Families & Community

The eviction notice arrived last month at William Nunley’s modest two-story house in Detroit’s Fitzgerald neighborhood, one of the hottest real-estate markets in the city. He had lived in the house for three years with his wife and their three children and had hoped to buy it from their landlord.

The Michigan Department of Corrections has partnered with DTE Energy and IBEW Local 17 to train inmates in trimming trees.

MDOC worked very closely with DTE and IBEW Local 17 to develop the curriculum for the program, located at Parnall Correctional Facility in Jackson. It allows inmates to get hands-on experience. 

Detroit’s Fourth of July long weekend is off to a violent start, with police reporting at least ten shooting incidents across the city Thursday night into Friday morning.

Most of the shootings appear to have resulted from interpersonal disputes. They started with a non-fatal shooting during an argument at a fireworks display around 11:30 p.m.

More than 100 people showed up at Detroit’s immigration office on Thursday to protest conditions at migrant detention camps along the southern U.S. border.

Just down the street from the Michigan Radio office is an iconic Ann Arbor destination: Washtenaw Dairy. It didn’t come by the label of “icon” lightly; the dairy is celebrating its 85th anniversary this week.

Today, Washtenaw Dairy is known for ice cream, doughnuts, and coffee. But when Edwin Laubengayer opened the shop in the middle of the Great Depression, it was one of the state’s many dairy shops.

Bethany Christian Services is looking for short-term foster care families in Holland and East Lansing as the Grand Rapids-based social services agency expands its transitional foster care program in those cities.

Bethany is looking to place migrant children who arrived in the U.S. unaccompanied, and are waiting to be reunited with family members or other sponsors. The agency has operated the transitional services in Grand Rapids, Muskegon and Paw Paw since 2012.

A lot of Michiganders have hometown pride. It’s the reason you see so many locals sporting everything from bumper stickers to tattoos celebrating their home. But in some cities, hometown pride is a bit more complicated.

Cities like Dearborn, Michigan.

Dearborn native Rima Fadlallah says many people from her city see being “too Dearborn” as a negative thing. Being associated with the city's large Arab American community, she says, "in some ways is an unpopular thing to do."

Demolition work will soon begin at a long-abandoned trailer park in Flint.

Shady Acres closed in 2015.  But the 20-acre park is overgrown, and overwhelmed with trash and rotting mobile homes.

The home of former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant and his wife Julia is getting relocated to Detroit's Eastern Market. As part of the Eastern Market Garden project, the house will be moved from the former state fairgrounds.

The Michigan History Center, the Eastern Market Partnership and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources have been developing plans for the move for years. The house has sat at the now-closed state fairground since its relocation from its original address at 253 East Fort Street in 1936.

Fifty-two percent of fathers have received criticism or doubts regarding their parenting style, according to a new report from the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health.

Advocates for low-income families, policy think tanks, church organizations and other community-based agencies met in Lansing today to discuss Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s proposal to raise Michigan’s Earned Income Tax Credit.

Her budget proposal would allow people who qualify to claim 12 percent of the federal credit – instead of the current 6 percent.

A Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) policy regarding returned baby formula has been revised to make unopened baby formula available for low-income families at shelters, food banks and pantries.

The Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program released a policy in February of this year that didn't allow for the distribution of the unused, returned formula. That was in accordance with USDA guidelines.

When people think of Michigan, a handful of places come to mind. Big cities like Detroit and Grand Rapids, tourist destinations like Traverse City, the political hub of Lansing. And that’s with good reason — all of those cities are deservedly beloved by those who live there and those who visit.

But what about the places that are often overlooked? That town you drive past every time you go on vacation, for instance, or a city that you’ve never been to but could probably find on a map.

The 15th annual West Michigan Girls on the Run event will take place Saturday, May 18th.

The 5k run is expected to include more than 1,700 girls and 1,000 runners from the community. Girls in the program range in age from third to eighth grades. Almost 500 volunteers help run the program.

Morgan McCaul was looking to start something.

Currently a rising junior studying at the University of Michigan, she has been in activism circles for years now. McCaul has appeared on local news, panels, and was even a speaker for this year’s Ann Arbor Women’s March, specifically in promoting awareness of sexual and domestic violence.

Lansing held a ceremony this week to celebrate an end to veteran homelessness in the Capitol City.

The Lansing, East Lansing and Ingham County Continuum of Care, the Capitol Region Housing Collaborative (CRHC), was recently recognized by the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) as “effectively ending” homelessness among veterans.

Immigrant’s rights marches are planned for Wednesday in Detroit, Ann Arbor, Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids.

Demonstrators are calling for the state to issue driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants. The annual marches have drawn thousands of people into the streets in years past.

This year, the city of Grand Rapids is threatening arrests if demonstrators block traffic as they have in previous years.

Michigan continues to see an increase in cases of child abuse and neglect.

That's according to latest Kids Count in Michigan Data Book released Tuesday by the Michigan League for Public Policy.