ADRIAN — Building relationships with community partners is Sarah Buku’s first order of business as Housing Help of Lenawee’s new executive director.

“My biggest goal is attempting to work with the organizations that are in place here in Lenawee County to get us all working together in a more effective way,” she said.

Those organizations include Share the Warmth, the Catherine Cobb domestic violence shelter, Community Mental Health, Align Lenawee, and the wide range of other organizations in the county that work with people in need.

“I’m excited about all the different partnerships that we’re working toward,” she said. “I think it will really make a difference.”

Housing Help of Lenawee grew out of a recognition by community leaders that there was a need in the county for a program to assist those facing a housing crisis.

The county’s Basic Needs Task Force helped form a Housing Task Force to explore the possibilities, and in 1990, in collaboration with the Adrian Dominican Sisters, the Lenawee Emergency and Affordable Housing Corp. (LEAHC) took shape.

The organization became Housing Help of Lenawee (H2L) in 2013.

Buku became the agency’s executive director earlier this year, on Sept. 10, which is “an interesting time” to start a new job in the non-profit world because many fiscal years end on Sept. 30 and begin on Oct. 1.

“So I walked into a lot of year-ending and year-beginning stuff, including grants that needed to be written,” she said.

“I got a crash-course education in it, and my program manager, Katherine Kosino” — who had stepped in as interim executive director before Buku was hired — “has been absolutely phenomenal.”

Buku was hardly a stranger to H2L, however. She served on its board several years ago and was the property manager for a time, but having a baby at home wasn’t conducive to the job’s often-unusual hours.

She also worked for about five years with the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MHSDA)’s housing choice voucher program in Lenawee and surrounding counties.

Her experience in property management goes hand-in-hand with the many years she’s been a local Realtor. She started out in real estate in 2007 at Edward Surovell, then went to Foundation Realty, and eventually opened her own company, Grata Domum in Adrian. The name is Latin for “welcome home.”

She also owns a cleaning company and was just elected Adrian Township clerk.

A Lenawee County native, Buku attended Washtenaw Community College intending to be a nurse, but as a single mother at the time, getting her necessary clinical hours was too difficult. And so, she changed her major and went into the business world instead.

She has four children: Cora, 20; Lila, 16; Michael, 7; and Margarete, 4. Her husband, Michael, is an agent at Grata Domum and works for Adrian Insurance, in addition to serving on the Adrian school board.

She applied for the H2L executive director’s position because she thought her experience, community contacts, and skill set would be assets to the organization. “I love to fundraise and I’m really good at community networking,” she said.

One of her first orders of business when she arrived there, besides all those fiscal year-end and year-beginning tasks, was to work on the situation involving the Adrian Inn.

About two and a half years ago, when the Riverview Terrace on College Avenue in Adrian was closed due to structural issues, many of the displaced residents moved into the motel, which was purchased by the city for that purpose.

H2L became the property’s leaseholder soon thereafter, and used the motel to also house other people needing temporary housing. Resident complaints about conditions at the facility became commonplace, and when Riverview Terrace reopened this August after repairs were made, Housing Help discontinued the program at the motel.

Many of the Riverview Terrace residents returned to the apartment building, but a number of people remained housed at the motel and needed to find permanent housing. “The intention of that program was always to be a transitional housing program,” Buku said, adding that H2L case managers were regularly onsite helping residents do what was needed to move elsewhere.

H2L operates several different programs designed to provide housing stability and affordable housing for low-income people, especially those who are in crisis or at risk of becoming homeless.

The organization runs the only two family shelters in Lenawee County, both of which are in Adrian, as well as four transitional housing units. Other clients are placed in units throughout the area through a voucher program.

With the help of a grant and local donations, the agency recently purchased a house that it plans to turn into a transitional home for veterans. “We expect to have it going by fall 2025 if the stars align,” Buku said.

Additional programs include the Veterans Dire Need Fund; Housing First, which assists with issues such as past due rent and foreclosure situations; and a Permanent Supportive Housing program for people with a history of homelessness and a long-term disability.

H2L also has a wide range of other services, such as a food pantry for clients, helping those experiencing housing crisis to care for their pets, and issuing  Lenawee Public Transportation Authority tokens to eligible community members.

According to Buku, in the past year 2,204 community members came to H2L looking for assistance because they were either facing a housing crisis or experiencing homelessness. 

She provided the following figures for the fiscal year running from Oct. 1, 2023, to Sept. 30, 2024:

n 256 households consisting of 299 adults and 274 children applied for prevention assistance.

n 296 households consisting of 342 adults and 178 children were enrolled in rapid rehousing.

n 6 families consisting of 7 adults and 14 children were housed in the two-year Transitional Housing Program.

n 9 residents with a history of long-term homelessness stayed housed in Legacy Housing.

n 7 households consisting of 8 adults and 23 children were housed in our two emergency family shelter homes.

n 38 households consisting of 51 adults and 69 children were provided emergency motel vouchers.

n 16 households consisting of 20 adults and 38 children applied for and were denied emergency shelter services due to lack of space and funding for motels and/or family shelters.

One of the keys to helping people find and keep housing is to help remove barriers, such as obstacles to employment, and H2L case managers can provide both emergency support and help connect people with other resources. “We want to help [our clients], but we want to give them a hand up, not a handout,” Buku said.

H2L does a number of different fundraisers throughout the year but the agency is always in need of donations, whether it be financial gifts or donations of food, personal items, or socks, gloves and hats. Money for emergency shelter needs runs out the fastest, Buku said, “so we’re always looking for unallocated funds that can be used wherever the need is.”

She’s looking forward to serving the community in her new role and to be working with all the partners needed to help H2L’s clients. 

“Lenawee County is such a cool place,” she said. “I feel like we’re really unique in the services we have here that can meet all sorts of needs. The community is such a generous community.”

H2L is located at 307 E. Church St., Adrian. Its hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday (closed from noon to 1 p.m.) and Friday from 9 a.m. to noon. To reach the agency, call 517-264-0782 or email [email protected]. More information is available at www.h2lenawee.org.