Storytelling as Social Justice

It’s not unusual for someone’s personal background to influence their professional pursuits. But the extent to which Michael Larson (’21) has turned his challenging childhood and passion for social justice into a fulfilling career in service of others is not just rare, it’s incredible.

Just a few years after graduating in sociology along with minors in leadership studies and solidarity and social justice, Larson founded an organization dedicated to helping some of the least fortunate among us.

Humans for Housing, a Portland-based nonprofit Larson started in the summer of 2023, is dedicated to storytelling, community engagement and advocacy on behalf of people living on the street. The organization grew directly out of Larson’s work both in the classroom and the community while at Gonzaga, volunteering to serve those who are homeless in Spokane while studying the complex web of issues that make housing a national crisis. As a senior, Larson and nearly two dozen peers produced a film, “Humanizing Spokane,” that took viewers inside the lives of people living on the streets of the Lilac City, and he later led a “Humans for Housing” march through downtown to advocate for long-term solutions locally.

It’s no accident the name of his new nonprofit draws on those intense years of learning about America’s most marginalized communities while serving meals to housing-challenged friends in Mission Park.

“The opportunity to produce short documentaries about issues I was learning about in sociology, then hosting events where people come and engage in conversations about these issues, and also my leadership classes, learning how to better manage people and build a team — without those experiences, without the resources I had access to, and also the education studying sociology, I may have never gotten to this point, so I feel really deeply grateful.”

Larson’s passion to help those in need stretches back even earlier than his time at Gonzaga, as he spent his childhood bouncing between his biological family and the foster care system, between Washington and California, before he and two of his siblings were adopted by a single mom in Everett, Washington.

Larson credits the “village of support” that came into his life around middle school — “great mentors, great teachers, people who just sacrificed a lot of time and energy to pour into us” — with putting him on a path toward college instead of becoming one of the many foster-care cases who experience homelessness themselves, or fall into addiction or suffer mental health illnesses.

At Gonzaga, he jumped right into sociology courses. Researching issues around race, class and gender sparked something that has only grown hotter through the years since Larson’s freshman year.

“I remember being really fired up about these issues and statistics, all these things that are still around today, the racism that still exists,” Larson says. “Especially being a Black man myself and in the United States, the challenges I knew that would come for me as a Black adult.”

Larson put his social justice passion into action through his love of filmmaking, something he discovered in high school when watching the reactions of students at a leadership camp where organizers showed daily videos of camp highlights. He started making videos himself, and when he arrived at Gonzaga he turned his camera toward addressing the complex issues he was learning about in class.

During his first year, he helped produce a documentary, “Zag Stories,” about microaggresions suffered on campus by students of color. His sophomore year, Larson made a film about what healthy masculinity can look like, and his junior year he produced a film about his Study Abroad experience in Chile. All those projects ultimately led to the “Humanizing Spokane” film that Larson and his peers showcased at Gonzaga, and then for audiences at Eastern Washington University and Whitworth University as well.

Larson hoped that after he graduated, the Humanizing Spokane group would keep going, but “it just kind of faded, even with our efforts to try and make it a sustainable effort.”

“And that’s kind of when seed was planted that there needs to be a nonprofit organization that’s able to do this consistently and tell and share these powerful stories that humanize people while also advocating for longer-term solutions to the issue,” Larson says.

That’s where his new Humans for Housing organization comes into play. Post-graduation, Larson worked in videography and marketing for a Seattle education company, CharacterStrong, but he was also laying the groundwork for the organization of his dreams. He met with mentors, learned all he could about the nonprofit and business worlds, and eventually was able to launch Housing for Humans.

Its first project is a film, “No Place to Grow Old,” that delves into the crisis of elderly homeless, a population that’s growing as the Baby Boomer generation hits retirement age.

The subject is important, and strategically speaking, a good way to launch the Humans for Housing organization through a story that every community is experiencing. “No Place to Grow Old” premiered in the fall of 2024, and Larson traveled to show the film to communities throughout the Northwest, including a stop at Gonzaga in November.

Larson hopes to continue promoting the film into the spring of 2025, further establishing Humans for Housing and building a movement of people inspired by his storytelling and advocacy to help make the change he’s been working on for a lifetime.