Bay City puts another $150,000 in marijuana tax money into its overnight drop-in center

BAY CITY, Mich. — Bay City will spend another $150,000 of its marijuana tax revenue to keep an overnight drop-in center open for people experiencing homelessness. City commissioners approved a funding agreement with Good Samaritan Rescue Mission Bay City on Monday night, Oct. 5, MLive reported.

The center offers a bed for the night, not a long-term shelter stay. People can come in each day and stay from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m., City Manager Rik Hayman told WNEM. The station said the center has about 35 beds, handed out first come, first served.

It opened Jan. 14. Since then it has served 340 people who would not stay in a traditional shelter, and 29 of them have moved into a shelter setting, according to Dan Streeter, CEO of Rescue Ministries of Mid-Michigan, MLive reported.

Word got around. MLive said people began arriving from outside Bay County, including from Detroit and Grand Rapids, and when nightly attendance reached 35 the mission added a residency requirement. Non-residents can still stay if they agree to move into the emergency shelter when a bed opens. Attendance has since settled at about 20 to 22 people a night.

The money comes from the city’s payments under the Michigan Regulation and Taxation of Marijuana Act. Bay City received more than $400,000 under the act last fiscal year, WNEM reported, and Hayman told the station he expects those payments to shrink as the marijuana market changes. The agreement covers operating costs such as salaries, maintenance and repairs, cleaning, laundry and food. It reaches back to the start of the fiscal year in July and runs through next June.

The city pays only for documented expenses, and anything left over returns to city funds, MLive said. That happened last year. Of the $150,000 set aside, about $66,000 was used, and Hayman told WNEM the rest went into the city’s neighborhood streets fund.

This is the second year of $150,000 in operating money. It follows about $250,000 in federal Community Development Block Grant funds that paid to build and open the center, according to MLive. Commissioners also talked about using the building as a warming center during weather emergencies, after concerns last winter that people had few places to go in dangerous cold. The mission plans to bring the same program to Saginaw.

Sources:
MLive, “Bay City approves $150,000 for overnight homeless drop-in center,” Oct. 6, 2026, https://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw-bay-city/2026/10/bay-city-approves-150000-for-overnight-homeless-drop-in-center.html
WNEM, “Bay City to vote on $150,000 in marijuana tax funds for shelter drop-in center,” Oct. 5, 2026, https://www.wnem.com/2026/10/05/bay-city-vote-150000-marijuana-tax-funds-shelter-drop-in-center/
Photo: Andrew Jameson, “Bay City MI City Hall,” 2012, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/), cropped and color-corrected; derivative under the same ShareAlike license, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bay_City_MI_City_Hall.JPG

Bay City

Tags: Bay City · News · Budget and Taxes · City Council