Michigan housing isn’t affordable. Here’s how we can fix it. | Opinion

We have a housing affordability crisis. To be more accurate, we have a housing supply crisis that has created a housing affordability crisis. A 2023 Zillow study concluded the U.S. is short 4.3 million homes. 

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer addressed the issue during her 2024 State of the State: “The rent is too damn high, and we don’t have enough damn housing! Our response will be simple: Build, baby, build!” 

It sounds like a simple enough proposition. Unfortunately, decades of obstruction from “not-in-my-backyard" NIMBYists and racially motivated regulations blocking new multifamily and affordable housing have created a climate in which building the supply of housing demanded by the market is easier said than done.   

When communities reject NIMBYism, and aggressively pursue new housing development, prices stabilize. Cities like Minneapolis and Austin are building housing at such a pace that it’s driving rent prices down. They aren’t just building affordable housing, either. Even new market-rate housing, including those oft-maligned million-dollar condos, is helping to quell marketplace demand, with more supply. 

So, Whitmer’s words were a refreshing change after generations of politicians who are often quick to defer to noisy, obstructionist voices perpetually in fear of anything that might “change the character of the neighborhood.”  

Coded language

Historically, if we’re honest, the change most often feared by incumbent residents is Black neighbors.  

In Florence, South Carolina, officials reversed support for a development of 60 subsidized apartments in 2022 after prominent local citizens held a meeting at — seriously — the local country club to rally opposition. Racism is suspected to have played a role. The developer sued, claiming Florence violated the Fair Housing Act and Civil Rights Act.  

NIMBY activists have even championed parking spaces over housing. That happened in Ontario last month, where the Hamilton City Council deadlocked on approval for a project that would have built 67 affordable housing units at the expense of 27 parking spaces in a municipal lot. Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath is trying to revive the project, but for now, the natural habitat of 2007 Honda Accords remains protected. 

Last year in Harlem, affordable housing was actually used as a cudgel against ... affordable housing. A developer proposed to build about 900 apartments. The Manhattan borough government demanded that 50% of the project’s units be affordable in exchange for necessary zoning changes. The developer agreed. The civic process works, right? 

Nope. Then-City Council member Kristin Richardson Jordan effectively vetoed the project because she wanted 100% of the developments housing to be affordable. Instead, the developer built something on the site that met existing zoning rules — a truck depot. Zero new homes, affordable or otherwise, but probably lots more pollution and noise.  

Ann Arbor, a case study 

Unfortunately, the effects of NIMBYism go beyond opposition to specific projects. The legacy of knee-jerk opposition to development has constructed a regulatory rampart against building housing at a scale demanded by the market. Even communities with pro-development leaders and willing developers are handcuffed in efforts to build necessary housing, especially the reasonably dense and vertical multifamily housing. 

Ann Arbor is a case in point. Housing affordability in the university town is a real challenge. Zillow reports the median rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,975 per month; in comparison, a median two-bedroom rent in Ypsilanti is $1,202 a month. Ann Arbor rents outpace a desirable metro Detroit suburb with a tight housing supply like Ferndale, where Zillow lists the median rent is a still-too-damn-high $1,657 per month.  

The University of Michigan has expanded enrollment by 12,000 students over the last 20 years, Ann Arbor City Councilwoman Jen Eyer told me, but only added 1,000 new student beds. Even with additional private sector student housing, the state’s flagship university is still short about 5,700 beds. 

As the university has grown, the city has experienced significant economic expansion. Over the last decade, Eyer says, U-M has grown its workforce by 6,000 new jobs, and Ann Arbor’s private sector employers have added 22,000 new jobs.  

But virtually no new housing has been built to keep pace with this economic growth. 

Ripple effects

City officials estimate about 80,000 workers commute daily to Ann Arbor, a city regularly ranked as one of the most desirable places to live in the country. Do many of these workers commute by choice? Sure. But it’s also clear that high housing costs take that choice away from many Ann Arbor workers, including teachers, nurses and first responders, who have no choice but to accept longer commutes to reach affordable housing.  

“This lack of housing supply, coupled with high demand, has driven up prices so much that many people who work or go to school here are unable to find housing they can afford,” Eyer says. “Our rental vacancy rate is practically zero, while a healthy rate that keeps rents stable is 7%. This pushes rents ever higher. And the wealthiest home buyers get into bidding wars over the few houses available, causing gentrification of our neighborhoods.” 

A housing market that forces people to live further than they like from work means more miles driven and more carbon billowing into our atmosphere. That means the housing shortage is also a climate problem.  

Given the city’s progressive electorate, Ann Arborites with NIMBYist impulses should consider that climate change just might be the greatest threat to the character of their community.  

Policy changes, practical changes

The good news for Ann Arbor is that pro-housing candidates have decisively won the city’s last two municipal elections, and seem genuinely committed getting housing built, both market-rate and affordable.   

This new government has enacted zoning changes to allow for more multi-family development along the city’s transit corridors, and city leaders are working to eliminate zoning regulations that prevent building multifamily housing in some parts of town.  

The city is exploring the creation of an economic development office with a focus on housing development and the goals supporting “overall affordability, placemaking, tax base improvements, and in pursuit of sustainability in the built environment.” 

They’ve made legislative recommendations to Lansing that, if enacted, would allow communities to enact split-rate property taxes so the value of owned land would be much higher than the value of the buildings on them — essentially incentivizing more vertical development over sprawl.  

All these efforts, necessary though they are, feel far upstream from families moving into new housing.  

Even something as straightforward as selling city-owned land to potential developers is a challenge. Currently, a land sale requires an eight-vote supermajority of Ann Arbor’s city council. To change that rule requires a charter amendment approved by voters. Eyer hopes the city can put the issue before voters in November. 

“It’s a policy to protect the status quo,” Eyer said of the supermajority rule. “The status quo has created our housing crisis.” 

Housing affordability demands urgency  

The takeaway here is housing affordability will remain hamstrung by the NIMBY status quo until pretty much every town — not just Ann Arbor — moves with urgency to remove the inherent barriers to building housing. 

Local governments must modernize planning and liberalize zoning so that housing supply can meet demand. NIMBYs need to accept that a new condo building, or in-fill duplexes, won’t destroy their quality of life. Progressives should stop making market-rate housing into the enemy. Everyone should recognize that keeping certain communities lily white like it’s 1954 is neither virtuous nor advantageous for anyone.  

More importantly, there needs to be recognition that the housing shortage won’t get fixed overnight.  

Too often our political imagination has the attention span of a news cycle or TED Talk season. Look how quickly the chattering class got bored with STEM education or “bridging the digital divide.” Housing cannot become another fashionable cause … wired now, but tired by 2025. 

It will take years, perhaps a generation, to really rebuild our housing stock to meet demand. Even in the best of environments, 4.3 million new housing units can’t be built overnight.  

Whitmer is right: We need to build, baby, build. For a good long time.  

Jeff Wattrick is a freelance writer who lives in Grosse Pointe Park. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.