Grant, who represents Michigan's 82nd district, is the sponsor for the package of bills that make up the Housing Readiness Package. She graduated from MSU’s James Madison College with a bachelor’s in Social Relations and Policy in 2009.

Grant worked on the Grand Rapids Public School Board before pivoting to the Legislature after she realized how much housing instability affected kids’ performance in school. Housing remains Grant's primary focus while serving in the Michigan House of Representatives.

 The state representative has worked on the Housing Readiness package since late 2022: Nine bills geared toward combating housing instability. Grant hopes to pass at least two within the next term. 

The bipartisan housing package would affect all Michigan residents, but Grant highlighted the ways MSU students specifically would benefit from its passing. 

A big part of the package is the construction of more affordable and diverse housing. In East Lansing, there are bans and zoning laws that dictate the number of people and units that a house can be used for. The package would make it so that less land is required, and smaller buildings can be built, which would house more people. 

AHM Policy Director Joel Arnold said the package offers students more housing options, such as ADUs, houses on smaller lots or a duplex to be legalized.

“These bills try to … get rid of a lot of the regulations and barriers that have nothing to do with health and safety, that are really just aesthetic, that make it hard to build that kind of housing," Arnold said. 

Grant pushed back on the idea that affordable housing only happens in a certain part of town.

“If you basically isolate poverty, people do not have a higher trajectory,” she said. Creating housing with people of different backgrounds and incomes leads to a higher upward mobility, Grant said, who discouraged the construction of only luxury apartments and family homes in East Lansing. 

“This town exists and thrives upon students, but it’s built and geared towards professors, and all the doctors and lawyers who want to be in proximity to this university," Grant said. 

The package also lowers parking requirements for each unit. Not every student has a car on campus, and parking “adds millions of dollars” to the construction of new buildings, Grant said.

However, even with bipartisan backing, the package faces difficulty making it out of committee. There are dozens of supporting groups, but two opposing ones: The Local Township Associations and the Michigan Municipal League, whose size makes them a loud minority. 

“This is just a really hard cycle where politics are playing a big role in everything that we do,” Grant said.  

East Lansing Housing Commissioner Lila Abdullah, who is also the cofounder of SHA, hopes to pass an ASMSU resolution to support Grant’s package as a main solution to Michigan’s housing issues.

The SHA focuses on student engagement in local government housing related matters. 

“What we want students to take away from every meeting with us is 'how do these obscure housing policies affect my life and what do I need to know about my legislator’s decisions regarding them?'” Abdullah said.

Grant said college campuses are like “petri-dishes,” MSU being a great place to test out concepts and things that wouldn’t work in other areas. “I think if students can use their voice and prove those theories on campus, then when you go out into the world, you’re a little more confident in what’s owed to you.”