1 00:00:14,450 --> 00:00:28,590 Thank you very much for coming tonight for this joint meeting, this joint housing meeting. Today, if you're thinking of official, I have a two-legged, official chair, mayors set, and townships, to the right and the right side. If you can, we'll call you to board a set board, mayors from the community members. 2 00:00:28,590 --> 00:00:35,770 First, how about we have an honor to see it up? 3 00:00:36,610 --> 00:00:38,470 So, everybody is from the United States. 4 00:00:38,630 --> 00:00:40,230 I'm just going to say that we'll call this, 5 00:00:40,250 --> 00:00:42,670 so we're all going to call off the roll. 6 00:00:45,070 --> 00:00:45,790 All right. 7 00:00:45,930 --> 00:00:46,170 Thank you. 8 00:00:46,230 --> 00:00:46,250 Thank you. 9 00:00:46,330 --> 00:00:46,370 Thank you. 10 00:00:46,370 --> 00:00:46,650 Thank you. 11 00:00:46,830 --> 00:00:47,130 All right. 12 00:00:47,130 --> 00:00:47,390 Thank you. 13 00:00:47,410 --> 00:00:49,750 All right. 14 00:00:49,750 --> 00:00:51,090 Thank you. 15 00:00:56,310 --> 00:00:56,670 Thank you. 16 00:01:00,750 --> 00:01:04,010 All right, and both of you are planning to meet over and out. 17 00:01:06,130 --> 00:01:07,090 Thank you very much. 18 00:01:07,250 --> 00:01:09,650 I know that both of you would like to get some of your information on the board. 19 00:01:09,810 --> 00:01:15,130 So if you'd like to come up here, thank you very much again for coming to our housing workshop. 20 00:01:15,330 --> 00:01:16,470 Just a couple of cool things. 21 00:01:16,470 --> 00:01:21,010 We anticipate this to go to about a matter of fact based on a little comment in the presentations. 22 00:01:21,710 --> 00:01:26,350 I do anticipate a small five-minute break after Mr. Kilpatrick's presentation case. 23 00:01:26,390 --> 00:01:31,050 Anyone has two directions, which will be located out to this quarter and middle of the hallway. 24 00:01:32,090 --> 00:01:33,930 Thank you again for coming here. 25 00:01:34,050 --> 00:01:36,110 We are going to be talking about a detailed positive plan. 26 00:01:36,370 --> 00:01:40,530 Mr. Kilpatrick has prepared for our two communities, the city of Southay and the Southay and South Georgia. 27 00:01:41,290 --> 00:01:43,570 We will be discussing what is in that plan. 28 00:01:43,570 --> 00:01:48,650 And we'll also be just discussing a number of options and barriers that are facing our communities. 29 00:01:49,610 --> 00:01:52,910 And I know another you may know about an over-tune site. 30 00:01:53,490 --> 00:01:57,450 This is not necessarily the focus of over-tune tonight, but we keep that effect in your head 31 00:01:57,450 --> 00:01:59,830 if you know our relationship with the habitat is no longer. 32 00:02:00,330 --> 00:02:03,250 This city will have to explore what our options are next to the over-tune site. 33 00:02:03,690 --> 00:02:06,730 Also today, we have a planning commission chair for Township, 34 00:02:06,730 --> 00:02:11,450 our island up here to kind of go over some of the township projects that are outlined 35 00:02:11,450 --> 00:02:16,290 or in the case of a shoot, and some of you may have known what those are, so I'm glad I was 36 00:02:16,290 --> 00:02:20,830 getting a brief fight in the presentation. Anything else Mayor Smith or Supervisor Stein? 37 00:02:23,230 --> 00:02:27,470 Okay, what's that? I'll have one. I'll put it up in a given short presentation. Thank you. 38 00:02:28,170 --> 00:02:28,650 Thank 39 00:02:32,720 --> 00:02:38,360 you. Thank you. I've been asked to do a brief high level overview of what's happening 40 00:02:38,360 --> 00:02:45,520 in self-saving township right now in terms of different levels of housing that we're working on. 41 00:02:45,520 --> 00:02:50,340 And I do want to let you know that our focus in the township is broad. 42 00:02:50,940 --> 00:02:57,240 We look at it from the perspective that we need housing at all cost levels, and that's 43 00:02:57,240 --> 00:03:02,520 the focus where we are, and as I go through this, I think you'll quickly see that that's 44 00:03:02,520 --> 00:03:02,940 what we're doing. 45 00:03:04,340 --> 00:03:10,080 So we're going to start with a project that's already in the works that has been approved. 46 00:03:11,020 --> 00:03:16,080 20 acre site, 12 parcels, six are sold already. 47 00:03:16,820 --> 00:03:19,900 This is the Woodcriss subdivision on 77th Street. 48 00:03:22,290 --> 00:03:32,010 There are three completed homes, 200 construction, and another one in the phase of developing the plans for it. 49 00:03:32,010 --> 00:03:37,190 So, this one is on Doctors' Road, 77th Street, 50 00:03:37,870 --> 00:03:40,850 and some of those lots have late views. 51 00:03:41,410 --> 00:03:44,230 Some of them are at Forest and Blueberry Hill views. 52 00:03:45,190 --> 00:03:52,190 Coming soon is a property that we have re-sold, 53 00:03:52,590 --> 00:03:55,170 and we have approved from the Planning Commission 54 00:03:55,170 --> 00:03:57,690 in public hearings, and we'll be going 55 00:03:57,690 --> 00:03:59,230 to the top ship border next week. 56 00:03:59,230 --> 00:04:05,550 This is a 10-year parcel immediately next to the Holiday Inn, just east of the 57 00:04:05,550 --> 00:04:10,850 Holiday Inn in Southeast. Two acres, commercial ten acres, multi-family housing. 58 00:04:11,310 --> 00:04:19,070 There will be 100 market-grate housing units, apartments, one to bedroom. 59 00:04:19,890 --> 00:04:26,310 There are four 16-year buildings, two 18-year buildings, total 100, 227 60 00:04:26,310 --> 00:04:35,090 parking spaces and 48 graduates and you just get a look at the site plan here it's pretty 61 00:04:35,090 --> 00:04:41,170 efficient use of space these are market rate so the market will determine really what these are 62 00:04:41,170 --> 00:04:50,290 we are hoping that this is the type of project that teachers, teachers, school teachers, police officers, 63 00:04:50,290 --> 00:04:56,590 others that other lines cannot find housing in South-Aid and we'll find a 64 00:04:56,590 --> 00:05:02,270 tractor. So that one is ready to roll. Happen next week. Very 65 00:05:02,270 --> 00:05:05,690 recognizable developer that we think will do a good job for it. 66 00:05:08,320 --> 00:05:10,600 The next one that 67 00:05:10,600 --> 00:05:18,940 I want to talk about is it's called trailside but it's not to be confused with 68 00:05:18,940 --> 00:05:21,480 the trail site subdivision in South Africa. 69 00:05:22,540 --> 00:05:26,320 I'm not sure why he chose that name or whether he will leave it that way. 70 00:05:27,040 --> 00:05:31,980 But what this is is a total of 18 tiny homes 71 00:05:32,680 --> 00:05:36,320 of no more than 600 and 80 square feet. 72 00:05:36,540 --> 00:05:38,160 Most of them will be less than that. 73 00:05:38,480 --> 00:05:39,520 They are detached. 74 00:05:40,660 --> 00:05:42,880 There are 25 toy barns. 75 00:05:42,900 --> 00:05:44,400 Somebody asked me just a few minutes ago. 76 00:05:44,560 --> 00:05:45,120 It's a toy barn. 77 00:05:45,120 --> 00:05:53,020 It's a story game for folks, RVs, stuff that you otherwise don't have ready for. 78 00:05:53,740 --> 00:05:57,480 Seven of those toy barns have a loft with just a bathroom. 79 00:05:58,560 --> 00:06:07,980 Seven of those toy barns have a 472 square foot residence within the unsightly story. 80 00:06:08,980 --> 00:06:13,640 That has gone through a public hearing preliminary site plan review. 81 00:06:14,320 --> 00:06:22,900 We're waiting for the developer to come back and offer us some information about some of the requests that we have on that project. 82 00:06:23,920 --> 00:06:29,040 The next one is really another interesting project. 83 00:06:29,280 --> 00:06:31,760 What makes it really interesting is it's rural. 84 00:06:32,800 --> 00:06:41,980 part of it is in Geneva Township, part of it is in Sausage, in the township, it will have its own private 85 00:06:41,980 --> 00:06:51,240 subject, subject, and sewer system built on the private land. There are a total of 15 rental 86 00:06:51,240 --> 00:06:59,040 units on this property, 20 storage units, more toy farms, 30 RV sites, and 80 camping sites. 87 00:06:59,040 --> 00:07:04,960 Again, this has gone through preliminary public hearing and we're waiting for our back 88 00:07:04,960 --> 00:07:08,060 from the developer on the request that we had in this program. 89 00:07:09,880 --> 00:07:13,780 Next, I'm going to spend just a couple of minutes talking about master plan considerations. 90 00:07:14,900 --> 00:07:18,860 We are working on that right now. We're working with the same firm for the city used. 91 00:07:20,080 --> 00:07:25,560 And we've had several meetings including an open house back in May. 92 00:07:26,340 --> 00:07:32,740 we've done a survey. What we're seeing so far is population has been 93 00:07:32,740 --> 00:07:38,740 steady and continues to show a slight growth pattern. More than a third of the 94 00:07:38,740 --> 00:07:44,180 timeshift residents are between ages 50 and 69 and the median age is increased. 95 00:07:44,580 --> 00:07:48,420 South Haven and Township may have a need for additional assistive living 96 00:07:48,420 --> 00:07:54,160 skill nursing and senior living. If you know what it was, senior living, assistive 97 00:07:54,160 --> 00:07:57,480 is living a project in the township approved and built 98 00:07:57,920 --> 00:08:00,980 or looks within the last year. 99 00:08:01,680 --> 00:08:03,460 And that is a beautiful facility. 100 00:08:03,760 --> 00:08:05,480 And I guess it's another one that you would consider 101 00:08:06,160 --> 00:08:07,300 housing for seniors. 102 00:08:09,100 --> 00:08:12,180 Developmental pressure in the township is growing. 103 00:08:12,360 --> 00:08:14,420 There's no question about the number of requests 104 00:08:14,420 --> 00:08:15,100 that we're getting. 105 00:08:15,760 --> 00:08:19,920 And so we're being cautious, very cautious about working 106 00:08:19,920 --> 00:08:21,900 on a master plan in such a way that we 107 00:08:21,900 --> 00:08:29,480 We encourage certain types of housing, but we also want to preserve the rural nature of the township to the extent possible. 108 00:08:30,740 --> 00:08:35,460 Let's talk a little bit about affordable, attainable housing provisions. 109 00:08:36,400 --> 00:08:41,220 And this is really part of what is permitting these projects to take place to the township. 110 00:08:42,460 --> 00:08:50,220 First, we have a special use provision that provides for micro-housing developments in the township. 111 00:08:50,220 --> 00:08:56,760 The micro housing development is between 5 and 10 acres, it's served by water and sewer. 112 00:08:57,520 --> 00:09:05,180 The maximum square footage of any house built is 600 feet square feet and there are no 113 00:09:05,180 --> 00:09:07,520 opportunities for additions to that home. 114 00:09:07,980 --> 00:09:12,060 So you're maxed out at 600 feet square feet, you can build less. 115 00:09:13,260 --> 00:09:24,100 the main level has to be at least 12 by 24, 280 square feet so you can go on in each unit must have two part of the spaces. 116 00:09:25,380 --> 00:09:34,020 The next provision that most people are not aware of, that's unique to South David Township as opposed to your zoning partners in the city, 117 00:09:34,640 --> 00:09:41,420 is all of our zoning districts permit multifamily due to places to family residences 118 00:09:41,420 --> 00:09:49,860 in township, and that is creating some opportunities for us to begin to look at, perhaps expanding 119 00:09:49,860 --> 00:09:57,500 that even, into four plexes, Ryan has shared some really good information with us, and 120 00:09:58,680 --> 00:10:06,140 many of these are very attractive, and they tend to fit well into rural areas, so we think 121 00:10:06,140 --> 00:10:12,440 opportunity is already there but we're looking at densities and height limitations of those as well 122 00:10:12,440 --> 00:10:19,040 we want to make sure to grow up in the opportunity possible. The next one I wanted to share with you 123 00:10:19,040 --> 00:10:24,640 with us will be the last one is the public utility residential overlay district. This is a new 124 00:10:24,640 --> 00:10:33,460 district in the last two years. What it does it reduces the lot size down to 16600 square feet, 125 00:10:34,580 --> 00:10:44,240 66 feet minimum on a roadway. It must be served by water and sewer and so these are really areas where 126 00:10:44,240 --> 00:10:51,000 they're underdeveloped, water and sewer is available and the opportunity is there for us to 127 00:10:51,000 --> 00:10:59,480 improve some smaller lives, smaller residences as well. So that's a quick overview of what's happening in the 128 00:11:00,140 --> 00:11:03,540 And with that, Kate will turn it over. 129 00:11:03,820 --> 00:11:04,800 Do I have to get it done environment? 130 00:11:05,600 --> 00:11:06,520 Good, thank you. 131 00:11:13,400 --> 00:11:14,900 All right, thank you so much Mark. 132 00:11:15,140 --> 00:11:16,600 And at this time, I think we'll ask Ryan, 133 00:11:16,720 --> 00:11:19,580 we'll pack it, come on up, and talk about our detail housing plant 134 00:11:19,580 --> 00:11:21,460 for the city of Southgate and Southgate for sure. 135 00:11:23,060 --> 00:11:25,800 As you know, Ryan has been a consultant here with the city 136 00:11:25,800 --> 00:11:26,500 for some time. 137 00:11:26,500 --> 00:11:28,720 He has had a vast experience with housing, 138 00:11:28,940 --> 00:11:31,080 working with, I think, any U.C., 139 00:11:31,080 --> 00:11:32,480 another housing that has something on it. 140 00:11:32,600 --> 00:11:34,260 So he has a pretty big history, 141 00:11:34,260 --> 00:11:36,960 and is well known for its efforts in housing, so with that, 142 00:11:37,200 --> 00:11:37,780 I'll bring them back. 143 00:11:38,500 --> 00:11:39,560 Can I use this? 144 00:11:40,000 --> 00:11:40,820 Thank you so much. 145 00:11:41,440 --> 00:11:41,920 Yeah. 146 00:11:43,040 --> 00:11:43,860 Is that a little bit? 147 00:11:44,120 --> 00:11:44,220 Yeah. 148 00:11:45,320 --> 00:11:45,700 Thanks. 149 00:11:45,960 --> 00:11:46,340 Oh, sorry. 150 00:11:47,440 --> 00:11:48,520 You guys were pulling that up. 151 00:11:48,740 --> 00:11:48,840 Great. 152 00:11:49,740 --> 00:11:51,840 So thanks, everybody, for coming out tonight. 153 00:11:52,060 --> 00:11:53,400 It's a gorgeous evening. 154 00:11:53,920 --> 00:11:56,240 And you chose to spend it here with us. 155 00:11:56,720 --> 00:11:58,280 So, appreciate you doing that. 156 00:11:59,100 --> 00:12:01,200 Again, my name's Ryan Chilpatrick. 157 00:12:01,200 --> 00:12:03,720 I have a little consulting firm called Flywheel. 158 00:12:04,460 --> 00:12:09,920 Our goal is really to work with local communities to help build momentum around their vision. 159 00:12:11,300 --> 00:12:16,740 So our intention is to really spend a lot of time in the community, understand where 160 00:12:16,740 --> 00:12:24,200 you're headed, work towards incremental progress, but those incremental games turn into big momentum 161 00:12:24,200 --> 00:12:24,740 over time. 162 00:12:25,720 --> 00:12:29,680 So we've been working with the city of South Haven for quite a while, a couple of years 163 00:12:29,680 --> 00:12:36,120 and I'm really thrilled that we've got more South Haven charter township members and residents here tonight. 164 00:12:36,840 --> 00:12:41,120 I think you all need to be applauded for working together collaboratively as a region. 165 00:12:41,980 --> 00:12:47,420 One of the things that's really important to keep in mind is that most residents of a community 166 00:12:47,420 --> 00:12:49,860 don't care very much about the political boundaries. 167 00:12:50,620 --> 00:12:55,900 What they're really thinking about is, do I have access to jobs and do I have access to good schools? 168 00:12:56,400 --> 00:13:00,060 can I get where I need to go, and can I afford where I'm going to live? 169 00:13:01,060 --> 00:13:03,600 And so those are the things that people are really thinking about, 170 00:13:04,000 --> 00:13:07,920 and if there's a better housing opportunity on the other side of 171 00:13:07,920 --> 00:13:09,680 a political boundary, most people will take it. 172 00:13:10,420 --> 00:13:13,500 So the fact that you're working together is really important. 173 00:13:14,560 --> 00:13:16,500 Okay, I've stalled long enough that this is okay. 174 00:13:17,980 --> 00:13:20,340 Talked about what flywheel is. 175 00:13:20,600 --> 00:13:21,760 Oh, can we adjust this? 176 00:13:21,860 --> 00:13:23,900 Yeah, let me work on it. 177 00:13:23,900 --> 00:13:25,540 Do I need to pull the screen down a little bit? 178 00:13:25,900 --> 00:13:29,180 No, it's, okay, they're lacking a program 179 00:13:29,180 --> 00:13:30,080 that makes it work better. 180 00:13:30,360 --> 00:13:30,840 Got it, okay. 181 00:13:32,740 --> 00:13:34,440 So housing is regional. 182 00:13:35,140 --> 00:13:37,960 Housing is also highly indicative 183 00:13:37,960 --> 00:13:40,000 of the regional workforce, right? 184 00:13:40,440 --> 00:13:42,480 So I'll talk a little bit about this today, 185 00:13:43,800 --> 00:13:45,500 in your housing plan. 186 00:13:46,620 --> 00:13:49,120 Some of our interventions that we recommend 187 00:13:49,120 --> 00:13:52,200 are really specific to housing related strategies. 188 00:13:52,200 --> 00:14:03,440 But a couple of the recommendations are really specific to workforce development because all new housing is going to have a minimum price, right? 189 00:14:03,680 --> 00:14:14,160 There's the cost of construction doesn't get below a certain threshold. Right now, we're seeing average costs around $220 a square foot to build new residential housing in West Michigan. 190 00:14:14,880 --> 00:14:22,120 And so the township should be commended for allowing the tiny home village 600 square feet 191 00:14:22,120 --> 00:14:22,620 and less. 192 00:14:23,360 --> 00:14:26,080 So that's easily bringing the price of that housing down. 193 00:14:27,280 --> 00:14:30,000 But there's still a certain floor there. 194 00:14:30,560 --> 00:14:33,880 And so when you have households that are earning less than $25,000 a year, 195 00:14:33,900 --> 00:14:36,120 what we really need to focus on is workforce development. 196 00:14:36,660 --> 00:14:39,880 Is how do we get those households connected to higher paying jobs? 197 00:14:40,440 --> 00:14:44,700 or where they have a disability or they're aging seniors, how we get them connected to the 198 00:14:44,700 --> 00:14:48,720 federal benefits that are available. So it looks like we're up. 199 00:14:50,800 --> 00:14:53,260 To kind of level set baseline 200 00:14:53,260 --> 00:14:59,820 expectations, some of the things that are really important to keep in mind is that our current 201 00:15:00,000 --> 00:15:28,280 The housing market is plagued by these three shortages. We have a shortage of land available for the types of housing that are needed in our communities. There's no shortage of land, right? We are still the great American open space community. There's lots of land available. But land that has access to infrastructure and that is zoned to allow for the types of housing that people can afford today is highly limited. 202 00:15:28,280 --> 00:15:35,600 And I'm not particularly picking on South Haven or South Haven township across the state of Michigan. 203 00:15:36,140 --> 00:15:43,340 A roughly 78% of all residentally-zoned land is owned for single-family only on lots 204 00:15:43,340 --> 00:15:45,120 that are a quarter of an acre or larger. 205 00:15:46,060 --> 00:15:52,580 So when we have to start with a quarter acre log and we can only build single-family homes. 206 00:15:52,580 --> 00:15:58,680 Again, when we know that we have to spend $220 a square foot for any residential product, 207 00:15:59,860 --> 00:16:02,620 we automatically are setting the floor on the cost of the house. 208 00:16:03,780 --> 00:16:05,960 So the second shortage is labor and materials. 209 00:16:06,680 --> 00:16:12,540 Since the Great Recession, almost half of our Michigan labor workforce in the construction 210 00:16:12,540 --> 00:16:16,980 trades have either migrated south or into other employment opportunities. 211 00:16:17,540 --> 00:16:23,900 We didn't get all of those residential contractors back after they left in 2010 and 2012. 212 00:16:26,280 --> 00:16:38,320 In 2018, 2019, 2020, we had significant material shortages, partly due to COVID, partly due to tariffs, partly due to a really blooming housing industry that wasn't really expected at the time. 213 00:16:39,080 --> 00:16:45,880 And then lastly, the thing that we've been talking about a lot for the last year is rising interest rates, which means we have a shortage of available capital 214 00:16:45,880 --> 00:16:48,920 to build the kind of a residential product that we need. 215 00:16:49,560 --> 00:16:51,160 So there are constraints, right? 216 00:16:51,340 --> 00:16:54,240 I'm not here to promise you an easy path forward, 217 00:16:54,400 --> 00:16:55,500 but I am here to promise you 218 00:16:55,500 --> 00:16:56,860 the incremental steps that should work. 219 00:16:58,400 --> 00:17:00,220 So in light of those shortages, 220 00:17:00,540 --> 00:17:02,700 even before we started to experience shortages, 221 00:17:03,360 --> 00:17:05,820 what this graph is trying to depict, 222 00:17:05,980 --> 00:17:08,280 there's read it like a comic book, right? 223 00:17:08,540 --> 00:17:10,060 Left to right and then top to bottom. 224 00:17:11,080 --> 00:17:12,940 These are starter home sales. 225 00:17:12,940 --> 00:17:22,120 You can see 1999 to 2006. We were up at about 350,000 nationwide on an annual basis and 226 00:17:22,120 --> 00:17:29,060 then fell off a cliff in late 2006, early-tech 2007. Again, that was the mortgage crisis. 227 00:17:30,780 --> 00:17:37,540 Those mortgage-backed securities, the financial scheme that really failed in 2007 had a huge impact 228 00:17:37,540 --> 00:17:42,700 on starter homes. And at that time, starter homes were typically homes that were priced 229 00:17:42,700 --> 00:17:47,340 around $150,000, maybe $175,000. 230 00:17:47,600 --> 00:17:52,420 They used to make up about 42% of the overall housing 231 00:17:52,420 --> 00:17:54,340 construction in the marketplace. 232 00:17:54,880 --> 00:17:58,300 It then dropped down to about 17% 233 00:17:58,300 --> 00:18:00,320 of the overall housing construction in the marketplace. 234 00:18:01,220 --> 00:18:04,420 So if we think about, if we used to build almost half 235 00:18:04,420 --> 00:18:06,840 of the new housing was for young families 236 00:18:06,840 --> 00:18:09,560 that were just coming up, or first time home buyers 237 00:18:09,560 --> 00:18:11,660 who were just entering the housing market, 238 00:18:11,660 --> 00:18:17,220 price very affordably for the middle class if we stop that if that amount of 239 00:18:17,220 --> 00:18:22,060 housing declined by more than half we begin to understand what has happened 240 00:18:22,060 --> 00:18:28,020 over the ensuing 12 years right now all of those middle income households who 241 00:18:28,020 --> 00:18:33,260 could have afforded that $150 to $175,000 loan are forced to continue renting 242 00:18:33,260 --> 00:18:37,220 because there aren't other good options in the marketplace and because they're 243 00:18:37,220 --> 00:18:41,180 forced to continue renting but they earn enough to potentially buy a house just 244 00:18:41,180 --> 00:18:46,360 not a super expensive house. They're now crowding out our middle and lower income renters. 245 00:18:47,340 --> 00:18:51,400 And so what then happens is those lowest income renters get crowded out of the market entirely, 246 00:18:51,900 --> 00:18:56,000 which means they're forced to double up with other renters, they're forced to double up with 247 00:18:56,000 --> 00:19:02,040 family or they're pushed out of the community. And oftentimes it's those lower income workers who 248 00:19:02,040 --> 00:19:08,000 are essential workers, our grocery store clerks, the folks who are cleaning every place, 249 00:19:08,000 --> 00:19:14,040 keeping us clean especially during pandemics, those really important people, our nurses, 250 00:19:14,320 --> 00:19:19,280 age, our preschool teachers, all of these folks starting less than $18 to $20 an hour 251 00:19:19,280 --> 00:19:24,400 are getting squeezed out of the marketplace. And it's largely due to the fact that in 2006 and 252 00:19:24,400 --> 00:19:29,480 2007 we stopped making starter homes one of the largest product commodities in the housing 253 00:19:29,480 --> 00:19:29,780 market. 254 00:19:31,920 --> 00:19:37,080 So this slide, I'm going to skip it because it just repeats what I just said for 255 00:19:37,080 --> 00:19:44,540 the most part. So what we have done is we created a housing plan but embedded in this housing 256 00:19:44,540 --> 00:19:50,820 plan is a housing needs assessment where we looked at the census data, the changes in census 257 00:19:50,820 --> 00:19:58,380 data from 2010 to 2022. You'll actually find in the report when you read it most of the census 258 00:19:58,380 --> 00:20:04,160 data is 2011 to 2021 because those of the years we have the best most consistent data across 259 00:20:04,160 --> 00:20:09,000 census years there is an acknowledgement that the population of the township has gone up between 260 00:20:09,000 --> 00:20:15,820 2021 and 2022 and yet you'll see most of our data is rooted in the 2021 calculations so quick 261 00:20:15,820 --> 00:20:21,520 to caveat so in that plan we've made a series of recommendations and we've made those recommendations 262 00:20:21,520 --> 00:20:27,040 based on household income so there are different solutions depending on a household's income 263 00:20:27,620 --> 00:20:32,800 to the extent possible we want to encourage people to move toward homeownership but as I said 264 00:20:32,800 --> 00:20:37,440 there's a minimum cost to get into homeownership. We don't want to push people into that too soon 265 00:20:37,440 --> 00:20:42,660 when they don't have dollars available for maintenance or taxes or insurance. So some of the solutions 266 00:20:42,660 --> 00:20:47,680 are early on are more rental product and then as people gain more income we want to make sure 267 00:20:47,680 --> 00:20:52,540 that those runs on the economic ladder of opportunity are low enough that they can get on the ladder 268 00:20:52,540 --> 00:20:57,580 and start building equity and wealth over time. So tonight I'm going to give you a high level 269 00:20:57,580 --> 00:21:03,440 overview. The full document is available I think should be posted online later on this evening. 270 00:21:04,040 --> 00:21:08,100 There's also a little teaser document, a flyer that is kind of a one-page summary 271 00:21:08,100 --> 00:21:14,500 in infographic form that will be available for all of you. But real quickly we're looking at both 272 00:21:14,500 --> 00:21:20,060 city of township and all of Sally and charter township as our study area. We did include casco 273 00:21:20,060 --> 00:21:25,120 township in this one, maybe sometime in the future we'll kind of expand north or south or east. 274 00:21:25,120 --> 00:21:28,300 But for today, I think this is going to be really helpful. 275 00:21:29,400 --> 00:21:35,420 If you've looked at the census data, you will have noticed that the population across 276 00:21:35,420 --> 00:21:40,800 the South Haven community, both city and township, has declined among most of our generational 277 00:21:40,800 --> 00:21:45,060 cohorts, except for our baby boomers, baby boomers are up. 278 00:21:46,000 --> 00:21:50,640 And our youngest generation, generation alpha, and these are our kids. 279 00:21:51,020 --> 00:21:53,440 These are typically kids under 15 years old. 280 00:21:53,440 --> 00:21:58,340 So they actually grew by 100% over the last 11 years. 281 00:21:59,460 --> 00:22:03,340 Interesting, given that our millennials and Gen Z have declined. 282 00:22:04,540 --> 00:22:09,320 So I think that there was a number of years there where we had families 283 00:22:09,320 --> 00:22:13,060 where their kids were growing up and growing up and moving out of the house. 284 00:22:13,540 --> 00:22:15,440 Actually just watched this happen in my neighborhood. 285 00:22:15,680 --> 00:22:18,400 When I moved into our neighborhood, I think it was 2016. 286 00:22:19,220 --> 00:22:22,640 And I was my wife and I were almost the youngest couple in the neighborhood. 287 00:22:22,640 --> 00:22:25,660 at the time our boys were nine and five. 288 00:22:26,680 --> 00:22:28,600 And over the last five or six years, 289 00:22:29,020 --> 00:22:32,280 we've become one of the older couples, weirdly enough, 290 00:22:32,660 --> 00:22:34,480 right, I'm in my mid-40s. 291 00:22:34,860 --> 00:22:37,260 And suddenly I feel like the old guy on the block. 292 00:22:37,940 --> 00:22:40,260 And it's because a lot of the older generation 293 00:22:40,260 --> 00:22:41,360 that had lived in our neighborhood 294 00:22:41,360 --> 00:22:44,140 have decided that we're moving to Florida or Arizona 295 00:22:44,760 --> 00:22:45,820 or maybe South Haven. 296 00:22:46,600 --> 00:22:49,460 And so there's lots of younger Gen Z and millennials 297 00:22:49,460 --> 00:22:50,240 who are moving in. 298 00:22:50,240 --> 00:22:59,440 And so I can see how my neighbor could probably look similar to this community being that the oldest generation has moved out. 299 00:22:59,920 --> 00:23:04,020 We've got some younger families moving in and lots of those younger families are having kids. 300 00:23:05,460 --> 00:23:11,000 So what we'll start to see is recommendations specifically for that baby boomer generation. 301 00:23:11,480 --> 00:23:17,800 But also recommendations to be thinking about how we bring millennials and Gen Z into town because that's your workforce. 302 00:23:17,800 --> 00:23:21,540 course, that's the future of the employment base in the community. 303 00:23:22,640 --> 00:23:27,660 And then as was mentioned by Mark earlier, median age across the two communities is 56 304 00:23:27,660 --> 00:23:34,100 years old compared to Van Vieren County, which is just 40, it's like 40.7 years old, so 305 00:23:34,100 --> 00:23:34,700 we rounded up. 306 00:23:37,160 --> 00:23:42,380 Okay, so the other important thing is we're thinking about housing stock is what is the size 307 00:23:42,380 --> 00:23:46,000 of the household in the community, where's our average household size? 308 00:23:46,460 --> 00:23:54,580 And we talked about this in previous presentations and it turns out it bears out actually quite in alignment with state and national numbers here. 309 00:23:55,880 --> 00:23:57,960 You're roughly a third, a third, a third. 310 00:23:59,040 --> 00:24:04,020 27% of all households in the South Island community are one adult, no kids. 311 00:24:05,200 --> 00:24:07,740 37% are two adults, no kids at home. 312 00:24:08,360 --> 00:24:10,280 And mind you, this is no kids at home. 313 00:24:10,500 --> 00:24:14,220 So remember all those baby boomers whose kids have grown up and moved out of the house. 314 00:24:14,220 --> 00:24:16,140 They have kids, they just don't live in the classroom. 315 00:24:19,180 --> 00:24:22,480 Another, a little over a third, are households with kids. 316 00:24:23,560 --> 00:24:25,260 So, as we start to think about, 317 00:24:25,400 --> 00:24:27,560 what are our housing solutions for these households? 318 00:24:28,500 --> 00:24:32,160 A third are households should be oriented towards kids, right? 319 00:24:32,580 --> 00:24:33,900 Families and kids in the school district, 320 00:24:34,060 --> 00:24:36,680 and maybe we can even grow this to be closer to 40% 321 00:24:36,680 --> 00:24:38,020 if that's a goal for the community. 322 00:24:38,760 --> 00:24:41,140 But it's probably not going to be more than half 323 00:24:41,140 --> 00:24:43,060 of your community, as families with kids. 324 00:24:43,660 --> 00:24:50,260 And so as we think about what are the housing types that are most appropriate for the demographic groups in the community, 325 00:24:50,640 --> 00:24:53,920 you probably don't need a ton of single family homes on large lots. 326 00:24:54,780 --> 00:24:58,700 There are definitely people who prefer single family homes on large lots. 327 00:24:59,020 --> 00:25:02,700 It's an important part of the marketplace and the ecosystem and where there's demand. 328 00:25:03,200 --> 00:25:04,400 We want to satisfy demand. 329 00:25:05,060 --> 00:25:08,960 But I think you're also going to find a lot of demand for smaller homes, 330 00:25:08,960 --> 00:25:17,720 A lot of demand for attached homes, sometimes demand for stacked flats for condominiums closer to the walkable amenities. 331 00:25:18,680 --> 00:25:22,880 So what we really want to be thinking about is how do we serve all three of these groups well? 332 00:25:23,580 --> 00:25:31,920 Because for the most part in Michigan and in most of the US, we've really focused all of our housing attention on this group. 333 00:25:31,920 --> 00:25:38,720 We are kind of stuck in the 1950s mentality that everybody is a nuclear family, mom, dad, 334 00:25:38,900 --> 00:25:44,860 two kids and a dog, and everybody wants that suburban dream of, you know, white pick 335 00:25:44,860 --> 00:25:48,760 offense and a nice house with a two-star garage. 336 00:25:49,520 --> 00:25:53,140 And I think many people are still aspiring to that, and it's an important product. 337 00:25:53,580 --> 00:25:55,360 But it's not the only thing that we should be building. 338 00:25:56,360 --> 00:25:59,300 And to illustrate that, it's not the only thing that you're building here. 339 00:25:59,300 --> 00:26:04,140 South Haven community compared to the Van Buren County community at large. 340 00:26:04,680 --> 00:26:10,420 You've got greater diversity of housing product in South Haven than Van Buren as a whole. 341 00:26:10,860 --> 00:26:15,840 So as a whole Van Buren County's housing product is 78% single-family detached, 342 00:26:16,540 --> 00:26:19,860 whereas the South Haven community is only 64% single-family detached. 343 00:26:20,520 --> 00:26:23,160 So you're already in moving in the right direction. 344 00:26:23,760 --> 00:26:28,580 I think finding more ways to build in more opportunity of housing choice in diversity 345 00:26:28,580 --> 00:26:34,160 is going to be valuable, but kudos to you for already being creative and innovative in your 346 00:26:34,160 --> 00:26:40,220 housing solutions. Now this graph even though the bars look the same, now what we're talking about 347 00:26:40,220 --> 00:26:48,140 is housing 10-year, meaning is it owner occupied or rent or occupied. In South Haven about 67 and a half 348 00:26:48,140 --> 00:26:54,320 percent of all households are owner occupied, whereas about 33 percent are rent or occupied. 349 00:26:58,000 --> 00:26:58,560 In 350 00:26:58,560 --> 00:27:05,620 And this is important because I think for a long time we have maybe over-mythologized 351 00:27:05,620 --> 00:27:10,740 home ownership, it's a really important opportunity for people who want to be 352 00:27:10,740 --> 00:27:17,200 homeowners. And I think being able to build wealth in your home is definitely 353 00:27:17,200 --> 00:27:22,980 something that should be available to as many households as possible. And there 354 00:27:22,980 --> 00:27:27,320 are maintenance obligations that come with home ownership. There are cultural 355 00:27:27,320 --> 00:27:32,340 obligations that come with homeownership. There are time-oriented obligations that come with 356 00:27:32,340 --> 00:27:39,380 homeownership. And not everybody wants or needs to be a homeowner. If we look at how 357 00:27:39,380 --> 00:27:45,460 things appreciate over time, if you were to invest the same $20,000 either into a down payment on a home 358 00:27:45,460 --> 00:27:54,580 or in the stock market, you will see a much what's the word I want. In the stock market, you're 359 00:27:54,580 --> 00:28:00,460 see dips and valleys on a greater basis, right? And it's less likely than in a home that 360 00:28:00,460 --> 00:28:06,960 you will always see growth. But over time, over a 30-year investment horizon, you end up 361 00:28:06,960 --> 00:28:10,660 at close to the same place if you continue to invest in a stock market than the way that 362 00:28:10,660 --> 00:28:15,700 you invest in your home. And that's not to advocate for one or the other. It's just to say that 363 00:28:15,700 --> 00:28:20,580 people can build wealth if they're making the same kinds of investments year after year after 364 00:28:20,580 --> 00:28:26,340 year after year. In other financial vehicles, as opposed to always making your only investment 365 00:28:26,340 --> 00:28:32,980 in your own. I spend a lot of money trying to keep up my yard and replace the driveway 366 00:28:32,980 --> 00:28:39,020 and my windows need to be repaired. I've got a 92 year old house. And so to me, it doesn't 367 00:28:39,020 --> 00:28:44,440 always feel like, gosh, is this the best place for me to be putting all my money? Know that 368 00:28:44,440 --> 00:28:48,700 some people don't want to be owners. And the reason this graph is important is because 369 00:28:48,700 --> 00:28:52,320 because I think sometimes communities set goals where they say, hey, we don't ever want 370 00:28:52,320 --> 00:28:55,300 to fall below 60% when we're occupied housing. 371 00:28:56,020 --> 00:29:00,000 And I think the more appropriate goal, I think what we're actually trying to drive towards 372 00:29:00,000 --> 00:29:05,000 is the number of people who take great care and pride in their neighborhood. 373 00:29:05,560 --> 00:29:12,200 We don't ever want fewer than 80% of households to take great care and pride in their neighborhood. 374 00:29:12,740 --> 00:29:15,640 And oftentimes, home ownership is a proxy for that metric. 375 00:29:15,640 --> 00:29:20,820 And the real question is how do we get more renters to take great care and pride in their neighborhood? 376 00:29:21,380 --> 00:29:27,780 How do we build a cultural expectation that, hey, we're going to really care for this place together collaboratively as a community? 377 00:29:28,520 --> 00:29:32,180 And oftentimes that's done through a partnership but it doesn't have to be. 378 00:29:34,940 --> 00:29:39,640 Oh, so this graph is illustrating the number of households who are cost-brewed. 379 00:29:40,180 --> 00:29:44,560 It's showing you how many households are spending more than 30% of their income on a house. 380 00:29:44,560 --> 00:29:48,040 Now, 30% is kind of a rough metric. 381 00:29:48,740 --> 00:29:52,080 Some families can afford to spend 40% of their income on housing. 382 00:29:52,080 --> 00:29:52,840 It would be just fine. 383 00:29:53,540 --> 00:29:58,560 Some families, when they get over 20, 22% of their income on housing gets to be really sticky. 384 00:30:00,240 --> 00:30:06,800 Nationally, the federal standard is more than 30% of your income on housing is cost overburdened. 385 00:30:06,800 --> 00:30:16,800 Guys like Dave Ramsey tend to say the same thing. Your mortgage broker probably says, hey, we don't really lend to folks that are spending more than 28, 30, 35% of income on housing. 386 00:30:17,380 --> 00:30:27,220 So, it's a fairly standard metric. But what you can see here is our renters tend to be more cost burden than our homeowners. So, plus one another ownership category. 387 00:30:28,120 --> 00:30:33,200 When we look at in Bearing County, we have fewer households to our cost burden than South Haven. 388 00:30:34,140 --> 00:30:43,120 And so this is illustrating what you already knew, is that housing prices have gone up more quickly in South Haven than they have in Bearing County as a whole. 389 00:30:44,620 --> 00:30:51,160 And middle and low income households are struggling more in South Haven than they are in Bearing County as a whole. 390 00:30:51,660 --> 00:30:53,400 We'll talk a little bit about that going forward. 391 00:30:54,400 --> 00:31:00,660 Now, the other thing here is vacancy rate, and this is going to be a fun way, it'll be 392 00:31:00,660 --> 00:31:02,140 interesting to talk through this. 393 00:31:03,020 --> 00:31:08,740 So the total vacancy rate, depending on how we calculate it, is 30 and a half percent, 394 00:31:09,000 --> 00:31:15,180 however, the way the Census Bureau thinks about vacancy is any home that is not occupied 395 00:31:15,180 --> 00:31:15,860 year-round. 396 00:31:16,700 --> 00:31:23,980 And so, when we think about second homes, and when we think about RV parks, and when we 397 00:31:23,980 --> 00:31:28,780 think about all of the other places campgrounds, all of those things are considered vacant, 398 00:31:29,240 --> 00:31:33,400 if they're not occupied your rent, but they are considered housing, they're included 399 00:31:33,400 --> 00:31:35,340 in the tally of total housing stock. 400 00:31:36,340 --> 00:31:43,340 So even though 30% feels like a giant number, when we go down, when we eliminate vacation 401 00:31:43,340 --> 00:31:48,200 homes, either second homes or seasonal rentals, the vacancy rate is actually 8.6 percent across 402 00:31:48,200 --> 00:31:56,520 the community. Your effective vacancy rate is about 6.2 percent. So now this is still compared 403 00:31:56,520 --> 00:32:03,520 to a lot of other communities that are high demand scarce housing neighborhoods or communities. 404 00:32:04,040 --> 00:32:10,400 6.2 percent is still a somewhat high number, right? What that tells me is there is opportunity 405 00:32:10,400 --> 00:32:15,420 to go find some of those vacant homes, figure out who the homeowners are. 406 00:32:15,700 --> 00:32:18,380 It's probably in the absentee landlord that decided, 407 00:32:18,920 --> 00:32:20,940 oh, it's not really worth renting this thing out anymore, 408 00:32:21,440 --> 00:32:23,300 or maybe they got an inspection and realized, 409 00:32:23,480 --> 00:32:25,200 gosh, I need to invest a bunch of money in that, 410 00:32:25,380 --> 00:32:27,140 I'm just going to let it sit vacant for a while. 411 00:32:28,360 --> 00:32:31,100 I think there's going to be an opportunity to start to explore 412 00:32:31,100 --> 00:32:34,500 what are some of those vacancies that are non-seasonal non-second homeowners, 413 00:32:35,180 --> 00:32:37,100 and how do we get those back on the market, 414 00:32:37,100 --> 00:32:43,470 especially for our low and middle income household income distribution. 415 00:32:43,670 --> 00:32:45,510 This is another interesting one for the community. 416 00:32:46,070 --> 00:32:51,590 When we compare to Van Buren County, the overall share of households earning less 417 00:32:51,590 --> 00:32:55,190 than $50,000 in South Hayden is greater than Van Buren County. 418 00:32:56,130 --> 00:33:01,990 But our combined households earning $100,000 a year or more as a percentage 419 00:33:01,990 --> 00:33:03,750 is more than Van Buren County. 420 00:33:03,750 --> 00:33:09,490 So you've got sort of a barbell in South Haven where you've got a greater number of high 421 00:33:09,490 --> 00:33:15,310 wealth, high income households and a greater number of low, well, low income households. 422 00:33:16,350 --> 00:33:18,970 And you all experience this all the time, right? 423 00:33:19,170 --> 00:33:24,650 We can see the income inequality in South Haven more readily than we see in other communities 424 00:33:25,270 --> 00:33:27,570 because of that wealth differential and proximity. 425 00:33:30,230 --> 00:33:36,730 So then, if we really just look at the cost burden by price point, we can start to see 426 00:33:36,730 --> 00:33:42,930 how many households who can afford a housing payment of $250 a month or less. 427 00:33:43,430 --> 00:33:45,690 We've got 324 of those households. 428 00:33:46,230 --> 00:33:48,410 These are basically zero income households. 429 00:33:49,430 --> 00:33:54,390 So think about an individual who's on social security benefits is probably over the age 430 00:33:54,390 --> 00:33:59,610 of 65 is on Medicaid or Medicare, unable to work, right? 431 00:33:59,830 --> 00:34:01,430 These are those households more than likely. 432 00:34:02,390 --> 00:34:05,150 300 households, who can afford rent or mortgage 433 00:34:05,150 --> 00:34:10,470 of 250 to 500, and so this is 500 to 850 to 1250. 434 00:34:10,990 --> 00:34:13,230 This is what helps us understand, all right, 435 00:34:13,630 --> 00:34:17,030 if we were gonna try to solve for our housing equation tomorrow, 436 00:34:18,070 --> 00:34:20,050 where do we need the most housing 437 00:34:20,050 --> 00:34:21,770 and what kind of housing do we need? 438 00:34:21,770 --> 00:34:25,030 This is a snapshot in time of what we would need today. 439 00:34:25,870 --> 00:34:29,550 So we'll talk a little bit about what all those numbers look like. 440 00:34:30,310 --> 00:34:34,770 But in the meantime, this actually, this should have been the previous to the last slide. 441 00:34:35,390 --> 00:34:38,590 This comes from a company called AirDNA. 442 00:34:39,490 --> 00:34:46,370 AirDNA scrapes data from Airbnb, VRBO, a couple of other short-term rental missing agencies. 443 00:34:47,070 --> 00:34:49,030 And it compiles it all into one place. 444 00:34:49,030 --> 00:34:54,830 so that we get a pretty good picture of how many short-term rentals do we have in the community? 445 00:34:55,490 --> 00:34:59,770 How much revenue gets created? How many unique stays do we have? 446 00:34:59,990 --> 00:35:05,110 What's our peak listing count? You can see peak listing count of a third line and it says 921. 447 00:35:06,170 --> 00:35:13,170 The greatest number of listings on any day ever in the South Haven community was 921. 448 00:35:13,170 --> 00:35:20,290 total units. And that creates a market place of more than $50 million a year. Right? So the good 449 00:35:20,290 --> 00:35:26,490 news is you've got $50 million a year being spent on short-term rentals. And that's adding to 450 00:35:26,490 --> 00:35:33,190 the local economy. The bad news is on any given night you could have as many as 900,000 units that 451 00:35:33,190 --> 00:35:39,630 are occupied by one of these people who are contributing $50 million to the community. So there is no good or 452 00:35:39,630 --> 00:35:44,530 bad here, right? We're not going to villainize short-term rentals. We're also not going to 453 00:35:44,530 --> 00:35:49,290 praise them. They add value to the community and they create problems, right? And so what 454 00:35:49,290 --> 00:35:54,290 we have to do is understand where do the supply and demand mechanics that are at work here? 455 00:35:54,630 --> 00:35:58,390 We have a lot of people that want to be in South Haven for five months out of the year. 456 00:35:59,210 --> 00:36:02,610 And then we've got another whole group of people that want to be in South Haven for 12 months 457 00:36:02,610 --> 00:36:09,030 out of the year. And we've got to figure out, in part of the issue here, many of you know 458 00:36:09,030 --> 00:36:16,010 this better than I do, is 10 years ago before Airbnb and VRBO existed, it was a lot harder 459 00:36:16,010 --> 00:36:22,250 to rent a house out on a 90 basis. Today, I could log on, make a profile for my own house, 460 00:36:22,710 --> 00:36:28,070 stick it up on Airbnb, and I might get a rent or tomorrow. It's gotten super easy to 461 00:36:28,070 --> 00:36:32,430 do that. Some people might say, hey, I'm just going to rent my house out for three weeks 462 00:36:32,430 --> 00:36:38,430 because I'm going to be traveling the other way. That's a great tool, honestly, if you're 463 00:36:38,430 --> 00:36:42,530 a homeowner on a fixed income and you're like I just want to make a few grand while I'm 464 00:36:42,530 --> 00:36:46,330 away and then I'm going to actually live in my house for the rest of the year. 465 00:36:47,410 --> 00:36:51,150 But there are other folks who are using the market to their advantage. 466 00:36:51,350 --> 00:36:55,450 They don't live here full-time, who knows where they do live but they have a property here 467 00:36:55,450 --> 00:36:59,970 that they're making a lot of money off of and it's reducing the availability of housing 468 00:36:59,970 --> 00:37:01,810 supply for folks who want to live here year round. 469 00:37:02,730 --> 00:37:07,810 And so we've got to figure out solutions to that that balance the economic benefit with 470 00:37:07,810 --> 00:37:13,230 the social costs. And so a lot of conversation has to be had. There's no easy solution. 471 00:37:15,110 --> 00:37:20,630 So when we think about our overall housing needs today, if we're going to solve for those 472 00:37:20,630 --> 00:37:26,790 needs, our current affordable housing needs, meaning housing that has to be subsidized in some way 473 00:37:26,790 --> 00:37:32,530 because the cost to create it is greater than what the renters or homeowners can afford. 474 00:37:33,530 --> 00:37:37,190 A little over a thousand units between the city and the township would be needed. 475 00:37:38,470 --> 00:37:41,190 Average price would be about $850 a month. 476 00:37:41,710 --> 00:37:45,090 Some of those units would need to rent for less, some would rent for a little more. 477 00:37:46,830 --> 00:37:53,490 In order to do that, we would need a typical subsidy of between $60,000, $75,000 per rental unit. 478 00:37:53,690 --> 00:37:58,770 Or if it was homeownership, it would probably need to be more, more like $120,000, $120,000, $150,000. 479 00:37:59,930 --> 00:38:03,370 So, this starts to just, like, break this down into easy math. 480 00:38:04,550 --> 00:38:10,170 Very often I'll go to communities where they'll say, gosh, we need a whole lot more housing, 481 00:38:10,490 --> 00:38:13,730 but it has to be affordable. We don't want more housing if it's not affordable. 482 00:38:14,610 --> 00:38:20,150 And I feel for that argument, I want to be on that team and say, we don't want more housing if it's not affordable, 483 00:38:21,330 --> 00:38:24,830 but somebody has to come up with the 60 to 75,000 dollar subsidy. 484 00:38:25,490 --> 00:38:29,970 Right now the federal government has some programs, there's the low income housing tax credit, 485 00:38:30,430 --> 00:38:36,370 there's affordable housing voucher programs, there's HUD financing them to the 221D program. 486 00:38:36,830 --> 00:38:41,950 There are tools out there, but the federal government puts them in a big square box, right? 487 00:38:42,090 --> 00:38:45,470 You have to follow their rules, you have to comply with all of their regulations. 488 00:38:46,310 --> 00:38:52,510 In many instances it works very well, but it's always the same size box that needs to be 489 00:38:52,510 --> 00:38:57,150 fit on different size properties and in different flavored neighborhoods. 490 00:38:58,130 --> 00:39:01,870 And so sometimes that kind of product makes a ton of sense. 491 00:39:02,190 --> 00:39:06,690 We can go get the federal tax credits, we can get the federal loan programs and it works 492 00:39:06,690 --> 00:39:07,270 really well. 493 00:39:07,770 --> 00:39:09,450 Other times it doesn't make as much sense. 494 00:39:09,970 --> 00:39:14,050 And so we need to be able to communicate with constituents who say, hey, we want the housing 495 00:39:14,050 --> 00:39:15,870 but it needs to be more affordable than that. 496 00:39:16,730 --> 00:39:20,030 Somebody has to show up with that subsidy in order to make it more affordable. 497 00:39:20,030 --> 00:39:23,790 We can't just say, hey, developer, will you take a loss on this one? 498 00:39:24,450 --> 00:39:26,310 I don't know any builders or developers. 499 00:39:26,530 --> 00:39:34,950 Frankly, I don't know any business owners are entrepreneurs who will say, sure, I'll build it and lose 30% on the product. 500 00:39:36,650 --> 00:39:44,310 A quick side note here, 92% of the housing stock in the United States is privately owned and privately funded. 501 00:39:45,210 --> 00:39:50,870 I think there's a strong argument to say we need more federal funding for affordable housing. 502 00:39:51,550 --> 00:39:55,130 I would say we also need more flexible federal funding for affordable housing. 503 00:39:55,950 --> 00:40:02,110 But keep in mind that 92% of our housing stock is financed and constructed by the private sector. 504 00:40:02,550 --> 00:40:04,010 It is an entrepreneurial business. 505 00:40:04,010 --> 00:40:09,470 And so again, we're not always going to be able to find somebody who wants to underwrite 506 00:40:09,470 --> 00:40:13,590 the cost to subsidize affordable housing if we're not using one of those state or federal 507 00:40:13,590 --> 00:40:14,030 programs. 508 00:40:15,110 --> 00:40:18,210 That was a long diatribe, thank you for sitting through it. 509 00:40:19,650 --> 00:40:26,250 So if you wanted to use federal financing resources, the tax credit program is the simplest 510 00:40:26,250 --> 00:40:34,890 to use. Often times you typically want 40 to 60 residential units in order to make the tax credit 511 00:40:34,890 --> 00:40:41,950 process worthwhile for the investors who make the tax credit program actually work. So usually five 512 00:40:41,950 --> 00:40:48,090 acres is about the minimum property size, unless we're downtown, unless we can compete for the 513 00:40:48,090 --> 00:40:53,310 really competitive 9% life tech program, then you don't need anywhere near that one city bridge. But 514 00:40:53,310 --> 00:40:55,270 but if we're out of the neighborhood or in the township 515 00:40:55,270 --> 00:40:57,910 using the less competitive program, we need more acreage. 516 00:40:59,450 --> 00:41:00,850 A tenable housing. 517 00:41:01,530 --> 00:41:04,690 Now, a tenable housing has this ever elusive definition 518 00:41:04,690 --> 00:41:07,010 where we love to talk about it as a euphemism, 519 00:41:07,590 --> 00:41:09,050 but we don't clearly define it. 520 00:41:09,670 --> 00:41:13,650 I like to define it as housing that is affordable to households 521 00:41:13,650 --> 00:41:18,230 and be earning between 60% and 120% of the median income. 522 00:41:19,110 --> 00:41:22,190 So think about your middle income resident, 523 00:41:22,190 --> 00:41:27,710 which is typically in Van Buren County, somebody who earns about $55,000, $56,000 a year. 524 00:41:28,970 --> 00:41:33,970 If we take 60% of that, we're probably looking at $35,000 a year if my math is close. 525 00:41:34,610 --> 00:41:40,110 If we take 120% of that, we're probably looking at $68,000 to $70,000 a year. 526 00:41:40,790 --> 00:41:45,590 So if we're going to try to serve households earning between $35,000 and $75,000 a year, 527 00:41:45,850 --> 00:41:48,190 I'm going to say they need a attainable house. 528 00:41:48,190 --> 00:41:51,950 doesn't need to be subsidized and affordable, but it's got to be attainable. 529 00:41:52,530 --> 00:41:56,630 In order to do that, it's still possible to do that with private sector, 530 00:41:56,930 --> 00:42:01,770 entrepreneurial, business oriented, construction companies and developers. 531 00:42:02,310 --> 00:42:05,350 You need today, if we were to solve today, you need about 532 00:42:06,350 --> 00:42:09,010 370 new attainable housing units. 533 00:42:09,590 --> 00:42:14,650 Those would be priced in the $1,000 a month to $1,400 a month price range. 534 00:42:14,650 --> 00:42:24,430 It could go higher, right? We've got some attainable households who can afford up to $1,800 a month, but that feels a little bit out of balance for South Haven in this moment. 535 00:42:25,470 --> 00:42:36,190 What it requires is a little bit more flexible zoning, probably less parking. Keep in mind that parking consumed land is expensive, especially in a community with high demand. 536 00:42:37,570 --> 00:42:42,590 And don't forget, roughly a third of households in the community are single adults, no kids. 537 00:42:43,250 --> 00:42:46,730 So not every apartment unit needs two parking spaces. 538 00:42:47,250 --> 00:42:50,070 A lot of your apartment units will only need one parking space. 539 00:42:50,710 --> 00:42:53,410 Same is true for smaller houses, those little cottages. 540 00:42:53,910 --> 00:42:55,710 Many of them will only need one parking space. 541 00:42:57,190 --> 00:43:00,650 But thinking about infrastructure that accommodates visitor parking, 542 00:43:00,910 --> 00:43:04,550 overflow parking, right? How do we do parking on-street in some instances? 543 00:43:04,870 --> 00:43:08,190 How do we have a little grass lot maybe that is overflow parking? 544 00:43:08,190 --> 00:43:13,470 those things make a ton of sense. But to build a parking space, just an 545 00:43:13,470 --> 00:43:18,250 asphalt parking space is typically about 8 to 10 thousand dollars per space. So 546 00:43:18,250 --> 00:43:23,390 know that for every parking space you require your adding cost. The other 547 00:43:23,390 --> 00:43:28,670 opportunity we talk about this in the plan is an impact investment fund. And we 548 00:43:28,670 --> 00:43:33,450 haven't explored this yet in South Haven, but I think considering who are some of our 549 00:43:33,450 --> 00:43:40,150 top employers do they have a significant housing need? Do they make annual 550 00:43:40,990 --> 00:43:46,150 philanthropic or impact investments? And if all of those things are true, would 551 00:43:46,150 --> 00:43:50,330 they be willing to make an impact investment into a fund? And what that means 552 00:43:50,330 --> 00:43:57,510 is they could invest through a CDFI fiduciary at a low interest return 553 00:43:57,510 --> 00:44:02,490 expectation to allow financing for the kinds of attainable housing we need for 554 00:44:02,490 --> 00:44:08,730 the workforce at a much lower cost of capital. So to break that down even more, if I'm a developer 555 00:44:08,730 --> 00:44:13,770 and I go get a commercial loan today, I'm going to spend probably six and a half, seven percent 556 00:44:13,770 --> 00:44:18,430 on the commercial loan. So at six and a half to seven percent on everything that I borrow 557 00:44:18,430 --> 00:44:23,210 for the entire period that I borrow it, it's going to be tens of thousands, if not hundreds of 558 00:44:23,210 --> 00:44:29,870 thousands of dollars of additional costs to finance. If I have impact investors that say, hey, we'll 559 00:44:29,870 --> 00:44:34,950 participate in this deal with a loan through fiduciary it's going to guarantee it and we'll 560 00:44:34,950 --> 00:44:41,930 come into that loan for an agreed return of 2%. You take the administrative fees in addition 561 00:44:41,930 --> 00:44:48,510 to that now we're talking 2.5 maybe 3% debt. The difference between 6.5% or 7% debt and 3% 562 00:44:48,510 --> 00:44:53,750 debt is significant over a 10 year period of time especially when we're talking about a 10 563 00:44:53,750 --> 00:44:59,970 to $30 million deal, right? Think about $20 million financed at 6% versus financed at 3%. 564 00:45:01,060 --> 00:45:16,500 So, we have opportunities. We want to start talking to some of those larger employers who might want to help solve for this. Now, we talked in the beginning about starter homes and how many starter homes we didn't build and how many we need to build. 565 00:45:18,940 --> 00:45:30,440 At the top, I've underlined and italicized at least. So, given today's data and the cost to build a starter home in today's market, knowing that we probably can't 566 00:45:30,440 --> 00:45:34,060 feasibly build a starter home for less than $225,000, 567 00:45:34,260 --> 00:45:35,800 just because of the cost of construction. 568 00:45:37,220 --> 00:45:40,900 Given these numbers, our data says you probably need 569 00:45:40,900 --> 00:45:43,340 at least 83 starter homes in order to satisfy 570 00:45:43,340 --> 00:45:44,200 current market demand. 571 00:45:45,080 --> 00:45:47,360 I think it's probably a lot higher, right? 572 00:45:47,500 --> 00:45:49,680 I think what you're probably experiencing right now 573 00:45:49,680 --> 00:45:52,640 is a lot of your workforce can't currently afford 574 00:45:52,640 --> 00:45:54,520 to live in the South Haven community, 575 00:45:54,860 --> 00:45:56,000 and so they're driving in. 576 00:45:57,060 --> 00:45:59,120 And so if we spent a lot of time looking at 577 00:45:59,120 --> 00:46:04,620 the existing workforce and where they're commuting from, this member could probably triple 578 00:46:04,620 --> 00:46:09,140 or quadruple pretty easily, but it wasn't readily available in a census date. 579 00:46:10,580 --> 00:46:17,480 So the idea here is, how do we allow for more compact homes, attached homes in some instances, 580 00:46:17,700 --> 00:46:22,480 as I mentioned, condominiums, townhouses, stack flats, all of the things, right? 581 00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:27,010 It's got to be context sensitive, it's got to have access to infrastructure and be in the 582 00:46:27,010 --> 00:46:31,270 places, honestly, it doesn't ever need to be super tall, right? 583 00:46:31,470 --> 00:46:34,890 Maybe downtown, supporting taller buildings is a great idea. 584 00:46:35,470 --> 00:46:37,730 But every place else, two or three story buildings 585 00:46:37,730 --> 00:46:38,950 are as tall as you need to go. 586 00:46:39,470 --> 00:46:42,130 They can be very much in character with your existing neighborhoods. 587 00:46:42,450 --> 00:46:44,030 And I'll show you some examples of how that can. 588 00:46:45,950 --> 00:46:49,290 So in the future, I just shared with you 589 00:46:49,290 --> 00:46:50,630 what are your current housing needs. 590 00:46:51,150 --> 00:46:53,510 In the future, you're going to continue 591 00:46:53,510 --> 00:46:55,350 to have growth in the baby boomers sector. 592 00:46:56,010 --> 00:46:58,370 You're also going to find all those baby boomers 593 00:46:58,370 --> 00:47:00,230 that are here today, love it, and they want to stay, 594 00:47:00,750 --> 00:47:02,830 and they're going to become others, right? 595 00:47:03,010 --> 00:47:04,270 Over the next 10 or 15 years, 596 00:47:04,270 --> 00:47:05,850 we're going to be needing to think about 597 00:47:05,850 --> 00:47:07,350 senior housing opportunities. 598 00:47:08,310 --> 00:47:11,750 And I'll bet you, if my parents and my grandparents 599 00:47:11,750 --> 00:47:13,550 are any indicator, they're not going 600 00:47:13,550 --> 00:47:15,530 to want the same assisted living options 601 00:47:16,150 --> 00:47:18,170 that my grandparents took advantage of 602 00:47:18,170 --> 00:47:19,790 and that their parents took advantage of. 603 00:47:20,430 --> 00:47:22,230 They're going to want a more independent lifestyle. 604 00:47:22,890 --> 00:47:24,090 They're going to want more privacy. 605 00:47:24,710 --> 00:47:26,130 They're going to want more activity. 606 00:47:26,130 --> 00:47:30,730 So thinking through senior housing options that are more ingrained in the community, 607 00:47:31,190 --> 00:47:35,510 rather than isolated out off the highway, thinking about senior housing opportunities 608 00:47:35,510 --> 00:47:40,690 where they can be ingrained in the downtown or ingrained in neighborhoods with access to nature, 609 00:47:41,270 --> 00:47:44,270 those are going to be really important elements for senior housing going forward. 610 00:47:45,610 --> 00:47:48,290 But then we've also got this critical element of our workforce. 611 00:47:48,590 --> 00:47:53,070 Our teachers, our firefighters, our nurses, all of those folks who are earning 612 00:47:53,070 --> 00:47:59,530 great middle class wages but can't afford to stay in the community right now in order to grow the 613 00:47:59,530 --> 00:48:04,010 economy and even keep the economy stable making sure that we've got housing options for those folks 614 00:48:04,010 --> 00:48:11,690 as well. So our housing plan elements, the three S's and this is borrowed from an author Shane Phillips 615 00:48:11,690 --> 00:48:17,490 who wrote a book called The Affordable City. There's like 122 proposed strategies that you can mix 616 00:48:17,490 --> 00:48:23,990 and match, always recommended this book. Stability, supply, and subsidies. We've got to recognize 617 00:48:23,990 --> 00:48:30,130 on the front end that our housing commendium right now is based on scarcity. And while we have 618 00:48:30,130 --> 00:48:33,710 scarcity, we've got to be thinking about how do we keep those households who are vulnerable, 619 00:48:34,230 --> 00:48:40,590 stable. And so that's things like your nonprofits, the Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity, 620 00:48:40,730 --> 00:48:45,430 Goodwill Industries, all of those organizations help to keep residents stable. We've got to continue 621 00:48:45,430 --> 00:48:50,250 to make philanthropic investments there so that we don't lose households because they're 622 00:48:50,250 --> 00:48:56,750 being priced out. But we simultaneously have to build supply. You're clearly short on 623 00:48:56,750 --> 00:49:02,550 supply today by at least a thousand units probably more since we're not factoring in the workforce 624 00:49:02,550 --> 00:49:08,270 that doesn't live here. And in some instances we've got to explore how to use those subsidies 625 00:49:08,270 --> 00:49:13,970 to your advantage. It's got to, again, be context appropriate. You've got to think about which 626 00:49:13,970 --> 00:49:15,550 which subsidies work in which environments, 627 00:49:15,850 --> 00:49:17,770 and how are we optimizing those subsidies 628 00:49:17,770 --> 00:49:20,450 to satisfy the desires and the needs of the community? 629 00:49:21,330 --> 00:49:22,930 But those three things together 630 00:49:23,310 --> 00:49:25,630 make up an equitable housing environment. 631 00:49:27,130 --> 00:49:29,590 So as we talk about things that you have local control 632 00:49:29,590 --> 00:49:33,230 over zoning and economic development inside of policies, 633 00:49:33,430 --> 00:49:35,510 these are the things that should be relatively easy 634 00:49:35,510 --> 00:49:36,830 to do in a short period of time. 635 00:49:37,450 --> 00:49:41,010 Thinking about narrower minimum lot with area standards. 636 00:49:41,890 --> 00:49:46,090 There's also a lot of financial importance to a lot withs. 637 00:49:46,810 --> 00:49:49,950 So especially in the neighborhood that are served by public infrastructure, 638 00:49:49,990 --> 00:49:56,310 I wanted to think about when the local municipality gets pricing to install new infrastructure. 639 00:49:57,270 --> 00:49:59,630 They get pricing based on the linear foot. 640 00:50:00,530 --> 00:50:03,750 So for every linear foot of pipe that goes in the ground, 641 00:50:03,750 --> 00:50:08,450 and every linear foot of asphalt that gets laid, the cost goes up. 642 00:50:08,450 --> 00:50:12,930 right? That's how the contractors are going to build it. And so for every linear 643 00:50:12,930 --> 00:50:17,630 foot that you require in lot with, the cost of your infrastructure goes up. 644 00:50:19,030 --> 00:50:23,950 Depending on who's financing the infrastructure, that might add a lot of 645 00:50:23,950 --> 00:50:28,730 costs to the homeowner, or it might add a lot of cost to the municipality when it 646 00:50:28,730 --> 00:50:32,810 comes time to replace that infrastructure. When you've got to repave the road, or 647 00:50:32,810 --> 00:50:36,630 when you've got to rip out all of that old sewer because it's now 50 or 80 years old, 648 00:50:37,510 --> 00:50:45,690 Those minimum lockwood standards essentially dictate how much you've got to spend on a per-home basis to replace that infrastructure. 649 00:50:46,410 --> 00:50:54,350 So, as a thought experiment, think about it, if we've got 100 feet of infrastructure, and you say we've got a 70 foot minimum lockwood, 650 00:50:54,930 --> 00:50:59,490 well, we're going to get 1.3 homes per 100 feet of infrastructure. 651 00:51:00,170 --> 00:51:08,810 But if instead, and so if that home on one 70-foot lot with, if that home is valued at $350,000, 652 00:51:09,090 --> 00:51:16,330 we need enough tax increment from that home to pay for all 70 feet of infrastructure that they're using. 653 00:51:17,170 --> 00:51:25,030 Whereas if we have homes that have a 40-foot lot with requirement, suddenly we can get 2.2 homes per 100 feet. 654 00:51:25,030 --> 00:51:31,370 And now, each of those homes, which are probably still valued close to $300,000, they're going 655 00:51:31,370 --> 00:51:38,090 to net more tax revenue than your 70-foot lock width on a linear-foot basis, right? 656 00:51:38,470 --> 00:51:42,170 So that was a super-long way of me trying to explain that when you have narrower lock 657 00:51:42,170 --> 00:51:44,030 widths, it's actually easier to pay for your infrastructure. 658 00:51:45,950 --> 00:51:49,590 It gets even better when we attach things, right, when we do townhouses. 659 00:51:49,590 --> 00:51:56,190 Now, when we do townhouses or duplexes or fourplexes, design standards are important. 660 00:51:57,870 --> 00:52:05,210 Looking at any duplex from the early 1970s through the mid-1980s, we built a lot of 661 00:52:05,210 --> 00:52:06,490 bad duplexes. 662 00:52:06,990 --> 00:52:11,130 You can go all over Michigan on a bad duplex hunt and find a ton of them. 663 00:52:11,930 --> 00:52:17,610 But it wasn't because it's a bad product type, it wasn't because those aren't good opportunities 664 00:52:17,610 --> 00:52:23,790 for housing. It was because we were sort of in this area where design wasn't a huge 665 00:52:23,790 --> 00:52:29,750 stop consideration. And so if we make design a big part of the thought consideration and 666 00:52:29,750 --> 00:52:35,570 we don't, we don't make design overly burdensome, but we do think about simple, proud structures 667 00:52:35,570 --> 00:52:40,970 with good façades, they're compatible with neighborhood character. We can build a lot 668 00:52:40,970 --> 00:52:45,410 of good housing products that is affordable. And we've got to think about usable community 669 00:52:45,410 --> 00:52:50,070 degree space. Not everybody needs a big backyard, a lot of us like big 670 00:52:50,070 --> 00:52:54,690 backyards, but if we don't have a big backyard, where is the community 671 00:52:54,690 --> 00:53:00,990 backyard? Also, keep in mind, not every development has to have their own 672 00:53:00,990 --> 00:53:05,950 community backyard. Sometimes we can have a park that's down the street or around 673 00:53:05,950 --> 00:53:09,710 the corner that can serve as the green space for the development. And so 674 00:53:09,710 --> 00:53:13,770 sometimes we'll have lots that are going to develop a majority of the lot 675 00:53:13,770 --> 00:53:15,490 between the housing and the parking. 676 00:53:16,230 --> 00:53:18,970 As long as there is good adequate green space nearby, 677 00:53:19,350 --> 00:53:20,110 that can be okay. 678 00:53:20,810 --> 00:53:22,230 In other instances you're gonna say, 679 00:53:22,370 --> 00:53:23,870 actually no, there's not a good 680 00:53:23,870 --> 00:53:25,130 adequate green space nearby. 681 00:53:25,470 --> 00:53:27,950 You've got to integrate usable green space into the development. 682 00:53:28,450 --> 00:53:29,610 It's context sensitive. 683 00:53:31,010 --> 00:53:33,510 So this is one of my favorite examples to use. 684 00:53:33,950 --> 00:53:36,590 I think it's a great building technology. 685 00:53:37,250 --> 00:53:38,350 This is actually a fourplex. 686 00:53:38,850 --> 00:53:40,210 This has four apartments in it. 687 00:53:41,070 --> 00:53:44,630 This is about a 950 square foot one bedroom apartment. 688 00:53:45,150 --> 00:53:49,490 On the other side, it's about a 980 square foot two bedroom apartment, 689 00:53:49,790 --> 00:53:52,070 and then you get a mirror image upstairs. 690 00:53:53,690 --> 00:53:56,710 From the street, you would never know, right? 691 00:53:56,890 --> 00:54:00,030 From the street, this blends in beautifully in most neighborhoods. 692 00:54:00,370 --> 00:54:03,570 I would gladly have this across the street for me and look at it every day. 693 00:54:05,170 --> 00:54:09,910 This kind of housing product, this can cost a little bit more than 694 00:54:09,910 --> 00:54:13,910 a traditional single-family house, the most expensive things in a house are 695 00:54:13,910 --> 00:54:17,170 kitchens and bathrooms. So we're going to have more kitchens and bathrooms in 696 00:54:17,170 --> 00:54:20,470 this than we would have in a traditional single-family house. But otherwise 697 00:54:20,470 --> 00:54:27,830 the cost is relatively on par. So if we could build that for, let's say, $455,000. 698 00:54:28,450 --> 00:54:33,130 But we can get four households living there, four smaller households mind you 699 00:54:33,130 --> 00:54:37,130 because most of our households are single adults or two adults with no kids. 700 00:54:39,370 --> 00:54:39,890 You 701 00:54:39,890 --> 00:54:41,790 and then a couple of singles and couples. 702 00:54:42,810 --> 00:54:45,730 This consumes a lot less space, a lot less infrastructure. 703 00:54:45,730 --> 00:54:46,710 It's more affordable. 704 00:54:47,170 --> 00:54:48,630 There are all kinds of benefits 705 00:54:48,630 --> 00:54:50,470 to allowing this kind of housing technology. 706 00:54:51,410 --> 00:54:53,730 The more we can make it easy to build this, 707 00:54:53,870 --> 00:54:54,170 the better. 708 00:54:54,910 --> 00:54:57,170 Again, good quality design standards. 709 00:54:57,870 --> 00:54:59,930 Some communities that we're talking to now 710 00:54:59,930 --> 00:55:01,890 in the Michigan Municipalities promoting this 711 00:55:01,890 --> 00:55:04,570 are adopting pattern books, where they say, 712 00:55:04,790 --> 00:55:06,350 hey, if you built this exact thing, 713 00:55:06,550 --> 00:55:07,290 we'll permanent tomorrow. 714 00:55:07,770 --> 00:55:13,650 Right? They essentially will hand you this plan. They'll say, build this, we like it. You can build it tomorrow. 715 00:55:13,790 --> 00:55:18,250 You don't have to go through a special land use process. You don't have to go through six months of the administrative zoning review. 716 00:55:18,770 --> 00:55:20,670 We've already decided that we like it. You can build it. 717 00:55:21,410 --> 00:55:22,950 During more of that is valuable. 718 00:55:23,990 --> 00:55:25,290 These are other examples. 719 00:55:26,210 --> 00:55:36,410 The note being that roughly half of the housing market today will pay more for less square footage if it's in a walkable amenity rich environment. 720 00:55:37,030 --> 00:55:42,770 We have a lot of people that are really hungry for small town charm, and it just so happens 721 00:55:42,770 --> 00:55:44,630 that Saturday that's full of small town charm. 722 00:55:45,570 --> 00:55:49,390 And so thinking about how do we create more neighborhoods that are walkable, a metady 723 00:55:49,390 --> 00:55:56,170 rich, that are compact, that allow people to be closer together, and closer to the things 724 00:55:56,170 --> 00:56:00,310 that they really value, which are probably going to be things like downtown, the schools, 725 00:56:00,550 --> 00:56:06,090 the libraries, the lakeshore, the more opportunities to be close to those things we can build into 726 00:56:06,090 --> 00:56:10,730 the neighborhoods that are. Smaller cottages, these are sometimes called cottage 727 00:56:10,730 --> 00:56:16,470 cords or pocket neighborhoods. These fit great in rural environments. There's 728 00:56:16,470 --> 00:56:20,970 one of these in the Sleeping Bear Dunes Lakeshore area in the village of 729 00:56:20,970 --> 00:56:26,670 Empire that is on a shared community septic system that actually sits underneath 730 00:56:26,670 --> 00:56:30,710 the green space, right? So instead of everybody having their own drainfield, they 731 00:56:30,710 --> 00:56:35,510 have one larger drainfield. But these are smaller cottages, they're not your typical 732 00:56:35,510 --> 00:56:43,990 1500 to 2500 square foot house, they're closer to that 850 to maybe 1400 square feet, meaning they're more efficient. 733 00:56:44,470 --> 00:56:51,310 There's less land costs, shared community green space, but you can see here's the thing that's really important that sometimes gets overlooked. 734 00:56:52,330 --> 00:57:04,290 Everybody here has this beautiful little sitting porch, which allows them to have kind of this permeable space that is semi-public, semi-private in between their home and that green space. 735 00:57:04,730 --> 00:57:10,330 So, it allows you to kind of look out and watch the grandkids or the kids who might be playing 736 00:57:10,330 --> 00:57:15,130 in the green space to see your neighbor, but also to be back a little bit from that shared 737 00:57:15,130 --> 00:57:15,670 green space. 738 00:57:15,970 --> 00:57:19,530 So, when you want to be seen and kind of out in the open, you're out in your yard or you're 739 00:57:19,530 --> 00:57:23,330 out in the green space, what you just want to enjoy your neighbor and having that covered, 740 00:57:23,830 --> 00:57:27,790 semi enclosed porch is a really important element to be weaving into these kinds. 741 00:57:29,750 --> 00:57:31,370 The other one is accessory dwelling units. 742 00:57:31,370 --> 00:57:37,470 These are really important opportunities to be thinking about for homeowners that are 743 00:57:37,470 --> 00:57:41,930 trying to take advantage of opportunities to generate a little bit of passive rental 744 00:57:41,930 --> 00:57:42,490 income. 745 00:57:43,190 --> 00:57:47,910 There are some households that can just barely afford to live in the community but can 746 00:57:47,910 --> 00:57:54,690 almost do it and if we give them the opportunity for that passive rental income they can actually 747 00:57:54,690 --> 00:57:56,070 afford to live in the community. 748 00:57:56,070 --> 00:58:02,190 And then, when we think about all of the young teachers and firefighters and police officers 749 00:58:02,190 --> 00:58:07,830 and nurses who were trying to attract into the community and who just need a simple one 750 00:58:07,830 --> 00:58:11,950 bedroom apartment, either above the garage or next to the garage, and they're not going 751 00:58:11,950 --> 00:58:16,370 to live there for 25 years, but they might live there for two years while they get a foothold 752 00:58:16,370 --> 00:58:19,550 while they establish their career, while they think about what's their next move. 753 00:58:20,150 --> 00:58:24,750 They may get married in the meantime and move into a single-family house or an apartment down 754 00:58:24,750 --> 00:58:30,910 industry, but these are great options for young adults to be able to move into that can cost 755 00:58:30,910 --> 00:58:32,590 a well under a thousand dollars a month. 756 00:58:34,610 --> 00:58:38,730 And then again, multi-family can be great. Lots 757 00:58:38,730 --> 00:58:43,970 of valuable attributes to multi-family. This is a great design. It's a company called 758 00:58:43,970 --> 00:58:50,570 Humphries and Partners that does a lot of these in the Texas market around Austin and Dallas. 759 00:58:51,210 --> 00:58:55,830 They're doing more and more nationally. We're seeing good products like this now creeping 760 00:58:55,830 --> 00:59:02,430 up into the Midwest. And so thinking about when we're allowing for multi-family, what are 761 00:59:02,430 --> 00:59:06,110 our expectations? How does it relate to the public realm? How does it relate to the street? 762 00:59:06,590 --> 00:59:11,810 How does it integrate into the fabric in the neighborhood? And some instances this isn't as important 763 00:59:11,810 --> 00:59:16,950 because you don't have a built up neighborhood that's already close by. And so the multi-family 764 00:59:16,950 --> 00:59:21,570 development can kind of set the new pattern. But in instances where you already have kind of 765 00:59:21,570 --> 00:59:25,730 residential character, thinking about what are our design standards and how do we expect 766 00:59:25,730 --> 00:59:29,950 this development to integrate into the design of the community. That can be an important 767 00:59:29,950 --> 00:59:30,630 thing to think about. 768 00:59:32,330 --> 00:59:32,810 Can 769 00:59:38,280 --> 00:59:39,500 you advance this? Almost 770 00:59:46,350 --> 00:59:50,010 wrapped up here. This is a case study. This is a development 771 00:59:50,010 --> 00:59:56,370 project that we've completed in the city of Grand Haven. A number of important things, I 772 00:59:56,370 --> 00:59:58,030 I don't want to start with our price point. 773 00:59:58,750 --> 00:59:59,970 So, this was... 774 01:00:00,000 --> 01:00:29,980 This was built and we started working on it in 2019 just before the pandemic, so I couldn't repeat those prices today. But we could get not too far from that. So if you're in all the way back, these are single family detached homes that we priced starting in $139,000 up to $290,000. This was an extraordinary partnership between the City of Grand Haven, Ottawa County, Land Bank Authority, the Grand Haven Brownfield Authority, a nonprofit developer called Michigan. 775 01:00:29,980 --> 01:00:35,880 community capital in housing next. And essentially what we did, the city said hey we've got six acres, 776 01:00:36,100 --> 01:00:40,340 it's over near the airport, it's been zoned industrial for a long time but there's residential 777 01:00:40,340 --> 01:00:45,000 on one side, there's a blueberry field on the other side. We think maybe housing can go there? 778 01:00:45,900 --> 01:00:52,120 And we said yes, housing can go there. And so we called up a friend at Michigan Community Capital, 779 01:00:52,340 --> 01:00:57,000 which is a nonprofit developer based out of Lansing, we said hey help us design a neighborhood. 780 01:00:57,560 --> 01:00:59,560 And we looked at a number of configurations. 781 01:00:59,920 --> 01:01:02,140 I was heavily advocating, hey, let's do lots of different 782 01:01:02,140 --> 01:01:02,660 building types. 783 01:01:02,860 --> 01:01:04,880 Let's do little cottages and most two townhouses. 784 01:01:05,480 --> 01:01:07,140 And they said, we love your thinking, 785 01:01:07,500 --> 01:01:09,340 but we just want to prove that we can do this 786 01:01:09,340 --> 01:01:10,580 because we've never done it before. 787 01:01:11,120 --> 01:01:12,340 So they said, let's start simple. 788 01:01:12,500 --> 01:01:15,200 We're just going to do basic single family homes. 789 01:01:15,840 --> 01:01:19,220 The smallest home in this neighborhood is 900 meters square feet. 790 01:01:19,800 --> 01:01:22,580 The largest home is 1,150 square feet. 791 01:01:23,640 --> 01:01:25,760 So the small one is too bad to run back. 792 01:01:25,760 --> 01:01:32,560 the largest is three beds to that. 30 single-family homes in total and what we did 793 01:01:32,560 --> 01:01:36,700 this was at the behest of the city of Grand Haven because they essentially gave 794 01:01:36,700 --> 01:01:41,060 the land away. The land was probably worth half a million dollars and they 795 01:01:41,060 --> 01:01:46,380 sold it to the development entity for 30,000. Because they did that they said hey we 796 01:01:46,380 --> 01:01:50,460 want this to be affordable for a long time, right? It's great to build it for 797 01:01:50,460 --> 01:01:55,600 $139,000 but if the first home owner lives there for a year and then puts it on the 798 01:01:55,600 --> 01:02:01,000 market for 250, we kind of lost the value of all of our property and didn't get a 799 01:02:01,000 --> 01:02:06,420 affordability as a result. So we created a community land trust. We spent about 800 01:02:06,420 --> 01:02:10,380 six months doing all the research that we could to understand how 801 01:02:10,380 --> 01:02:13,840 community land trust should be formed, what they should look like, create some great 802 01:02:13,840 --> 01:02:18,180 volunteer help from a couple of retired interns in town. The community land 803 01:02:18,180 --> 01:02:23,560 trust owns the underlying land. And essentially what they do is they have a long 804 01:02:23,560 --> 01:02:26,140 long-term lease agreement with each individual homeowner. 805 01:02:26,600 --> 01:02:30,200 The homeowner pays a dollar for their lease to have the home on the land. 806 01:02:30,860 --> 01:02:33,000 They have a traditional mortgage for the house. 807 01:02:33,560 --> 01:02:34,940 Nothing changes about the house. 808 01:02:35,060 --> 01:02:36,460 They just don't own the underlying land. 809 01:02:37,220 --> 01:02:41,860 But when the homeowner goes to sell the house, essentially what happens is the land trust 810 01:02:41,860 --> 01:02:45,740 buys the house, and then they sell the house to the next buyer. 811 01:02:46,580 --> 01:02:51,760 And what that does is it allows the subsidy that was put into the land to begin with to remain 812 01:02:51,760 --> 01:02:52,580 in the land. 813 01:02:52,580 --> 01:02:58,620 So, for as long as these homes exist, and for as long as the community land trust exists, 814 01:02:59,340 --> 01:03:04,160 that land subsidy will continue to run with the project, and will continue to subsidize 815 01:03:04,160 --> 01:03:06,020 those homes long into the future. 816 01:03:06,880 --> 01:03:11,760 But the benefit is, the homeowner gets to take the equity that they build in the home 817 01:03:12,220 --> 01:03:13,240 when they sell the house. 818 01:03:13,780 --> 01:03:20,360 So if they buy it for $139, and then it sells for $189, they still earn some equity. 819 01:03:21,160 --> 01:03:26,540 But there is no land value basis in that, so likely, and I'll tell you, in Grant Haven 820 01:03:26,540 --> 01:03:31,900 right now, the lowest home value that I have seen available on the market is $480,000, 821 01:03:31,900 --> 01:03:32,740 maybe $5,000. 822 01:03:33,360 --> 01:03:35,560 And that's where an older house that means a lot of work. 823 01:03:36,160 --> 01:03:42,200 So these folks, if it were a free market enterprise, they could probably turn around and flip these 824 01:03:42,200 --> 01:03:43,560 for $400,000 more. 825 01:03:44,180 --> 01:03:48,160 But the land trust ensures that they're going to remain relatively close to what they were 826 01:03:48,160 --> 01:03:49,000 originally sold for. 827 01:03:49,000 --> 01:03:52,700 while still allowing for some of that equity appreciation to go with them. 828 01:03:54,620 --> 01:03:58,360 All right, so now we're talking tools. What can we actually do about this? 829 01:03:59,020 --> 01:04:02,320 This is the list of tools that you have in your toolbox at the local level. 830 01:04:02,860 --> 01:04:04,400 We've got tax increment financing, 831 01:04:04,640 --> 01:04:08,340 labor and enterprise-owned residential facilities exemptions. That's a new one. 832 01:04:08,460 --> 01:04:10,520 We just created that with the legislature last year. 833 01:04:11,220 --> 01:04:14,400 You can use your publicly owned land. You can create land trusts 834 01:04:14,400 --> 01:04:16,180 or just impose D restrictions. 835 01:04:16,820 --> 01:04:19,420 And you can use those state and federal financial programs. 836 01:04:20,380 --> 01:04:24,300 I'm going through these quickly because they each could take an hour to explain if we 837 01:04:24,300 --> 01:04:25,820 really wanted to get into the weeds. 838 01:04:26,600 --> 01:04:30,820 So we'll definitely have follow-up for things that are interesting to all of you if you 839 01:04:30,820 --> 01:04:33,340 want to get more into the weeds, I'm more than happy to come back. 840 01:04:35,080 --> 01:04:37,600 So how do we actually make the math work? 841 01:04:37,800 --> 01:04:42,760 And I say for the middle class, because that's where the market still is possible, right? 842 01:04:43,300 --> 01:04:47,200 Making the math work for our low and moderate income households, as I mentioned, requires 843 01:04:47,200 --> 01:04:52,920 We just have to accept, we're not going to go to affordability for low income households without deep subsidies. 844 01:04:53,400 --> 01:04:59,840 And so, where that makes sense for all of you, we're willing to run the distance to ensure that those subsidies are available. 845 01:05:00,460 --> 01:05:08,000 But just getting the market to work for the middle class means we've got to recognize that housing scarcity is what's driving housing prices up. 846 01:05:08,580 --> 01:05:12,800 And so we've got to find more ways to get more supply into the marketplace. 847 01:05:12,800 --> 01:05:16,920 and use some of your tools, tax payment financing to subsidize the 848 01:05:16,920 --> 01:05:21,700 infrastructure costs is a great way. And those time-limited D 849 01:05:21,700 --> 01:05:25,820 restrictions are completely land trusts to ensure that when you are 850 01:05:25,820 --> 01:05:30,940 allowing public dollars to go into a deal, you're getting as much value out of that 851 01:05:30,940 --> 01:05:35,940 for as long as possible while not upsetting the apple car, right? It's got to make sense 852 01:05:35,940 --> 01:05:40,420 for the development entity to actually do the project, but you can also have clear 853 01:05:40,420 --> 01:05:44,260 expectations about how long do we want this to be affordable if we're going to put a bunch of taxing 854 01:05:44,260 --> 01:05:44,660 in the inventory. 855 01:05:47,040 --> 01:05:53,040 So what I'm recommending going forward is to first now that we kind of understand 856 01:05:53,040 --> 01:05:56,820 the data. We know we need to build at least a thousand more units between the township and the 857 01:05:56,820 --> 01:06:03,220 city to kind of catch up with where demand and supply are right now. Let's get clear on understanding 858 01:06:03,220 --> 01:06:08,300 the tools that are available, both in terms of zoning and economic development reform as well as the 859 01:06:08,300 --> 01:06:09,860 of the subsidies and the other programs 860 01:06:09,860 --> 01:06:11,240 that are available to offset costs. 861 01:06:12,640 --> 01:06:15,020 Then we'll define which ones are most appropriate. 862 01:06:15,600 --> 01:06:17,440 The township might want to use different tools 863 01:06:17,440 --> 01:06:19,480 than the city, and that's going to be totally okay, 864 01:06:19,600 --> 01:06:20,860 because you have different contexts. 865 01:06:21,740 --> 01:06:24,000 And then we want to craft local policies 866 01:06:24,000 --> 01:06:25,740 to set guard rules, right? 867 01:06:25,920 --> 01:06:27,640 Because each of you as decision makers 868 01:06:28,160 --> 01:06:29,480 are going to say, hey, you know, 869 01:06:29,540 --> 01:06:30,700 we don't want this to get out of control. 870 01:06:30,860 --> 01:06:32,500 We can't give away all of our tax economy. 871 01:06:33,020 --> 01:06:35,040 We can't obey everybody's taxes all the time. 872 01:06:35,540 --> 01:06:39,740 We can't subsidize all of the housing and so we want to set clear targets. 873 01:06:40,140 --> 01:06:43,080 We want to say here's what we're willing to do for what? 874 01:06:43,300 --> 01:06:47,640 What is the public benefit that we're expecting to get out of the tools that we're willing to use? 875 01:06:48,360 --> 01:06:55,160 And put that in a policy so that even after you retire from your positions and you allow the next 876 01:06:56,480 --> 01:07:02,720 to take over. You have left a legacy not only of the ability to use the tools, but some 877 01:07:02,720 --> 01:07:04,420 guidance as to how they should be used. 878 01:07:06,600 --> 01:07:10,960 Lastly, this is a plug. I hope to draft a statewide 879 01:07:10,960 --> 01:07:16,060 zoning reform toolkit. There are 15 tools in the toolkit we did with the Michigan Association 880 01:07:16,060 --> 01:07:20,820 of Planning. These are all of the relatively simple things that you can do with your zoning 881 01:07:20,820 --> 01:07:25,520 code. And it probably doesn't make sense for any community to implement all 15 of these, 882 01:07:26,060 --> 01:07:30,820 but picking out five or six to do in specific neighborhoods where you feel like, yeah, 883 01:07:30,980 --> 01:07:34,940 we can reduce minimum lot sizes here, or we can allow two family by right, which by the 884 01:07:34,940 --> 01:07:40,320 way, I love that the Township Relay does that. I think that's great. It's a relatively simple 885 01:07:40,320 --> 01:07:45,760 guidebook to the extent that you want someone to help walk you through it. We've got a team 886 01:07:45,760 --> 01:07:49,440 who can come down and really talk through, okay, how do we actually implement this in 887 01:07:49,440 --> 01:07:56,000 York code here for this location. But beyond that, I would say I think we're ready for 888 01:07:56,000 --> 01:07:59,760 comment cards. If you haven't already started to fill out comment cards, I would do that. 889 01:08:00,460 --> 01:08:08,100 And then Kate, do you want to dismiss for a short bathroom break? Okay, so I think what 890 01:08:08,100 --> 01:08:13,780 we're going to do is five minutes if you need to get up and stretch or something else 891 01:08:13,780 --> 01:08:16,060 write down your questions or comments, 892 01:08:16,600 --> 01:08:18,920 and then a team of us will try to respond 893 01:08:19,420 --> 01:08:20,620 to any questions you may have. 894 01:08:41,190 --> 01:08:44,500 Nate, I'm going to also ask, 895 01:08:52,100 --> 01:08:53,200 I'd like to invite you to join me, sir. 896 01:08:53,720 --> 01:08:56,600 If you can come right up to this microphone here, 897 01:08:56,880 --> 01:08:59,160 we'll take your comment and it'll be recorded 898 01:08:59,160 --> 01:09:02,540 so we'll get you to comment on it on your team. 899 01:09:10,970 --> 01:09:11,810 Sorry, please, if I could. 900 01:09:12,130 --> 01:09:13,650 This microphone is directional, 901 01:09:13,850 --> 01:09:16,010 so if you can point it towards you, 902 01:09:16,350 --> 01:09:17,390 it will pick you up much better. 903 01:09:18,470 --> 01:09:19,650 This might be better. 904 01:09:23,840 --> 01:09:29,320 At least the VAC 879 Monroe Boulevard, I have two questions for you. 905 01:09:30,060 --> 01:09:39,280 One question is, you're saying there's a lot of one in two household families, 906 01:09:39,940 --> 01:09:43,560 and your name duplexes with four apartments, things like that. 907 01:09:43,560 --> 01:09:50,560 Is there any, I guess, what I'm asking is people limit, you know, with the Habitat funds since they were 908 01:09:51,600 --> 01:09:54,460 121 bedrooms, but the funding they couldn't have kids. 909 01:09:55,100 --> 01:09:59,060 So if they lived there and they had a kid, there was no place for them to move. 910 01:09:59,820 --> 01:10:04,100 So my question is, you know, I like the pictures of the 4D flexes and things like that. 911 01:10:04,560 --> 01:10:10,340 Is there any limit, you know, the one person where they get married or they have a kid, do they have to move? 912 01:10:10,340 --> 01:10:11,300 Great 913 01:10:14,380 --> 01:10:20,520 question. So there are code requirements and there are funding requirements and sometimes 914 01:10:20,520 --> 01:10:26,680 they overlap and sometimes they're different. So when the Habitat House national Habitat 915 01:10:26,680 --> 01:10:32,420 sets some specific standards that your local Habitat affiliates have to follow, related 916 01:10:32,420 --> 01:10:38,380 to ADA accessibility and occupants per unit and per structure. And part of the reason for 917 01:10:38,380 --> 01:10:41,660 that is they want to maintain a really solid reputation in their communities. 918 01:10:41,660 --> 01:10:48,220 So, at the local level, if you were to build a couple of one-bedroom units that were occupied 919 01:10:48,220 --> 01:10:54,000 by a single adult, who then became a single adult with child, there is no requirement 920 01:10:54,000 --> 01:10:57,500 that would say, well, now she's got to move out because she's got a child. 921 01:10:57,800 --> 01:11:03,340 The building code, the zoning code, doesn't regulate number of occupants per bedroom. 922 01:11:04,920 --> 01:11:11,560 However, most people would ultimately say, I'd really like my kid to have their own bedroom 923 01:11:11,560 --> 01:11:15,460 right, to have a nursery or something like that eventually, right? 924 01:11:16,820 --> 01:11:23,140 So you want to have, and this is the beauty of allowing for different housing types in the same neighborhood, 925 01:11:24,060 --> 01:11:29,620 is ideally, what we would do is have some duplexes, some single family homes, 926 01:11:30,140 --> 01:11:35,000 and maybe one or two smaller multi-unit buildings, all in the same neighborhood. 927 01:11:35,420 --> 01:11:38,620 So that if a young person does either get married or has a kid, 928 01:11:38,620 --> 01:11:39,660 and they say, you know what? 929 01:11:39,740 --> 01:11:41,800 I think I'm growing out of my one bedroom apartment. 930 01:11:42,340 --> 01:11:43,760 They don't have to move across town 931 01:11:44,320 --> 01:11:45,480 away from all of the neighbors 932 01:11:45,480 --> 01:11:47,540 and the community that we have encouraged them 933 01:11:47,540 --> 01:11:49,320 to create in the neighborhood that they've been. 934 01:11:50,180 --> 01:11:52,880 They can move right down the street into a townhouse 935 01:11:52,880 --> 01:11:55,940 or into a slightly larger two bedroom apartment in it. 936 01:11:56,300 --> 01:11:57,880 Or maybe even into the same building. 937 01:11:58,660 --> 01:12:00,540 So having that diversity of housing choices 938 01:12:00,540 --> 01:12:02,620 good for individual choice, 939 01:12:03,180 --> 01:12:05,480 but it's not mandated by the building code 940 01:12:05,480 --> 01:12:06,400 or by the zoning code. 941 01:12:07,940 --> 01:12:11,500 But then those other options is they have kids, they have kids. 942 01:12:13,230 --> 01:12:13,530 Yes. 943 01:12:14,230 --> 01:12:17,710 If their family says it goes up but their income stays the same, 944 01:12:18,290 --> 01:12:23,890 yes, like finding ways, okay, how do we make sure that you can afford the extra $250 a month for the other place? 945 01:12:24,230 --> 01:12:28,130 So that leads to my second question is on the trust, 946 01:12:28,830 --> 01:12:31,670 you said that they could make a profit, a reasonable profit. 947 01:12:32,110 --> 01:12:35,550 But how do you keep that piece of base on inflation? 948 01:12:35,550 --> 01:12:45,390 I don't have a conversation with one of the council members that said, well, it's based on inflation and maybe you make $10,000 and you say that for two years you might make $20,000. 949 01:12:45,930 --> 01:12:52,350 But is there a limit, you know, or in two or three years can they sell it for $500,000? 950 01:12:52,730 --> 01:13:00,370 Yeah. So the beauty of the land trust model is you set up a local board that will govern the land trust and how it works. 951 01:13:00,370 --> 01:13:07,290 And so, at the local level, you would decide how much equity you can be taken by the first 952 01:13:07,290 --> 01:13:07,730 homeowner. 953 01:13:08,270 --> 01:13:13,830 Is it a percentage of the sale, is it just adjusted for inflation, is it an inflation 954 01:13:13,830 --> 01:13:14,950 plus a percentage? 955 01:13:15,610 --> 01:13:20,270 You can make all those decisions at the local level, and you can adjust it over time. 956 01:13:20,970 --> 01:13:24,750 So you'll make a commitment to a homeowner, and that commitment will run with the land. 957 01:13:25,330 --> 01:13:28,770 But if you have new homeowners moving in, you say, I don't think we ought to form you 958 01:13:28,770 --> 01:13:28,910 on it. 959 01:13:28,910 --> 01:13:32,590 exactly right, and you want to have a basket for the next homeowner, you can do that. 960 01:13:33,010 --> 01:13:37,030 It's part of the bi-loss and the master deed within the association. 961 01:13:38,310 --> 01:13:43,330 So there are a number of ways to structure it, and there's always this delicate balance 962 01:13:43,330 --> 01:13:48,770 of trying to think about how do we allow households to build some equity so that ultimately when 963 01:13:48,770 --> 01:13:53,770 they do decide to sell, we want them to be able to move up and have a down payment for that 964 01:13:53,770 --> 01:13:56,390 and move up house, but not so much equity 965 01:13:56,390 --> 01:13:58,330 that we're undermining future affordability. 966 01:13:59,010 --> 01:13:59,610 Thank you. 967 01:14:01,050 --> 01:14:01,890 On the next step, 968 01:14:13,390 --> 01:14:14,950 the one you got is very easy. 969 01:14:15,170 --> 01:14:16,530 I know your voice is more powerful, 970 01:14:16,970 --> 01:14:19,870 but there's a difficult area to understand very, very difficult. 971 01:14:19,990 --> 01:14:21,910 They really, are they coming through here? 972 01:14:21,910 --> 01:14:23,410 Well, here, can you hear me? 973 01:14:23,850 --> 01:14:24,390 Yeah, you can. 974 01:14:24,530 --> 01:14:26,930 Ellen, if you have the closer to the megaphone, 975 01:14:27,150 --> 01:14:30,570 as there is, if you have the closer to the megaphone, 976 01:14:30,830 --> 01:14:32,670 the next is the one of the insdirectional. 977 01:14:32,830 --> 01:14:33,610 And also that one. 978 01:14:34,510 --> 01:14:37,270 There's also seats over here if you'd like to sit closer. 979 01:14:39,590 --> 01:14:41,870 So Mary Hasley, some of you sitting in the North Shore Drive. 980 01:14:42,550 --> 01:14:48,390 So one thing I've been asking since March of 2022, when MSU Extension came out with common 981 01:14:48,390 --> 01:14:53,030 terms, is to start using common terms and some of them were used and some of them are not. 982 01:14:53,290 --> 01:14:59,050 And I just think it would be very helpful to all have working in the same direction and 983 01:14:59,050 --> 01:14:59,710 understand 984 01:15:00,000 --> 01:15:11,420 So, you know, affordable is used frequently, and it is discretionary, it's 30% of your income. But subsidized housing, and I, my tax, has 985 01:15:11,420 --> 01:15:19,280 sprints of cash to it, and there are limitations. And it would, I think that that lack of clarity over the past three years has been 986 01:15:19,280 --> 01:15:29,680 detrimental to moving forward, and I would request that that be used. Also, especially in light of over 10, I would hope that we can at least agree that there are 987 01:15:29,680 --> 01:15:36,620 recommendations. I know that there's been representations in city council recently that have detected 988 01:15:36,620 --> 01:15:43,320 not re-applied because of mischievous having questions and that have a technical information. In fact, 989 01:15:43,340 --> 01:15:49,520 if we go back to May 2021, there's enough from our environmental consultant to Griffin Graham saying 990 01:15:49,520 --> 01:15:54,800 it would be proven for a habitat company to complete their due diligence including phase 20 ESA and 991 01:15:54,800 --> 01:15:58,940 a minimum B.E.A. and the City Council waived environmental 992 01:15:58,940 --> 01:16:03,500 and tax payment. So I think to move forward, we need to really be 993 01:16:05,560 --> 01:16:11,480 truthful and painfully clear about what are the issues, what do we need to get and not 994 01:16:11,480 --> 01:16:16,260 move with the car before the horse and make sure we have that information so we don't keep 995 01:16:16,260 --> 01:16:20,900 having hiccups and losing three years' worth of work and having to start back at ground 996 01:16:20,900 --> 01:16:21,260 zero. 997 01:16:25,400 --> 01:16:36,240 And also, you know, for future projects where we're accepting bids, if a bid is just 998 01:16:36,240 --> 01:16:42,080 a little bit late, like 12 hours, I would ask that that bid be presented to the committee 999 01:16:42,080 --> 01:16:48,040 to determine whether we should extend the bid as opposed to a unilateral decision by 1000 01:16:48,040 --> 01:16:53,880 sitting manager and supported by the consultant, whether to accept it or not. 1001 01:16:54,380 --> 01:16:56,880 It would be a much more open process. Thank you. 1002 01:16:57,780 --> 01:17:00,860 I do think it can answer the environmental impact statement. 1003 01:17:01,120 --> 01:17:03,160 They make right and you're very aware of what they are. 1004 01:17:03,400 --> 01:17:06,200 They do not actually talk about contamination issues. 1005 01:17:06,680 --> 01:17:09,960 Those are for your phase one, your phase two, and your BEA. 1006 01:17:10,380 --> 01:17:16,580 The environmental impact statement is more cohesive or more expensive than that. 1007 01:17:16,580 --> 01:17:19,820 and it talks about traffic patterns and talks about 1008 01:17:19,820 --> 01:17:21,540 impact alien local housing. 1009 01:17:22,000 --> 01:17:23,500 You've talked a little about what you've seen 1010 01:17:23,500 --> 01:17:24,900 with environmental impact statements. 1011 01:17:26,040 --> 01:17:29,720 Yeah, so the Mr. Required Environmental Impact Statement 1012 01:17:29,720 --> 01:17:32,760 is really about what will the impact of the project be 1013 01:17:32,760 --> 01:17:34,060 on the overall community? 1014 01:17:34,620 --> 01:17:36,980 And it's an opportunity for folks to weigh in and say, 1015 01:17:37,180 --> 01:17:39,040 gosh, can we handle the traffic? 1016 01:17:39,900 --> 01:17:42,420 Do we need to install another stoplight or stop sign? 1017 01:17:44,060 --> 01:17:46,140 Do we have enough space in our schools 1018 01:17:46,140 --> 01:17:48,260 to accommodate the kids who might live there, right? 1019 01:17:48,360 --> 01:17:51,180 It's a super broad review. 1020 01:17:52,180 --> 01:17:56,280 I would agree that ensuring we have a very complete 1021 01:17:56,280 --> 01:17:58,960 and accurate understanding of any contamination 1022 01:17:58,960 --> 01:18:00,840 and remediation that's necessary 1023 01:18:01,160 --> 01:18:03,660 is definitely important before commencing development. 1024 01:18:04,360 --> 01:18:06,140 But waving the environmental impact statement 1025 01:18:06,140 --> 01:18:08,420 isn't saying we don't care about contamination 1026 01:18:08,420 --> 01:18:10,360 and saying actually we don't think 1027 01:18:10,360 --> 01:18:12,960 that the development, once we've remediated 1028 01:18:12,960 --> 01:18:18,240 and any contamination will have a significant impact on things like traffic and schools in those kinds of things. 1029 01:18:20,120 --> 01:18:21,600 Chair, please say sir, third. 1030 01:18:22,520 --> 01:18:23,000 Stinger? 1031 01:18:28,360 --> 01:18:30,280 Information, I hope I'm talking loud enough. 1032 01:18:30,660 --> 01:18:30,760 No. 1033 01:18:31,300 --> 01:18:31,720 Loud enough? 1034 01:18:32,540 --> 01:18:32,680 Okay. 1035 01:18:33,060 --> 01:18:35,200 We can adjust the date of the money. 1036 01:18:35,920 --> 01:18:37,340 We can adjust the date of the money. 1037 01:18:37,520 --> 01:18:37,920 That's better. 1038 01:18:39,240 --> 01:18:45,380 A question that I'm asking someone sitting now, and a question asked by a lot of residents, especially when it's two weeks, 1039 01:18:45,980 --> 01:18:46,700 is the following. 1040 01:18:47,380 --> 01:18:53,880 short-term rentals. When the money gets paid to the owner of a short-term rental, how much 1041 01:18:53,880 --> 01:18:59,740 is that staying in town? So here's my question. You had a number of there, 53 million, I think. 1042 01:19:00,380 --> 01:19:06,700 Okay, now let me give you an example. Let's say you have a short-term rental owner who doesn't 1043 01:19:06,700 --> 01:19:13,940 live in this town and are economic development manager, Jim Hanger, told us over 50% of the owners 1044 01:19:13,940 --> 01:19:16,660 of short-term rentals who live outside the state. 1045 01:19:17,400 --> 01:19:20,840 So now you get hypothetically a $5,000 a week rent. 1046 01:19:21,480 --> 01:19:25,300 So $5,000, you said 30% roughly covers a cost. 1047 01:19:25,720 --> 01:19:28,920 So now you got $3,500 left for the owner. 1048 01:19:29,620 --> 01:19:33,400 But the owner is in Illinois or Indiana or wherever. 1049 01:19:34,380 --> 01:19:37,600 So is it fair to say, there's a question, I don't know. 1050 01:19:38,360 --> 01:19:41,220 Is it fair to say that $3,500 then doesn't say 1051 01:19:41,220 --> 01:19:45,080 the community, most of it, and it goes out because you have to go to another bank, 1052 01:19:45,280 --> 01:19:51,840 it goes to another committee, versus if it was a homeowner or a local owner of a rental 1053 01:19:51,840 --> 01:19:56,980 property who listens to that pay, then that money would most likely say that they were 1054 01:19:56,980 --> 01:20:01,180 deposited in a bank and spent, is that thinking correct or not? 1055 01:20:01,800 --> 01:20:04,780 I think that logic is accurate, yes. 1056 01:20:05,440 --> 01:20:08,420 I think that there are qualifiers everywhere, right? 1057 01:20:09,800 --> 01:20:15,020 So we have created local economies that are dependent on national chains where we're all 1058 01:20:15,020 --> 01:20:17,940 spending money that ends up going someplace else, right? 1059 01:20:19,020 --> 01:20:25,320 But generally, yes, roughly 30 to 40% of the revenue that comes in for short-term rentals 1060 01:20:25,320 --> 01:20:30,940 gets spent on cleaners and repairs and landscaping and all those kinds of things. 1061 01:20:30,940 --> 01:20:37,860 but the other 65% often goes to the owner. 1062 01:20:38,840 --> 01:20:46,160 Now, one of the things to be clear about is sometimes the property isn't paid for in cash 1063 01:20:46,700 --> 01:20:48,680 and so there's a bank intermediary. 1064 01:20:49,140 --> 01:20:55,080 And so a big chunk of that 60% that isn't going towards operating in maintenance could be going towards debt, 1065 01:20:55,080 --> 01:21:00,020 whether it's a local owner or it's out of state owner. 1066 01:21:00,960 --> 01:21:04,220 So this is a long way of saying we'd have to actually put 1067 01:21:04,220 --> 01:21:07,740 together a study to try to evaluate how much leakage is 1068 01:21:07,740 --> 01:21:11,060 in the economy in your short-term rental market compared 1069 01:21:11,060 --> 01:21:14,940 to if they were all owner occupied by folks who live locally. 1070 01:21:15,680 --> 01:21:18,840 But I think the direction of your logic is absolutely correct 1071 01:21:19,270 --> 01:21:23,440 that if out-of-town owners are owning and operating 1072 01:21:23,440 --> 01:21:28,060 short-term rentals, a majority of the rental income is not saying in the community. 1073 01:21:29,100 --> 01:21:30,000 Thank you so much. 1074 01:21:53,990 --> 01:21:57,770 You have to sweep up 614 baby animals out here. 1075 01:21:58,370 --> 01:22:00,110 I am here for seniors. 1076 01:22:01,210 --> 01:22:04,550 I have had so much compassion for seniors in many years. 1077 01:22:04,750 --> 01:22:05,650 I've worked with them. 1078 01:22:06,730 --> 01:22:12,470 I have seen we need more growth in South America for relief service. 1079 01:22:13,090 --> 01:22:21,990 What is happening, I have some dear crimes that they fall into the cracks, and they can't find 1080 01:22:21,990 --> 01:22:22,890 things in their housing. 1081 01:22:23,490 --> 01:22:28,970 And what happens is they've been born and raised to this area, and they want to continue 1082 01:22:28,970 --> 01:22:32,190 their life here, and they can't be anything else to move out. 1083 01:22:32,870 --> 01:22:33,750 And it's very sad. 1084 01:22:34,570 --> 01:22:41,150 And our seniors are being born and are coming up, seniors are living longer. 1085 01:22:41,150 --> 01:22:43,770 and they're all so weird active. 1086 01:22:44,370 --> 01:22:46,990 We have 70 and 80 people that are playing, 1087 01:22:47,190 --> 01:22:51,070 people ball, you know, and myself, me seeing them out. 1088 01:22:51,790 --> 01:22:55,230 I see this, and we need this so much in this area. 1089 01:22:55,990 --> 01:22:59,690 And I just, I just want this to happen, 1090 01:23:00,150 --> 01:23:01,670 and they really need it. 1091 01:23:02,070 --> 01:23:03,170 So thank you. 1092 01:23:07,800 --> 01:23:09,960 How are our escrow cards from Abram? 1093 01:23:09,960 --> 01:23:10,800 So 1094 01:23:16,280 --> 01:23:23,440 I just want to say something to township for being so proactive and putting the pedal 1095 01:23:23,440 --> 01:23:29,100 to the metal because this is just a huge step in the right direction. 1096 01:23:30,140 --> 01:23:37,580 You know, I've heard Brian speak before to come to these meetings and we see the screens 1097 01:23:37,580 --> 01:23:45,820 And the thing that we don't know about is the physics and putting a face on it. 1098 01:23:46,300 --> 01:23:50,980 If you stay out of the high school and you get a thorough soft wall across the street, 1099 01:23:51,500 --> 01:23:59,640 you're going to hit the house of a business owner in a self-haven who can barely afford her house. 1100 01:23:59,640 --> 01:24:04,240 So when I talked to her, I said, what do you afford? 1101 01:24:05,140 --> 01:24:09,020 And like your neighbor said, she said she could afford 1102 01:24:09,460 --> 01:24:14,120 a house for what she has to have $174,000, 1103 01:24:14,480 --> 01:24:17,880 or an apartment at about $700 a month. 1104 01:24:18,540 --> 01:24:22,660 So that's putting a face on this type of problem. 1105 01:24:23,100 --> 01:24:24,380 And it's bigger than a problem. 1106 01:24:24,680 --> 01:24:26,180 It is a crisis. 1107 01:24:27,880 --> 01:24:36,820 And I think that, you know, we're not emphasizing that we really need to be in crisis mode. 1108 01:24:40,800 --> 01:24:45,680 Recently, my arm of three kids had to leave her team. 1109 01:24:49,610 --> 01:24:59,530 That means her three kids are pulled out in her school district, which caused a loss of 25,000 dollars every year. 1110 01:24:59,530 --> 01:25:03,530 They're now moving to Bearing County, where are you out on Alzheimer's? 1111 01:25:08,420 --> 01:25:13,680 Because those visits, and I also speak for them on who could not be at the meeting tonight. 1112 01:25:14,340 --> 01:25:16,740 And she said, what about housing for bigger families? 1113 01:25:17,880 --> 01:25:20,200 And I know you are doing, you know, a few bedrooms. 1114 01:25:24,120 --> 01:25:26,800 Mistok Haven has three siblings. 1115 01:25:27,620 --> 01:25:30,340 So Mistok Haven has come from a family of six. 1116 01:25:31,080 --> 01:25:35,480 So there's a similar range of big families who need housing too. 1117 01:25:36,020 --> 01:25:44,940 So, thank you again and go self-paying the power ship and it's great to be working together. I really appreciate that. 1118 01:25:48,020 --> 01:25:55,940 Before I wrap it tonight, I wanted to talk a little bit, I had a round talk about some of the tools that have just recently been enacted before me for tonight. 1119 01:25:56,180 --> 01:26:03,000 And one of them is the Brownfield Law that is looking to be updated here shortly, hopefully, it's past the Senate. 1120 01:26:03,560 --> 01:26:05,760 And then you can also talk about neighborhood and immigrant cells. 1121 01:26:07,500 --> 01:26:24,700 Yes, so I've been part of an organization called the Housing Michigan Coalition, which includes the Home Builders Association and the Michigan Municipal League, the Grand Rapids Chamber Housing Next and Housing North, Housing North represents the Traverse City 10 County region. 1122 01:26:26,000 --> 01:26:32,860 Last fall, we got four pieces of legislation passed to include their residential facilities 1123 01:26:32,860 --> 01:26:37,740 exemption, which is a tax evading very similar to an industrial facilities exemption. 1124 01:26:38,400 --> 01:26:44,120 So where you have new rental housing that isn't federally or state subsidized, but you'd 1125 01:26:44,120 --> 01:26:49,820 still like to reduce the tax obligation in exchange for a reduction in the rental rates. 1126 01:26:50,380 --> 01:26:52,520 You can do that, both in the city and the township. 1127 01:26:52,520 --> 01:26:56,700 We also got a change passed to the Neighborhood Enterprise Zone program. 1128 01:26:57,240 --> 01:27:05,780 Previously, the Neighborhood Enterprise Zone was only available in communities that were defined as core communities under old legislation. 1129 01:27:06,440 --> 01:27:15,060 That legislation used communities' population from the 1990s to determine which communities were eligible for incentives today in 2023. 1130 01:27:16,060 --> 01:27:22,880 So we got that legislation changed, neighborhood residents are now available in all cities, villages, and townships. 1131 01:27:22,900 --> 01:27:25,680 They support both home ownership and rental product. 1132 01:27:26,180 --> 01:27:33,520 It allows a local community to provide up to a 15 year tax abatement that is equal to 50% of the tax obligation. 1133 01:27:34,400 --> 01:27:44,180 So when you're trying to incentivize new home ownership, it's one of the few tools that's available to offset their tax obligation to make the house a little bit more affordable. 1134 01:27:44,920 --> 01:27:50,700 The other tool that we have is the Brownfield Tax Agreement Finance Program. 1135 01:27:51,220 --> 01:27:52,920 That's been around since 1996. 1136 01:27:52,920 --> 01:27:54,980 It's been amended a number of times. 1137 01:27:55,580 --> 01:28:01,680 Typically, when it first started, it was only available to reimburse costs related to environmental remediation 1138 01:28:01,680 --> 01:28:05,480 or blight or buildings that needed to be demolished. 1139 01:28:05,900 --> 01:28:09,480 Over time, it's been expanded with more and more eligible activities. 1140 01:28:09,480 --> 01:28:13,620 and we have a proposal that has now passed the Senate. 1141 01:28:14,180 --> 01:28:15,540 It's gone through House Committee. 1142 01:28:15,680 --> 01:28:18,280 It should be on the floor of the House next week Tuesday. 1143 01:28:18,980 --> 01:28:22,640 That would allow for improvements to residential property for 1144 01:28:22,640 --> 01:28:25,980 affordable and workforce housing to be an eligible expense. 1145 01:28:26,760 --> 01:28:31,620 So what's really important about this is, as we think about building new housing, 1146 01:28:31,800 --> 01:28:34,780 whether it's apartments or single-family homes or cottages, 1147 01:28:34,780 --> 01:28:38,400 is the infrastructure associated with those homes 1148 01:28:38,400 --> 01:28:40,800 can be an eligible expense to be reimbursed. 1149 01:28:41,460 --> 01:28:45,780 So a good example is if we were to build a neighborhood, 1150 01:28:46,300 --> 01:28:47,860 the neighborhood I showed you, Robinson Landing 1151 01:28:47,860 --> 01:28:51,320 and Grand Haven had $1.2 million of infrastructure costs. 1152 01:28:52,120 --> 01:28:55,280 We didn't have to pass any of those costs onto the homeowners 1153 01:28:55,800 --> 01:28:57,440 because we financed them separately 1154 01:28:57,440 --> 01:29:00,020 and got a reimbursement via tax increment. 1155 01:29:00,900 --> 01:29:03,460 We'll be able to do that in addition 1156 01:29:03,460 --> 01:29:08,280 to financing some of the cost of the actual construction of the homes, whether they're apartments 1157 01:29:08,280 --> 01:29:10,720 or a single family home or something in between. 1158 01:29:11,980 --> 01:29:17,340 So that can be a really important tool, but Kate and I were just talking about, it's 1159 01:29:17,340 --> 01:29:21,480 also important to set guardrails, right, because we don't want to just say, okay, everybody 1160 01:29:21,480 --> 01:29:26,880 gets, you know, no taxes and we'll figure out how to pay for police and fire in schools some 1161 01:29:26,880 --> 01:29:27,340 other way. 1162 01:29:28,720 --> 01:29:32,840 What's really important is establishing, what do you perceive to be the public benefit? 1163 01:29:32,840 --> 01:29:36,840 What are you trying to get as a result of the utilization of that incentive? 1164 01:29:37,600 --> 01:29:42,500 And be very clear with developers about here's what we're after, whether it's households 1165 01:29:42,500 --> 01:29:47,760 earning less than 60% of the median income, or it's households earning all the way up 1166 01:29:47,760 --> 01:29:54,420 to 100% or 120% of the median income, defining what you're willing to offer in exchange for 1167 01:29:54,420 --> 01:29:57,720 that public benefit, and how long you're willing to offer it for. 1168 01:29:57,720 --> 01:29:59,980 under the brownfield plan act your- 1169 01:30:00,000 --> 01:30:05,300 You can provide a reimbursement for up to 30 years until their eligible expenses are fully 1170 01:30:05,300 --> 01:30:11,000 reimbursed. But you can also say, hey, we'll provide a reimbursement for only 10 years if 1171 01:30:11,000 --> 01:30:15,840 you're doing kind of the minimum level of affordability or attainability. But if you're 1172 01:30:15,840 --> 01:30:20,720 doing everything that we ask for, maybe we'll go all the way to the 30 years. You also have 1173 01:30:20,720 --> 01:30:24,580 the ability to think about a revenue sharing agreement, where maybe the city doesn't have 1174 01:30:24,580 --> 01:30:28,260 chips as, hey, we've got to get some revenue out of this, because we're going to have costs 1175 01:30:28,260 --> 01:30:32,300 associated with our infrastructure and our emergency response activities. 1176 01:30:32,980 --> 01:30:38,140 But we're willing to do an 80-20 split, so maybe 80% of the new tax increment goes to 1177 01:30:38,140 --> 01:30:41,000 the developer, and 20% comes back to the local municipality. 1178 01:30:41,980 --> 01:30:45,520 Anyway, that bill should move through the House next week. 1179 01:30:46,100 --> 01:30:51,580 We already have word that Governor Whitmer is supportive, so we would expect a signature 1180 01:30:52,300 --> 01:30:54,280 hopefully by the end of the month. 1181 01:30:54,780 --> 01:30:59,200 And then we'll be able to talk about new tools available to both South Haven and South 1182 01:30:59,200 --> 01:31:02,340 Haven Township to be able to do those kinds of creative financing. 1183 01:31:03,060 --> 01:31:09,060 And I also wanted to mention that talking to one of our guests tonight, I failed to bring 1184 01:31:09,060 --> 01:31:11,820 up, and this is in the plan, so when you read the plan, we'll see it. 1185 01:31:12,180 --> 01:31:15,660 I failed to bring up the opportunities for mobile homes and manufactured homes. 1186 01:31:16,700 --> 01:31:21,840 We have stigmatized those as housing products over time, in a lot of ways because they are 1187 01:31:21,840 --> 01:31:24,700 are not always the best maintained housing options 1188 01:31:24,700 --> 01:31:26,800 in the community, especially when they're older perps. 1189 01:31:27,840 --> 01:31:30,620 But modern manufactured housing, 1190 01:31:30,960 --> 01:31:33,360 modular construction, factory build housing, 1191 01:31:33,760 --> 01:31:36,860 can be very high quality and relatively inexpensive. 1192 01:31:37,620 --> 01:31:40,120 There are some large companies in Indiana and Pennsylvania 1193 01:31:40,120 --> 01:31:43,040 that are making really great high quality mobile home 1194 01:31:43,040 --> 01:31:44,880 and manufactured housing projects. 1195 01:31:45,920 --> 01:31:48,240 Again, they might not be the solution for everybody. 1196 01:31:48,240 --> 01:31:55,460 It's not a perfect way to build equity, but it is kind of a step between renting and full ownership. 1197 01:31:56,560 --> 01:32:02,800 It's another tool in a toolbox to think about where you might want to allow for that type of housing and under what circumstances. 1198 01:32:05,210 --> 01:32:10,150 Well, thank you very much for Brian, and this is a very good housing workshop. I hope you get a lot of information. 1199 01:32:10,150 --> 01:32:15,670 I am going to let you know that these presentations are a little more important to be on the city's website tomorrow. 1200 01:32:16,670 --> 01:32:22,470 Lastly, I'll ask Mayor Smith and Mr. Chairman Mr. Sine from the township to go ahead and close your eaves. 1201 01:32:22,590 --> 01:32:25,190 Mr. Mayor Smith, do you want to go for us? 1202 01:32:36,680 --> 01:32:37,180 Mr. Sine? 1203 01:32:47,070 --> 01:32:47,530 All right. 1204 01:32:47,870 --> 01:32:52,770 All right, thank you both for doing it. 1205 01:32:52,890 --> 01:32:54,010 Thank you everyone for coming. 1206 01:32:54,350 --> 01:32:56,070 I hope you had an information for you tomorrow. 1207 01:32:56,070 --> 01:32:56,910 Thank you very much. 1208 01:32:56,990 --> 01:32:57,510 Thank you.