By James Windell
Jodi and Donald Heflin are caught in a dilemma.
They make too much money to live in low-income apartments, yet they don’t have enough income to buy a house in South Haven. And that’s where they want to live because they both work at Subway in downtown South Haven.
The couple have lived in the Maple Glen Apartments on the north side of South Haven for several years. However, they received written notices telling them that they no longer qualify to continue living in Maple Glen. In order to qualify to live in this apartment complex, your household income must be below 80% of the area median income (AMI). The AMI is updated annually by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and varies by county.
“Every six months in these apartments you have to recertify to show you are eligible to continue living there,” Jodi Heflin said in a recent interview before her shift as Manager of the South Haven Subway began. “We’re doing everything we can to find a new place to live, but there’s nothing available in South Haven.”
The couple moved from California nine years ago because Jodi wanted to move back to her home state. She was born in Holland, Michigan and grew up in Zeeland – just outside of Holland. When they moved back to Michigan, Jodi became manager of Subway and Donald was disabled. They had difficulty then finding a suitable place to live.
“We started out in Grand Junction and then we moved into a motel, the Great Lakes Inn,” Jodi recalls. “It was all we could find. We stayed there for three months, and it took my whole check just to live there. Luckily, I could take meat balls home from work, and we ate spaghetti a lot.”
They finally found an apartment in Maple Glen Apartments. However, what Jodi and Donald long for is to find a house they can afford.
“I would like to have a home close to where I work,” Jodi says. “I like South Haven, and I consider myself a resident. I go to functions, and we like living here.”
The Heflins, who have been married for 19 years, received a setback two years ago. “That’s when I was diagnosed with stage three cervical cancer,” Jodi says. “I had to stop working for a while to go to treatment. I couldn’t work because I was trying to stay alive. I finally called Subway and said I had to come back to work because we needed the money. That’s when we got the bad news from the apartment.”
The letter from Maple Glen Apartments states that “After a review of your income information, we have determined that your household is no longer eligible to live at Maple Glen Apartments.” It goes on to say that they must move at the end of their lease on December 31, 2025.
Prior to her illness, the Heflins were approved for a VA Home Loan. However, that approval has ended. Now they are just looking for a place they can afford. They did find a home in a nearby city that needs a lot of work and they think they could afford to live there. That, though, presents the problem of transportation costs everyday to and from work.
“We’re doing everything we can, but there’s nothing here in South Have n,” Jodi laments. They’ve looked at trailer parks and other alternatives. When they heard that the property at 120 Baseline might be rezoned and houses placed on the property, that was a ray of hope.
“I know they’ve been talking about rezoning down the road from Maple Glen; that would be great.”
She says she went to WE Care recently and asked them if there was any housing for people like her and her husband – people who no longer qualified for public housing. “They didn’t have any information for me,” Jodi says
Also, her boss talked to the Chamber of Commerce and that resulted in a conformation of what they already knew. “There’s nothing here for people like us,” she says. “And that’s what I have found over the years in managing at Subway. We have trouble getting employees in the shop because people who can afford to live in this town don’t work at these places. And the people who can work at these places can’t afford to live in this town.”
