In preparation for a Jan. 8 housing workshop, Housing North interviewed several Leelanau County community members. When asked about the lack of available homes, Kevin Murphy, co-owner of New Bohemian Café in Northport, said he worried the county would soon be filled with many beautiful homes with no one living in them, like the Anytown, USA, shooting location in Hollywood.
“If this community, like many others, becomes a movie set that is nothing but a bunch of things that look like houses but are actually hotel rooms, then it’s no longer a community,” Murphy told Housing North.
The workshop’s main presenter was Ryan Kilpatrick, lead consultant for Housing Next, Housing North’s sister organization in west Michigan.
Kilpatrick asked workshop attendees if Leelanau County was at a tipping point, where the lack of affordable housing was about to drive the already-dwindling pool of service workers to move elsewhere.
From the audience, incoming County Administrator Jim Dyer replied “yes.” Which should be concerning, because as Kilpatrick said, when service industry workers start moving away, it starts an iterative feedback cycle where new jobs can’t be created either — a stagnant community.
“The reason that I think (we reached the tipping point is that) it was very common, when I lived in Calhoun County, that I could take my wife out to dinner and feed the two of us for $40. I can’t get a decent dinner anywhere in Leelanau County for less than $60. I’m paying a 50% premium for that sort of thing to live in Leelanau County,” Dyer said. “That’s the premium we’re paying for the housing crisis.”
Another workshop attendee, Leelanau Cellars President Bob Jacobson, agreed the county was at a tipping point. A major takeaway of Kilpatrick’s presentation was that the lack of affordable housing is not just a social issue, but an economic one, since it affects local busi- ness’s ability to stay open later and make more money — an issue that also affects Jacobson.
“Everything that they’re talking about doing is going to involve breaking what’s being done today and starting over,” Jacobson said. “I do think the county is at a tipping point, for all the above reasons. … We’ve got to be iconoclastic and break the existing system, which ain’t so easy to do.”
According to Kilpatrick, Leelanau County has seen the most dramatic home price increases in the state, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
“All of us really hope there are folks who can show up and open the post office, and can man the fire station, and can teach kids who live in the local school district,” Kilpatrick said. “And we want to make sure that we’re creating enough housing for all the folks who really run the town, run the county, can live here, and not have to drive in from an hour or an hour-anda-half away.”
To Kilpatrick, it’s important to provide affordable housing options now. New homes are being built — for example, the 32-unit Harbor Heights development in Suttons Bay Village.
But the Harbor Heights homes are intended for retirees and second homeowners and as vacation homes. People who lease properties like these are less likely to apply at a local restaurant and start waiting tables.
And as local housing nonprofit leaders Larry Mawby and Jon Stimson noted, it’s hard for conventional home builders in Leelanau County to make a home and sell it at an affordable price while turning a profit.
Mawby’s and Stimson’s organizations are renting and selling some homes affordably, but as previously reported, progress is still slow.
Kilpatrick provided some statistics. An elementary school teacher makes an average annual salary of $61,650, with a maximum housing budget of $1,541 per month. In Leelanau County, the median cost to own a home is $4,961 per month.
Part of the problem, Kilpatrick suggested, was the type of housing being built. According to Housing North, 25% of all homes are occupied by a single adult. Another 51% are occupied by two adults with no kids. They live in homes that occupy roughly an acre of land and require more than a sixdigit household income. Some of them don’t live here full time.
“We’re going to have to allow more housing in some places where there’s never been housing before, or we’re going to have to think about some neighborhoods that are going to have different kinds of housing than they’ve ever had before,” Kilpatrick said. “(And) to ensure that it doesn’t all sell to the highest bidder, who might be a seasonal homeowner, or a tourist who comes in from week to week.”
Kilpatrick presented alternatives like a cottage cluster with a common courtyard. Four to six cottages on a 10,000-15,000 square foot lot could require as little as a $58,000 household income, for example.
A case study showed how the same area could be zoned for 38 traditional single-family homes for an average price of $425,000 — or 146 mixed housing types, including single-family homes, townhouses, and apartments, at an average price of $325,000.
Another option would be converting lots to include accessory dwelling units (ADUs) – a solution to the housing crisis that county Commissioner Steve Yoder said they were exploring in Solon Township during his time as trustee.
Yoder attended the workshop, and during a question-andanswer session, he asked Kilpatrick about ways to ensure ADUs are used for housing and not as short-term rentals. Kilpatrick recommended adding deed restrictions and language to their zoning ordinance.
