A patch of contaminated land in Pontiac that once held a railroad, a dry cleaner and an auto parts warehouse is set to become a new homeless shelter after state regulators signed off on a $460,000 cleanup grant. The money is meant to deal with chlorinated solvents and metals found in the soil, clearing the way for Hope Shelters to build an emergency shelter and warming center on the site.
The grant was awarded by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, known as EGLE, for a project creating a Hope Shelters facility, according to Oakland County Times. The property sits at 283 Baldwin Avenue, 18 Tacoma Court and 155 West Rundell Street, per Michigan EGLE. The new facility is expected to serve primarily adult homeless people and operate as both an emergency shelter and a warming center, the outlet reports.
Decades of Industrial Use Left Contamination Behind
The land's history stretches back more than a century. It was first developed as part of a railroad in 1907, and a dry cleaner opened on the property in 1931, followed by an auto parts warehouse by 1963, according to the same report. The railroad and commercial buildings were gone by 2012, though a house on the property that has been used as an office will continue serving that purpose.
Environmental assessments funded through EGLE's brownfield site assessment program in 2024 and 2025 found chlorinated solvents and metals in the soil, the outlet's report states. The new $460,000 grant is intended to pay for additional site investigations, asbestos abatement, and the transportation and disposal of contaminated soil. It will also fund installation of a vapor mitigation system beneath the new shelter building, addressing the kind of underground chemical risk that can seep into indoor air if left unchecked.
Conflicting Size Figures for the Planned Shelter
Oakland County Times describes the project as valued at $7 million, producing a 12,350-square-foot single-story shelter that could create as many as 32 new jobs. A separate account from Citizen Portal describes the planned facility as a 12,000-square-foot warming and community shelter adjacent to Hope Shelters' existing Pontiac site; the official EGLE release states the shelter will be 12,350 square feet. The shelter is scheduled to open in May 2028, per the Oakland County Times report.
What Hope Shelters Already Offers
Hope Shelters currently runs low-barrier emergency services for people without housing, including help obtaining identification cards and birth certificates. The organization's website states that nightly intake begins at 5 p.m., with new guests accepted on a first-come, first-served basis when beds are open, according to HOPE Shelters. The shelter provides dinner, cold breakfast and bag lunches, and sobriety is not required for admittance, though alcohol and drug use is prohibited on the premises.
Part of a Broader Statewide Push
The Pontiac grant lands amid a wave of brownfield redevelopment spending across Michigan. In 2025, EGLE's Brownfield program provided more than $23 million in incentives to 76 projects spread across 52 Michigan communities, with those projects projected to create more than 440 housing units, 600 jobs and over $675 million in capital investment, according to figures cited by Oakland County Times. Earlier this year, EGLE also awarded $3.9 million to seven brownfield redevelopment projects and a separate $1 million grant to the William Schma House project in Kalamazoo, according to Michigan EGLE.
The need for shelter capacity has been climbing nationally. More than 770,000 people were experiencing homelessness during the 2024 Point-in-Time Count, an 18% increase over the prior year, according to WXYZ. Oakland County officials typically expect to find several hundred people during their own annual count, which helps direct where state and federal funding for homeless services ultimately goes.
