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Jarrett Skorup
Housing affordability in Michigan is not a mystery — it’s a policy choice.
When you make it very difficult or impossible to build, prices rise.
Lawmakers in many cities choose to prop up the price of a residence by imposing single-family zoning over most of the area in their municipalities.
And even single-family zoning is subject to over-regulation. Local lawmakers often require homes to be of a minimum size, to fit on a set lot size, to be set back a certain distance from the road and to meet other arbitrary requirements. This micromanagement of land owned by private citizens extends to businesses and apartment buildings that are required to have far more parking spaces than they need. Many landlords choose to give up on developing new units.
These bad policy choices have spiked the cost of housing in Michigan. We rank 33rd nationwide in housing affordability. We are only permitting half as many houses as there are new jobs in the state, according to the State of Michigan Housing Data Portal.
What have state lawmakers done about this? They have approved the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies that come from your taxes. This money gets divvyed up by select cities, nonprofits and developers, who build a small number of homes (typically apartments).
This bureaucratic process for handing out taxpayer largesse is slow, ineffective and very expensive. There is a much easier and better answer that works in practice and costs nothing to taxpayers: let builders build by getting the government out of the way.
Here is what state lawmakers should do:
- Stop banning homes
In cities across Michigan, zoning laws make it flat-out illegal to build the kinds of homes we need. Traverse City bans apartments, townhomes, and small multi-family homes on most of its land. This is not unique. In 75% of most American cities, the only legal option is a single-family home on a large lot. That means fewer choices, higher costs and more families priced out. The fix is simple: legalize apartments, triplexes, quadplexes and mixed-use housing so that builders can provide what communities need.
- Streamline the permit process
Even when zoning allows housing, city approval processes often drag on for years. One East Grand Rapids project could have delivered 400 units two decades ago, but it remains mired in red tape and has been scaled back to only 140 units. In Midland, the conversion of an abandoned school to housing has dragged on for nearly a decade. Taxpayer dollars, investor funds and workers’ time are wasted while families wait for homes. Clear, transparent and efficient permitting would unlock thousands of units ready to be built.
- End arbitrary barriers
Many developments are killed not by safety codes but by costly, unnecessary mandates: oversized lots, minimum dwelling sizes, mandatory parking conversions or caps on building height. These rules don’t protect anyone — they just make housing too expensive to build. Scrapping them means more attainable homes for Michigan families.
Local government groups have one answer to the need for more housing — more subsidies from taxpayers. But government checks will not fix bad laws.
State lawmakers have a role in preventing municipalities from banning and over-regulating housing. If we want Michigan families to thrive, we need more homes — not more handouts.
Jarrett Skorup is the vice president for marketing and communications at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a research and educational think tank in Michigan.
The opinions expressed in the Guest View do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Daily News.
