Housing in northern Michigan isn't just a crisis.
"Lately, we've been saying it's almost reaching the point of an emergency," said Yarrow Brown, executive director of Housing North. "We are concerned that more and more people are going to be displaced, and we're just not seeing enough progress toward those housing units that we need."
Housing North works in 10 different northern Michigan counties to help remove barriers to housing.
The hundreds of people at the summit heard from keynote speaker Yusuf Dahl. His story is compelling — from poverty in Milwaukee, to prison, to his current role as a college educator and advocate for housing issues.
Now you can hear from him, too. IPR News aired his speech in a one-hour special. You can listen to it through the audio player above.