Trigger Warning / Content Note:
This piece includes discussion of sexual assault, domestic violence, and childhood trauma. These topics are addressed in a non-graphic but personal context.
By March of 2025, it was no longer possible to tell myself that what was happening at the Creamery was accidental.
The issues weren’t isolated. They weren’t brief. And they weren’t resolving. What had started as “problems” had hardened into an environment defined by instability and hostility. Maintenance failures went unaddressed. Safety concerns accumulated. Harassment was no longer subtle. The disruptions were constant.
The stress lived in my body. It followed me home. It affected my sleep, my parenting, my focus, my sense of safety.
And it was happening while I was trying to build something that mattered.
Trying to Build a Business While Everything Is Shaking
In early 2025, I was renovating a retail space downtown. I had poured what I had left, time, money, energy, into preparing the store. I was working toward a projected grand opening of April 4.
I was self-employed. There was no salary. No sick leave. No fallback. If I didn’t work, I didn’t get paid. If the store didn’t open, there was no safety net waiting on the other side.
As the weeks went on, it became clear that the conditions at the Creamery were directly interfering with my ability to function, not just mentally and emotionally, but financially. I was dealing with constant disruption at home while trying to renovate, paint, source inventory, coordinate logistics, and prepare to open a business.
I was exhausted. Distracted. Losing time I could not afford to lose.
Beginning in February, I told property management repeatedly that what was happening in and outside of my apartment was affecting my livelihood. I put it in writing, more than once. I explained plainly that the ongoing harassment, safety failures, and instability were interfering with my ability to work, that they were, quite literally, interfering with my income.
There was no meaningful response.
By the middle of March, I knew the April 4 opening was not going to happen, not because I had stopped trying, but because I could not stabilize my life long enough to finish building what I had already invested in. At the same time, I was paying rent on both my apartment at the Creamery and the commercial lease for the store downtown.
Still, I kept going.
I painted. I worked every single day. I posted updates. I tried to hold onto the future I had been working toward for the past two years.
In March 2025, I shared a video of myself painting inside the store as I prepared for the planned opening. At the time, it was framed publicly as progress and optimism. Looking back, it documents something else entirely: the widening gap between what I was presenting outwardly and what I was enduring privately.
When Silence Stops Being Neutral
There is a moment when silence stops being neutral.
Up until that point, you try to be reasonable. You document. You wait. You assume that if you communicate clearly and don’t make waves, things will improve.
But by early spring, it was clear that remaining quiet was no longer protecting me. It was leaving me exposed.
The conditions in my home had deteriorated to the point where silence itself felt dangerous. That realization forced me into a decision I had spent most of my adult life avoiding.
The Disclosure
Federal law provides protections for tenants who are survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. Invoking those protections requires disclosure.
Not casually.
Not indirectly.
Formally.
I disclosed in writing to property management that I am a survivor of domestic violence and sexual assault.
This was not something I had shared openly in my life. Very few people knew. It was not something I had ever wanted to put into writing, into a system, into someone else’s hands. It was deeply personal, and it carried weight far beyond the words themselves.
But by that point, the conditions in my home had reached a level where I felt I had no other responsible option.
So I disclosed—carefully, deliberately, and in writing, through the proper channels.
And in doing so, I crossed a line I had spent decades protecting.
Disclosure of Safety Concerns, VAWA Status, and Rent Reduction Request (April 1–4, 2025) — [View Document]
VAWA Lease Addendum (Signed December 18, 2024) — [View Document]
I had signed a lease that explicitly incorporated federal Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) protections related to domestic violence and sexual assault.
The following day, after receiving no meaningful response, I filed my first formal housing discrimination complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, invoking the VAWA protections included in my lease.
HUD Housing Discrimination Complaint (Filed April 5, 2025) — [View Document]
The following section discusses childhood sexual assault.
Fourteen
I was fourteen years old when it happened. It was a violent sexual assault. My perpetrator was a classmate.
That moment altered the trajectory of my life. It shaped how I understood safety, intimacy, and trust, and it influenced the decisions I made and the relationships I entered as I grew older. The impact of that experience carried forward into adulthood in ways I did not fully understand at the time.
What followed was not resilience or recovery. It was rupture. My relationship to school, to safety, and to myself shifted almost overnight. I became angry. disengaged. reckless in ways that looked like choice from the outside, but were rooted in a disregard for whether I stayed safe or not.
I learned how to keep going without processing what had happened and how to survive by not feeling that coping strategy followed me for years, and it explains why decades later, being asked to disclose this history again was not abstract, procedural, or easy. It carried the weight of everything that followed.
of my life that would later shape how I understand stability, home, and survival.
Photo: Jennifer L. Dayton.
The Cost of Speaking
Making that disclosure did not feel like empowerment. It felt like exposure.
I understood what I was risking. I trusted that the system asking for disclosure would handle that information with care and professionalism.
What followed did not feel like protection.
The environment did not stabilize. The pressure did not ease. If anything, it intensified. The disruption continued, not only in my home but also in my ability to keep my business alive.
The dream I had been working toward, opening the store, creating stability, finally building something lasting, began to slip away, not because I stopped trying, but because the ground beneath me would not stop shifting.
Asking for Help
By early April, it became clear that this was larger than a landlord-tenant dispute.
On April 7, 2025, I contacted the YWCA and officials within the City of Kalamazoo, including Mayor David Anderson; Jeanne Hess, who was serving as Vice Mayor at the time; Antonio Mitchell, Director of Community Planning & Economic Development; and multiple city commissioners. I described the conditions inside a publicly funded housing development promoted as safe and affordable, and I explained how those conditions were undermining my ability to sustain my business. I asked directly for help.
Email to City of Kalamazoo and YWCA (April 7, 2025) — [View Document]
Silence
No one responded.
Not the City.
Not the YWCA.
Not the entities charged with oversight of a publicly funded housing development.
There was no acknowledgement. No follow-up. No request for additional information.
Just silence.
Looking back, this was the moment when everything shifted, not because I disclosed, not because I asked for help, but because no one acted once I did.
What came next was not sudden. It was not accidental. It was the predictable result of systems choosing inaction.
—
Jennifer L. Dayton
Founder & Executive Director
Kalamazoo Justice Project, Inc.
All exhibits, complaints, emails, incident reports, news articles, and social media documentation referenced in this story are available here:
Blog 6 — Evidence File (Google Drive)
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Legal Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are based on publicly available information, cited sources, and the author’s lived experience. This content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. All individuals and organizations named are referenced in the context of their public roles and responsibilities.
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