The Housing Readiness Plan, a package of bills introduced in February to address housing issues by updating the state’s zoning laws may have significant bipartisan support in Lansing, but a similarly bipartisan group of local elected officials are speaking out in opposition to the legislation.
At a hearing of the Michigan House Government Operations Committee on Thursday morning, legislators who authored the bills described its merits, with state Rep. Kristian Grant (D-Grand Rapids), one of the leaders of the package, describing it as “focused on the fact that housing has become too expensive.”
“Some of that has to do with the requirements to build. The largest costs in a building project continue to rise. The cost of land keeps increasing, the cost of materials keeps increasing, and the amount of time that it takes for a project to be approved or denied has increased. In too many cases, a small number of voices can stop housing opportunities for entire communities,” she said. “This package directly addresses those barriers. We are not looking to eliminate zoning law as a whole. We are not looking to remove local voices. These bills are very intentional about the key issues that they hone in on.”
But that characterization of the bills was heavily disputed by members of the Michigan Municipal League at a press conference following that hearing, arguing that it preempts local authority and diminishes the voices of local citizens in decisions in their own municipalities.
“This is not a debate about local versus state control,” Clinton Township Supervisor Paul Gieleghem said. “This is about dramatically narrowing the authority of local communities to plan for their long term best interest and shifting that authority, into the hands of private developers, private equity firms and short term rental investors, whose first motivation is profit, not safe and responsible growth.”
A central point of contention between the hearing and the Municipal League press conference was the question of how much flexibility and choice local governments receive in terms of buying into the increased housing options that these bills would provide for, including duplexes and accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, as well as flexibility on new requirements like the distance houses can be set back from the street.
State Rep. Joey Andrews (D-St. Joseph), the sponsor of one of the bills, positioned his bill about duplexes as requiring a conversation between developers and local leaders.
“If somebody comes in and says, ‘We would like to build some duplexes in a residential community,’ the answer can’t start as no. The answer has to start as, let’s review, let’s have a conversation,” he said. “I think there will probably be plenty of instances where a community says we simply can’t support this. We don’t have the infrastructure for it. The roads aren’t ready for this. The sewers aren’t ready for this, and that’s fine, but having the conversation is important. Giving the developers, giving builders the ability to adapt and try to meet the needs of the community is important.”
But those words rang hollow to the local leaders speaking at the municipal league.
“That’s either stunning ignorance of his own bill or a complete lie, because it’s in the bill language,” said Michigan Municipal League Executive Director Dan Gilmartin. “It’s a duplex by right, we can’t say no.”
The text of that particular bill, HB 5584, reads, “A local unit of government shall not impose requirements related to the bulk or size of buildings that prevent the construction of duplexes with at least 1,000 square feet of habitable floor space per residential unit,” which includes requirements related to factors such as setbacks, maximum height, minimum unit size or the ratio of the floor area.
It adds that there can be “reasonable” requirements for those duplexes, but that they cannot be for the purposes of prohibiting the construction or maintenance of duplexes.
That discrepancy between local choice versus local requirements was the sticking point for the municipal leaders.
“Today in committee, I heard multiple times, ‘These bills will allow.’ These bills do not allow. These bills mandate,” Jennifer Antel, mayor of the city of Wayland, said. “When decisions move farther away from our local communities, people do not stop caring about the outcomes. They simply lose their ability to shape them.”
State Rep. Samantha Steckloff (D-Farmington Hills), who stood with local leaders at the Municipal League event, also added her own specific concerns, that many municipalities in Michigan simply do not have the infrastructure — water lines, sewage pipes and more — to build the housing that this legislation would provide for. That includes a significant portion of Steckloff’s district, which covers a portion of Oakland County, she said.
“My biggest issues are the unlimited ADUs because of the new hook ups, we can’t afford that on our current infrastructure,” she continued. “We also can’t afford 1,500 square foot lots. We can’t have four different hookups in that. There’s a huge capacity issue.”
One suggestion that she had heard from her colleagues in the Legislature who had sponsored the bill was the idea of excluding municipalities that did not have the infrastructure capacity in place to implement the new requirements — a change that she had believed was already being added, but was not a part of the bills debated in the House committee on Thursday.
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“Let’s just say that’s the case. That means the majority of Macomb, the majority of Oakland, certainly the majority of Wayne — Detroit’s still got wooden pipes — are not going to qualify,” she said.
The bills have received widespread support from business, environment, real estate and advocacy groups across the political spectrum.
“Michigan’s families are being squeezed by high housing costs, and the state has tools that it can use at no cost to the taxpayer to bring down the cost of housing,” said Lauren Strickland, the executive director of Abundant Housing Michigan, in a press release from the coalition of groups in favor. “On behalf of our affiliates across the state, we strongly urge the legislature to pass the Michigan Housing Readiness Package out of committee so that we can begin to tear down the outdated rules and regulations that make housing unaffordable for so many of our neighbors.”
However, for municipal leaders, who said that proponents of the bill in the House had ignored and rebuffed their efforts to discuss the bill and provide input, the central goal boils down to avoiding a one-size-fits-all solution to housing issues in the state of Michigan.
“These are a preemption, not a solution,” said Detroit City Council Member Scott Benson. “Local elected officials and residents are best equipped to make decisions for our own neighborhoods, our own residents in our own communities.”
