hotel remains a place for second, third and fourth chances. It’s something Karl believes in.

The future, he said, will take care of itself.

“I believe that everything happens for a reason so I’m not stressing it, I’m not searching for that money,” he said. “Right now I’m focused on taking care of the families we have here every day. I want to help them.”

About Homeless Angels

The Lansing-based nonprofit got its start two years ago, when Mike Karl's effort to help the area's homeless gained a following.

The Eaton Rapids man, an employee at General Motors, had been homeless himself 10 years ago. The experience prompted him to try and make a difference. For one week every year he returned to the streets to sleep there and connect with homeless. In 2013, after his story appeared in the State Journal, people reached out to help him, giving way to Homeless Angels.

Its volunteers have since helped hundreds of Lansing area homeless get off the streets and connect to available services. Many of their clients are housed at the Magnuson Hotel in south Lansing. Supporters can house a family for one night there for a $28 donation or "Homeless Angels room credit." Those can be made by calling the hotel at 393-1650.

Learn more about the Homeless Angels or get involved by visiting them on Facebook at "Homeless Angels," on Twitter at @Homeless_Angels or through their website at www.homelessangels.org .

Lansing's needy touched by Angels

Contact Rachel Greco at (517) 528-2075 or rgreco@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @GrecoatLSJ.