The Weaponization of Procedure: Lansing’s Deadly December Shell Game
By Chelsea Lynn Wooton December 21, 2025
In Lansing, the arrival of winter isn’t just a seasonal shift; it is a calculated deployment of administrative cruelty. As the city hangs its lights and prepares for the holidays, it is simultaneously executing a masterclass in bureaucratic evasion. The recent "postponement" of the NOVA Lansing Housing Initiative (Mod Pods) meeting—blamed on a convenient lack of quorum—is not a scheduling fluke. It is a strategic choice to ensure that while the temperature drops, the public’s ability to demand accountability is frozen out. The "Closed Session" Smokescreen For weeks, city officials have retreated behind the Michigan Open Meetings Act (OMA) like a fortress. They cite Section 8(d)—the "land acquisition" loophole—to justify scrubbing the Mod Pod site selection from the public record. Let’s be clear: The OMA was written to ensure transparency, not to provide a "dark room" where officials can decide which neighborhoods are "expendable" and which parks are "too valuable" for human survival. By the time these "closed sessions" conclude, the decision is already made. The public comment period that follows isn't democracy; it’s a funeral for a decision that died in private. Visibility as a Crime The dialogue being avoided in City Hall is simple: We are criminalizing the visibility of a crisis we refused to solve. When the city clears an encampment in December, they call it "safety." But moving a human being from a tent with a community to a dark alleyway with a body bag is not a safety strategy—it’s optics enforcement. * The "Code Blue" Myth: A press release about warming centers is not a housing policy. It is a temporary stay of execution that requires the unhoused to abandon their pets, their partners, and their dignity just to keep their toes from turning black. The Funding Fallacy: We are told there is no money for sanctioned sites, yet the checkbook is always open for police overtime to bulldoze tents. We are paying for the punishment of poverty because solutions like the Mod Pods require a political courage that is currently "out of quorum." The Cruelty of the Clock Why now? Why is every major housing decision "stalled" or "postponed" exactly when the frost arrives? By delaying the HRCS recommendation until January, the city has successfully outsourced the "danger" of the unhoused to the elements. They are betting that by the time the next meeting is called, the "problem" will have been thinned out by the cold, or pushed so far into the industrial shadows of Lansing that the housed public will have forgotten to care. "A system that fines the person with nothing while granting tax breaks to the developers who built nothing for them is not a government—it’s an extraction racket." A Demand for Radical Transparency The OMA Handbook (Page 8) states: "All decisions of a public body shall be made at a meeting open to the public." Lansing’s leadership is currently violating the spirit of that law to protect their own political comfort. We don't need more "subcommittee vetting." We need: Immediate disclosure of the 20+ rejected sites and the "scoring" that prioritized aesthetics over survival. An end to the 8(d) loophole for humanitarian projects. If you are building life-saving shelter, the public has a right to see the deliberation in real-time. Cease-and-desist on sweeps until the "postponed" pods are actually on the ground. Intentions don’t keep people warm. Minutes and quorums don’t save lives. Until Lansing stops treating the Open Meetings Act as a suggestion and starts treating the housing crisis as an emergency, this December ritual isn't just a failure of policy—it's a moral crime.
1. The "Mod Pod" Recommendation Meeting (Postponed) Original Date: Thursday, December 18, 2025 Meeting: Special Joint Meeting of the Human Relations and Community Services (HRCS) Advisory Board & Mayor’s Neighborhood Advisory Board. Status: Postponed to January 2026. Reason Given: "Absence of a quorum" of HRCS members. Significance: This was the critical meeting intended for public comment and the official recommendation of the site for the NOVA Lansing Housing Initiative (Mod Pods). While the Mayor's Neighborhood Advisory Board met, no vote or recommendation could be moved forward without the HRCS quorum. 2. Planning Board Meeting (Cancelled) Date: Monday, December 15, 2025 Status: Cancelled. Context: Often involved in land use and zoning reviews that precede major housing developments. 3. Board of State Canvassers (Cancelled) Dates: Friday, December 5 and Friday, December 19, 2025 Status: Cancelled. (Replaced by a special meeting on December 15). Context: While state-level, these cancellations at the Binsfeld Building in Lansing added to the "closed-door" atmosphere of the city's political hub this month. 4. Lansing Housing Commission (Regular Meetings) Date: October through December schedule. Status: Several 2025 meetings were listed as Cancelled throughout the late fall (specifically the October 27 and July 23 meetings), contributing to a backlog of housing-related deliberations heading into the winter crisis. 5. Holiday Shutdowns (Upcoming) The city has announced a total administrative shutdown for the final weeks of the month, effectively preventing any emergency "open" meetings from being called to address the Mod Pod location before the new year: Wednesday, Dec 24 – Friday, Dec 26: City Hall and City Council Offices CLOSED. Wednesday, Dec 31 – Thursday, Jan 1: City Hall and City Council Offices CLOSED.
