Royal Oak OK’s controversial plan for low-cost apartments as residents rally against it

The debate continues across Michigan over "affordable housing": Where should there be more? And what should it look like?

This week, ground zero for the tussle was Royal Oak, where a posse of residents tried to stop low-cost apartments from going up near their homes. On Sunday, they marched with signs outside a vacant bank building on Rochester Road, just south of 14 Mile, chanting their opposition to seeing the site razed, rezoned and turned into 42 units of low-cost rentals.

One of the group’s leaders, Rudy Stuglin, said that he "wants the neighborhood to continue with one-story houses, not four-story buildings.” The area's housing stock is almost entirely single-story ranch houses built in the 1950s,  and zoned for single-family occupancy. The new apartment building would be nearly four stories high.

On Monday night, the same residents jammed a Royal Oak City Commission meeting. They spoke in sharp opposition to the project and brandished petitions with hundreds of signatures against it. Brian Herman, who lives two blocks east of the site, said he was shocked that commissioners were ignoring the wishes of homeowners who paid taxes. “We’re told that we don’t know what’s good for our neighborhood,” Herman said. Royal Oak's city commissioners “show extreme bias for the developer,” he said.

Project sails through despite petitions

The protesters had petitions with enough signatures to throw a challenge at the elected officials. To approve the apartments, the officials needed a two-thirds majority — that is, at least five of the seven commissioners. Yet, that was no challenge at all. Despite residents’ heated protests, the commissioners voted 7-0 in favor.

That outcome reflected a growing concern among government officials at every level — nation, state, county and community. Almost everywhere, decision makers say there's a need for more housing, mainly of the type deemed “affordable.” For the apartment project on Rochester Road, the site plan includes this slice of federal jargon: “The developer shall reserve no fewer than three dwellings for households earning no more than 80% of the average annual median household income for the Detroit-Warren-Livonia Metropolitan Area, as established by the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development.“

Translation? Some of the 42 units must be reserved for low-income residents. That prospect can be attractive to employers and urban planners. It was also appealing to the seven commissioners. They said that turning the abandoned bank building and its weedy, crumbling driveways into a new L-shaped apartment building, with a new parking lot and landscaping, would add inexpensive rental housing that Royal Oak badly needs.

A month earlier, the city’s planning board had voted 6-1 for the project. Its members studied the plan and liked it, Commissioner Sharlan Douglas said.

“I think this is a good project by a respectable developer. People want to live here” and new housing will fill that need, Douglas said. Commissioner Monica Hunt said she was encouraged that the project was not in Royal Oak’s busy downtown but instead in the city’s north end, where apartments are hard to find. “This is housing that our community desperately needs,” Hunt said. Mayor Michael Fournier echoed their words.

Housing the city 'desperately needs'

“If one of my kids grows up to be a letter carrier or a police officer and can’t find a place to live in our community, well then shame on us” for not approving projects of affordable housing, Fournier said.

As he has in the past, Fournier skirted the allegations of critics who said, during public comment, that Fournier received campaign donations from the development’s architect and from others who promoted the project. Trish Oliver, a 38-year resident of the city, said Fournier was supporting the plan only because he’d taken "special interest money.” Oliver said that Fournier, as well as Douglas, "paid back their obligations to those who gave them the money" by supporting certain projects such as the apartment plan.

Douglas did not address Oliver's statement. Fournier called the charges “baseless conspiracy theories” and “mudslinging,” in an email to the Free Press. In Royal Oak's 2023 city election, Oliver ran for mayor and drew 41.6% of the votes, losing to Fournier’s 58.2%. He has been mayor since 2016. Fournier said he was committed to offering low-cost housing in Royal Oak, which meant allowing renters to live near homeowners.

“I find it incredibly disheartening when I hear people refer to our neighbors who rent with disparaging remarks and less-than-subtle dog whistles,” he said, in his emailed statement to the Free Press. The neighborhood's intense opposition to the project “is not representative of Royal Oak, which is an overwhelmingly loving and welcoming community, and a handful of grossly misinformed people won't change that,” Fournier said.

Monday’s vote to approve the site plan included a zoning change from commercial to residential — more specifically, from “mixed-use” to “planned unit development,” according to Royal Oak’s zoning ordinance. The parcel faces busy Rochester Road although it backs up to the neighborhood of single-family homes. According to zoning experts, about 75% of the land area in American cities is zoned exclusively for single-family residences.

Shortage of affordable housing

“This restrictive zoning limits the variety of buildings that can be constructed and hinders the ability of low-income families to live in resource rich neighborhoods,” according to the website of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials in Washington, D.C. The problem is growing worse, as more Americans get priced out of affording the housing where they'd like to live, the organization says.

Its website goes on to say: “In 2021, home prices experienced an alarming growth rate of nearly 20 percent, and rents surged." More low-cost rental apartments are the answer, but 70% of residential areas in major cities restrict or even ban apartments, the organization says. Those statistics ring true for metro Detroit. In many areas, and in some entire suburbs of Detroit, single-family residential is the only type of housing allowed.

“Affordable” is the buzz word added to many discussions of the nation's housing shortage. That term stands in contrast to the luxury end of the market where, as with luxury cars, handbags and diamonds, there's no shortage of supply. In Oakland County alone, there's a need for at least 12,000 affordable housing units by the end of the decade, said Oakland County Commissioner Dave Woodward, D-Royal Oak.

Without more low-cost housing, “our new teachers, police officers, nurses, nursing home workers, child care workers and many other service-sector employees won’t be able to live within reasonable proximity of the jobs we need them to fill,” said Woodward, who chairs the Oakland County Board of Commissioners.

Woodward added: “Without these workers, our economy suffers for everyone."

Contact Bill Laytner: blaitner@freepress.com