Stacy Jackson and Kelley Kellis

[00:03] STACEY JACKSON: My name is Stacey Salters Jackson. I am 49 years old. Today's date is August 2, 2023. We are in Kalamazoo, Michigan. My interview partner is Kelly Kellis, and my relationship to Kelly is. She is my sorority sister with the Zeta Phi beta sorority, Incorporated.

[00:26] KELLY KELLIS: My name is Kelly Kellis. I'm 47 years old. Today's date is August 2, 2023. We're in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Stacey Salters Jackson is my interview partner, and she is my soroer of Zeta Phi Beta sorority, incorporated and a former colleague. Stacey Stacey thank you so much for having a conversation today. One of the things I wanted to talk to you about is just when you think about home, where is home to you, and what does home mean to you?

[01:02] STACEY JACKSON: You know, this is a question that I really contemplated my whole adult life. I can say that Kalamazoo has always been my home, and I don't see myself moving from Kalamazoo. It is a great place to live and be and explore and learn. We'll get to the other stuff later. But Kalamazoo is home for me. I do have. What was the second part of the question? I'm sorry.

[01:33] KELLY KELLIS: So what does home mean to you?

[01:36] STACEY JACKSON: You know, so, Kelly, you know me. I have two children. I have to start with my family and my circumstance. And so I have two adult children now who are 30 and 25. And in the last 30 years, we have collectively accumulated 17 local addresses here in Kalamazoo county. So when I say, what is home? To me, home is where we can get high quality housing at a price that we can afford, where we want to live. And so that is really the determinant for me and not necessarily a specific place or anything, because, like I said, I've had 17 addresses in this community, and some have been apartments, some have been houses, some have been duplexes. But I can say that wherever me and my children are, that is home and always will be.

[02:42] KELLY KELLIS: So that's thinking through your 17 different addresses and thinking through the fact that you have now two adult children. Take me back a little bit to what it was like, you know, moving around with kids in Kalamazoo county. You know, what did that look like? You know, were there any barriers that you came into, anything that you had to overcome?

[03:06] STACEY JACKSON: Yes, and I've had a lot of support, and so I'm gonna say that first, I've had a lot of support from my family, my friends. People have supported me deeply, and this community has been challenging for someone who wants to be a renter for the last 30 years. Literally, I wanted to rent a house that was being rented through local realtor and had some credit issues. Right? Of course. Who didn't get credit issues in college as a freshman? And add two kids to that, you figure something stuff out. But. So I had some credit issues and wanted to rent a house that was suitable for me and my children, and reached out to a local realtor and asked the question, right, will my credit score impact my ability to get this housing? The question, the answer was no. So I applied. I paid the $75 to get told no, and I reached back out because I said, I clearly asked that question. And literally, my housing journey has been that my whole time. I still struggle. Well, not struggle, but I'm in student loan debt that hasn't been forgiven or probably won't be forgiveness. And so, like, even my options of buying homes have been limited. I got engaged and involved with what was the organization, housing resources here locally, and was a part of the transitional housing program, which was very helpful for me at the time. My son. I was pregnant with my son, and I needed to move back home, but my mom had transitioned her. She had rented my room, and then she was transitioning the other bedroom into a bathroom. And so because I had moved out on my own will and, you know, my own free will to move out, she wasn't making the person move out. So I literally lived in a bathroom for a few months and got connected to transitional housing. And when I shared my story with my intake person, they didn't believe me. So then they had to come see for themselves that I was living in a bathroom and got me right into an apartment, which I was like, why was there no apartment ready yesterday? But it's some today. Okay, fast forward through that. I got into some subsidized housing. I was in college, I got my associate's degree, and the next step was like, you got to move out of subsidized housing. You got a real job. Right. And it's difficult to have the thought of paying market rate for something that you had paid way less than market rate for without getting any additional amenities. And so we moved into a house on the north side and was renting it from a family friend, and then my family expanded, and so then that house wasn't big enough anymore. Ended up moving back to my mother's home. She moved out. We actually switched houses for a minute. Right? And so, like, I'm doing all this with two small kids, right? And I'm doing this when I'm working full time. I'm doing this while my kids are engaged and stuff. And so just, really just, you gotta do it. You gotta have housing, right? And so, just as my life went on, I was like, I should have a housing score instead of a credit score, because my housing score would be 100% right. I would have 100% housing score. I've never been evicted from anywhere. No landlord has ever had bad feedback for me as a rentere. But it was hard. You know, it made my life much more difficult than it needed to be, trying to figure out where to live with two young kids, knowing the circumstances of some of the neighborhoods that we live in, and really desiring that my children not experience any of that. I ended up out living in an apartment complex, a high end apartment complex, and was paying almost $1,000 a month for rent at that point for a three bedroom. And the narrative was that, you can afford a house, go buy a house. Got engaged with Koundsville neighborhood Housing, another local housing organization, purchased the house of my aunt and uncle. Very fortunate to have that opportunity. And then six months later, they recognized that they had not included the second lot on my property taxes. So I ended up with a four or $5,000 bill for the previous year that got added to my mortgage that I, of course, could not have paid. Right. I was still working the same. I had a good job. I was a financial analyst with the county. I had a decent job, but just could not afford that. So thus began. Oh, let me say this, too. Home ownership is not for the weak minded or hearted. During the three years I'm trying to remember, I have it all right here. But during the three years I lived at that. In that home and I owned that house, I had two trees fall on my house. I had an air conditioner unit stolen, like I had robberies, like, on top of. Right. So, anywho, thus began the venture to find somewhere else to live. I still could afford it, but I couldn't afford what they were asking me to pay for the mortgage. Every time I've met a private landlord, they tell me that if they hadn't met me, they would not have rented to me. Based on my application, every landlord I've had a. I've given them reason to kind of question some of the things that they believed about people. Right? So, moving forward a couple of years, so the house that I moved into after the house that I owned was a small two bedroom house. My daughter was in middle. Was in middle, high school at the time, and my son had just graduated from high school, so he was supposed to be on his own, but ended up sleeping on our couch most of the time. And then I quit my job at the county, which I really couldn't afford my rent at that point. And I was in a life space that really didn't allow me to continue working there. And I can say that I've never looked back. I've never been hungry. So from there, I quit my job, and my housing situation had to change dramatically. I had connected with someone who was connected with open doors, got connected to open doors, and was able to get an apartment through them, where I stayed for about three years. That was a really helpful transition space for me in my life, because not only did I get support in paying lower rent, I got the community and family support, too, that we also deeply needed. Not even recognizing. Right. That we were transient. Right. I believe Stephanie Hoffman was the first person that told me that, because at that time, I had only had nine addresses in 30 years in that number of years. And so she's like, do you realize that you would be classically defined as transient? And I'm like, how am I transient when I'm a bachelor's degree, educated person, you know, but just the definitions that people make for people, you know, the american dream, like, whose dream was that? And did they have two kids by themselves in a tree, fall on their house and try to figure that out? Like, I don't know whose dream that was. And so anyway, in definitions, recognize our transient nature and just kind of did some help and some healing around that and recognize that open doors was a program that I did not believe that I should take up more space in is that I had gotten. So when I quit my job, I became an AmeriCorps Vista, served for a year, and then I got a full time job and just really recognized at that point, like, make space for someone else. And so then I left there I was able to find great. How I found the perfect. What was my perfect house, my perfect condo. I'm out of the house buying game. So I wasn't even worried about that. I was just trying to find a landlord that would take me and my daughter at that point, met, found a landlord again, if I hadn't met, like, it was a personal collection right away. And then she sold the doggone unit a couple years later. So we've had three times now that houses have been sold out from underneath us, which is a very traumatic experience to learn, right? To stage your home where you live so that someone else can come in and see it, that you get no benefit from, except for you have to leave. So in the midst of all of that, you know, things have been great, but it's just, it's been interesting. My son, who's 30, I believe he the most, has really, like, taken on that transient identity as his own. And so he's real comfortable sleeping on couches, sleeping wherever he can, you know, and being on the go all the time. My daughter, I was telling her about this experience, and she recognized that in her daughter's three years of life, she's also had three addresses. So we really got to work to break some stuff, right? But at the same time, it's difficult to break some stuff if you're not willing to engage. If you're not able to engage. I'm not even going to say willingness to engage if you're not able to engage in processes and systems as they're designed. So.

[14:20] KELLY KELLIS: So let's talk about that just a little bit. So just thinking about, you know, being transient or being classified as transient, and, you know, most people, I've known you for years, that would. I would not picture you. You would not be the face of a transient woman or family, for that matter. And so when we think about stereotypes and we think about labels, if you had something to say to individuals who have available units, because we do know that there's a lack of affordable housing and available housing throughout Kalamazoo county. If you had one thing to say to those individuals, what might it be?

[15:01] STACEY JACKSON: You know, I think I would definitely ask people to really lean into their whys and where are they learning information from? That's what I say a lot in my job. Like, where did you learn that? Like, who did you hear that from? Because what I recognized is that even in the labels of being trans, like, I was transient, but we got no transient support for school, right? Like, my kids weren't identified as transient, even though I was changing our address at the school district every two to three years, right? So we got no benefits from being transient. So why are we establishing labels and things like that to people if there's no benefit to the label? I would say to landlords in Kalamazoo county specifically is to do better. I would ask them to really wonder why they got into housing as a landlord in the first place. I would ask people to really question their belief systems around people and what people will do in situations and circumstances. I'm very fortunate, the house that we live in now. So I'm gonna say I got married in 2016, so I got married, but he's also been moving with me. We moved together 123456 times in our eight years of being married, so. But he went to meet our landlord, and our landlord just decided that he wanted to rent to him. Like it was a personal connection. He had gotten offers from people to pay for the full year, but they only wanted to be there six months. And so he. So he kind of did this questioning to himself, like, why am I trying to rent housing? Like, what do I want to do? And so I think you have to, like, not put your ways of being on other people's. And maybe wonder why. Lean into, wonder more why people are doing things or why people are not doing things. Or, you know, everybody says, well, you can save up, you can pay your rent on the first is $2,000, right? Well, generally speaking is I can, and it's easier if I pay it twice a month, right? Like, which some people do on their mortgages and things like that, like, whatever. And so just leaning into wonder about people's stories around other people and why they won't rent to people. And just really because even while they're doing all the things to prevent people from misusing them, abusing their properties and all those kind of things, not paying their rent, those things are still happening. So now you're just excluding people based on what could be wrong information, right? And so, yeah, so I would just lean into that wonder, why are you a landlord? Why do you desire to be a landlord? Because no one's getting rich off of renting to other people like that. Let's break that. Let's lock that up right now, right? Like, this is an industry, but it's not a get rich industry unless you're in a bigger city, maybe you have those opportunities. You don't have those opportunities in Kalamazoo. I would say. But, yeah, I would say, and like, I used to clean, I'm not gonna say for who it was, but I used to clean for a landlord here in community. And just the variance of quality and what the variance of quality looks like in apartments, housing, rental housing for people. And that guy had a real high level class of people that he was renting to, and then he had another group of people that he was renting to that were different, right. And the conditions of the properties were different. And so I would also encourage folks to. To worry about that, be consistent with quality, right, throughout the neighborhoods, because when landlords will be consistent with quality, tenants will generally be consistent with quality, right? Because everybody wants a house place to live. And even if that place is outside. Right. Like, less. I don't know if we could talk about that a little bit, too, but I think it's really contradictory sometimes that camping is a billion dollar industry, yet while other people who choose. Some people choose right. Some people are out there because they don't have other choices and options. But if that's your choice, let people tell people where they can be and let them be right. Like, I think that all this policing that we're doing around housing, whether it's landlord policing or rental, like, whatever it is, I think we just got to stop and. And really ask ourselves why we're doing things like that and make housing fair.

[20:02] KELLY KELLIS: Yeah. So you talked a little bit about the fact that you have been blessed to have family support, and you've uplifted a number of community organizations. You know, some people might think, hey, you know, she's educated. She has all of these things, but that hasn't always been the case. And you've started out on your journey of being out on your own, younger to now. What advice might you give or, you know, some nuggets of wisdom to maybe single parents or parents with younger children or even those looking to engage in that process of becoming parents and being potentially transient or unhoused?

[20:45] STACEY JACKSON: You know, if I can look back like I've truly been surrounded by people who love me and care for me deeply and hold me to accountability. Right. I just talked to someone I was interviewing with and just talking about trajectories, and my trajectory was to go straight to work. It would be great if I got a government job and stayed at it for the rest of my life because that's what my elders did. That's what my mom did. In a not so happy place to be considered. Think about the state hospital in 1960. Something. Right. For. For black folks. Right? So I think, give me a. Give me a thing. I lost it because I was thinking about something else. Oh, nuggets of wisdom. So, yeah, so, you know, for when I. What I try to say to my. I tell my adult children is Isdev. First of all, I had to learn a lot. I had to learn what it was like to be an adult parent because it's way different than being the parent of a young person. Kids are resilient, and they can make it through pretty much anything that they come in contact with. It's us adults who have all these learned behaviors, preferences, things that we think we know that we don't know anything about. And so I think I would say that kids are resilient and make sure. That they have access to support, right. Whether that's counseling, coaching a peer, sports something, an outlet, right. Where they can process some of the stuff. My kids never questioned why we were moving to, right. They knew it was part of the, what happens is we, mom gets tired of being somewhere and we move, and it really wasn't that necessarily just they weren't aware that, like, oh, this happened here or, you know, that kind of thing. And so I would say be in relationship with your. And not as superiors, right. As. Not as friends either. But there's a big difference. But when you can explain stuff to young people, they definitely understand they can have an understanding, and if they don't have understanding, they can ask questions. Any other advice or support? I would say for young folks around housing is really to do your best, right. Because although we know the system is flawed, we know credit, even though it was only created in 1986, and even that woman, women didn't even have access to credit right away. Even though we know the system is flawed, it is a system that require, that requires some engagement. And so to really lean in and teach your young people about money and credit and what it is, you know, I got my first credit card in 1993, was more than I took in annually, right? And so what. What am I gonna say? No? Like, yeah, give me the credit card. And I did. I wasn't absorbed. I wasn't, like, flashy with the credit. I was living, right? I was living. We did birthdays on credit, we did Christmas on credit. Like, every were living on credit. And so my advice to young people would really be to take that, that, understand that it's a tool and the sharpest tools, right. Make the cut. So. And it might lessen some of the struggles that they come up against around finding quality housing.

[24:51] KELLY KELLIS: So you talked a lot about, when we think about housing and we think of a sense of home, whether that is a brick and mortar or whether that is just the comfort of being in whatever space that you're in, but being surrounded by safety and you think about different points of intersection. So you talked about your children with school and ensuring that they're able to kind of, having known you, you always created that stable environment and tried to continue to keep your children engaged in the things in familiar settings, even when the physical address moved. As an adult going through that process, what are things that you wish would have been in place for you or that you might have wanted to understand a little bit more as you're navigating the process?

[25:45] STACEY JACKSON: I think for me, it's a deeper and better understanding of the community services that are available to people. This community is very philanthropic and very rich. And I, there are definitely some programs that I see young people engaging in now that I know might have changed a circumstance for one of my people, one of my young people, adult people, right? Like, I know that if they could have gotten connected to some of these stronger programs, that they would have gotten some different skills and things like that. Yeah. So there is a richness of community, the availability of resources. You know, I grew up here. Kalamazoo, to my knowledge, was a great place to grow up, right? Girl Scout camp. I had all the things, right. And it seemed like I had a black principal in my first, my first elementary experience, Mister Franklin, you know, Miss Dawson, I had black teachers, you know, and so I think, and I felt like, and I always say, like, I want Kalamazoo to be better because I remember Kalamazoo being better as a young person, right. Without the violence, without the deep, deep poverty, right. Like, I used to work for an organization that like, filled in a gap for people and I don't remember that many gaps being presented, right. When I was a young person. And so, like, what's happening that's causing people to end up in these gaps so frequently, right. But it's the pursuant, it's pursuing capitalism. Right. Like we are a. Yeah, I'll stop there.

[27:34] KELLY KELLIS: Yeah. So me knowing you, knowing that you have a servant heart, you know, and you are all about looking out for people and, you know, find filling the gap, as you said, and also ensuring that people have access, you know, and educating folks so that they can make the best, an educated decision on where they move and how they flex. So thinking through us coming out of the pandemic, I mean, we have seen so much, you know, can you speak to how just pandemic living changed your world?

[28:12] STACEY JACKSON: Yeah. So pandemic living, you know, I was so strange. It's so strange how things happen, but I was at a social and emotional learning conference the day that the world shut down. I was driving back from Ann Arbor, from Lansing, Michigan state, your alma mater, and I was like, I'm gonna stop at the casino. But I got a call from my executive director who was like, we gotta clear the building. Our office was in a school and we had to clear the building by 02:00 so of course I didn't get to stop, but so coming from that, right, like, I'm out in the world, I'm meeting new people from across the country. I'm really like, deeply and then on Monday, we're having this meeting about what to do with all of our programming, because all of our programming had been in person. We didn't have a Zoom account. Like, all these kind of different things, just like I da da da da. Well, who I am today, right. I've learned to work from home and the job, so I've transitioned positions. But recognize, like, I've always said that, like, we can be working. We don't have to come here to work. And so working from home has been a great transition for me. I gave up my car. I don't have a car anymore, and just really have being content in being at home and making my home the place I want to be more than anything. And it's really made me available for my granddaughters. So I have three granddaughters that I have two that were born in 2020, and I had another one that was born this year. And so the pandemic has really, like, they were pandemic babies. They didn't know people until recently, you know, just watching them experience the world after nothing for so long. And so the pandemic really just opened up my opportunity to deepen my relationship with my adult children and really learn and hear from them about what life was doing to them and how life was really life in for them, you know, and really helping them understand that it was life in for me, too. I just didn't. Y'all just didn't know it. And so we're really having some really great conversations about best practice, you know, just different things around life. And that the biggest thing is that all of this stuff can be gone tomorrow. Right? Like, that's. I think that it is. Covid has really given us a deeper love for being with each other, because we recognize that so many people lost people during COVID for breathing, right? Like, and so it's just really a deep. I hate. Like, one of my best friends passed away right at the beginning of COVID My daughter, before she found out, had Covid, but had went to the hospital, and they told her it was a viral, a bacterial infection, a viral infection. There could do nothing about it. And then my best friend dies, and then we find out what it is. And so I think just that couldn't go to our funeral. The funeral was only for ten people. And so it's just really given us a greater appreciation for each other. My mother was able to move in with us after around Covid time. She's 85 now, and so the opportunity to take care of her, the building she was living in, you know, they weren't. They had no visitors. Right. You know, all the stories about seniors who were left alone, you know, and so just having that opportunity to have her with us during all of that was very. It was a blessing.

[32:13] KELLY KELLIS: So, as we, you know, get to the wrapping up point, what does the future look like for you? You know, what? Where do your passions lie? Where do you see yourself? You know, what are all things? Stacey Salters Jackson.

[32:28] STACEY JACKSON: You know, I want to just. I want to be a light in the dark world, right? I want to show people what you can do. I want people to. I want to help people, support people in questioning their narratives that they built up around whatever this thing is, right. I am going to continue to work hard and expeditiously around this community being its best. Right. Whether it's through the nonprofit sector, the business sector. I want the education system. I really want to take. I guess I'll be taking my leadership place in community, whatever that looks like. You know, I don't know what that is or what it isn't, but I feel like I'm being launched into an uncomfortable space through my current position, and I'm okay with that. I. I just really want. All three of my granddaughters are biracial, and I want them to all have this. A great experience wherever they are. It's really important for me that they don't have varied experiences unless they desire that. Right. Like, I don't want. I want this city, this country, this world. Right. To be a better place for them to. And their children. And so, like, becoming a grandmother has, like, intensified something in me to push for change. And so, yeah, so you'll see me being a change agent around here, probably. You know, I participated in a virtual visit of the Ferris Black History museum that they have and decided at that point, like, that, I think, like, I want to be in a museum. Like, I want to do something so radical, right, that people have no choice but to remember me. Right. Like, I want. Not that I want the accolades. Like, it's not for the accolades, right. But it's. I want my life to be impactful, and I know that I've impacted people in my interactions with them. I know that I've impacted systems, and I. And I want to continue doing that, and I want to keep making people mad. I was about to say pissing people off, but I don't know if you could say that on Storycorps. Okay, thanks. I'm going to keep pissing people off because I think that it's when people get that. That lighting inside of them, that lightning inside of them, that they can then push forward and do their best stuff, too.

[35:23] KELLY KELLIS: I know if the past has anything, has any forecast or any light that's shining on the future, you definitely will be in a museum. You definitely will continue. So I wanted to take an opportunity to really and truly heartfelt thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today, for you to share your story, and to thank you for the work that you've done, and thank you in advance for the work that you will continue to do. So thank you so much for allowing me to speak with you, and thank.

[35:53] STACEY JACKSON: You, Kelly, for reaching out. Like, I've always wondered, like, how do people get these opportunities? You know, I want the opportunity, and so I'm just like, housing has been a deep issue for me for at least the last 30 years. Oh. Part of my story that I always forget to tell about housing is I lived in the same house for the first 17 years of my life. So my mother bought her first home for, like, $6,000. And so the expectation was that I'd be able to do the same. But by the time I got to, the working houses were, like, $100,000, and that wasn't happening. So, anyway, so I just want, like, to say, like, that that experience doesn't necessarily, like. So just always be careful with, like, narratives that we're pushing for people, because, yeah, things happen, people make decisions, people regret things, and life just continues to move forward. So, thank you for letting me tell my story and put it in the national archives. Like, that's pretty powerful stuff for a little old peon from Kalamazoo, Michigan. I'm excited. Thank you.

[37:03] KELLY KELLIS: That is powerful, and may your light continue to shine.

[37:07] STACEY JACKSON: Thank you, Kelly. Thanks.