How Many Units of Market Rate, Low-Income, Workforce and Affordable Housing Has Ann Arbor Built Since 2014?

by P.D. Lesko

“If you want to work on affordability, the thing that you do is try to increase supply. So, that is going to be a community conversation that we are going to continue to have. Obviously it’s going to mean that we have to continue to have this conversation without destroying the character of our near downtown neighborhoods because it is so important to the look and feel within Ann Arbor. Finding that balance is going to be what we are going to need to work on.” Taylor, December 2014, Second Wave Media

In 2015, one year after Chris Taylor was elected Mayor, Ann Arbor and other Washtenaw County communities commissioned the Housing Affordability and Economic Equity Analysis. That analysis concluded that Ann Arbor needed to build 2,800 units of new, permanent affordable housing over the next two decades. As of February 2021, data from the City show that Ann Arbor is already behind on that goal by close to 600 units. Should that gap persist, by 2035, Ann Arbor will have missed that 2,800 unit goal by 1,500 units, more than half.

Ann Arbor’s Mayor Christopher Taylor plans to run for re-election. In his January 5, 2022 press release, he claims he has “enhanced quality of life” in Ann Arbor by approving “hundreds of units of permanent affordable housing with more than 1,000 still to come.” The Mayor’s claims is his press release are misleading and his math is fuzzy, according to the data, above, provided by city officials.

Talyor has been on City Council since 2009, when he defeated former Ward 3 Council member Stephen Kunselman to represent Ward 3. Taylor has occupied the Mayor’s office since 2014. In 2014, The A2Indy’s Editorial Board took Taylor to task for what was called his “credibility problem,” including an abysmal record as a City Council member with respect to the creation of affordable housing. After Taylor’s most recent claims related to affordable housing, The Ann Arbor Independent submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to obtain public records that document exactly how many units of low-income, workforce and affordable units of housing have been approved by City Council and built in Ann Arbor since 2014. The same request also sought records that show how many units of market rate housing have been approved by City Council and built in Ann Arbor over the same time period.

The response to the request for the public records was a bill for $225.54 (below). Not only have City officials neglected to make data that show their progress meeting the critical need for low-income, affordable and workforce housing easily available to the public online, the FOIA response revealed that it would take two City employees a total of five hours to locate the information.

“We need hundreds of units of new, permanent affordable housing built throughout Ann Arbor.” Mayor Taylor, Facebook, 2020

According to a recent study done by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, in Michigan only 35 affordable and low-income rentals are available for every100 low-income families in need of such housing. In addition, the study revealed that in our state 73 percent of low-income households are overburdened by housing costs, i.e. they pay more than 30 percent of their gross income on rent. For the past two decades, Ann Arbor politicians have been promising more “affordable housing.” But what, exactly, does “affordable” mean? The new 154 unit Lockwood senior housing development approved by Ann Arbor City Council members promises “65 affordable units.” Monthly rents for the 65 “affordable” units will range from $864 for a one-bedroom apartment to $2,750 for a two-bedroom apartment.

Low-income apartments peg rents at 30 percent of the renter’s gross income, whatever that may be. Affordable apartments peg rents at 30-60 percent Area Median Income ($71,000 in Ann Arbor). Workforce housing rents are, typically, set at 60-120 percent of AMI. In a workforce housing one-bedroom with rent set at 120 percent AMI, the monthly rent would be close to $1,900—higher than one-bedroom market rate rents ($1,700). Workforce housing is, in actuality, the least affordable of the three options.

“Affordable housing is a foundational issue for us. We can fund our affordable housing plan. We can build and support new affordable housing throughout the community.”—Mayor Taylor, April 2018, mayoral debate.

In Berkeley, CA there are 32 low income housing apartment communities offering 1,602 affordable apartments for rent. There are approximately 46,000 homes of all types in Boulder including single-family homes, town homes, condos, cooperatives and apartments. In 1991, the City of Boulder had fewer than 1,092 units of housing qualified as affordable. Today, Boulder has over 3,600 units of affordable housing. In Ann Arbor, there are approximately 47,100 units of housing, according to U.S. Census data. The City of Ann Arbor has a website, Affordable Housing Waitlist. This is from that page: “As of Winter 2021, there are only two properties with units available through this website. However, it is expected that properties will be added each year, so please check back at least annually.”

Even if City staff have no clue how many low-income, affordable and market rate housing units there are in the City, federal housing data reveal that in Ann Arbor there are 2,329 low-income apartments and 1,092 total apartments that offer rental subsidies.

According to the Downtown Development Authority’s 2017 State of the Downtown Report, the average asking price for a one-bedroom apartment in the DDA’s district was $1,480 and there were 3,100 total units of housing, only about 10 percent of which was constructed as “affordable.” Two years later, the rent per unit had jumped to $1,985, according to the DDA’s 2019 State of the Downtown Report. According to the DDA data, between 2014 and 2019, rents in the downtown area rose 29 percent. As rents rose, and hundreds of units of new, market rate student housing were built, between 2017 and 2019 Ann Arbor’s downtown lost 10 percent of its employers.

“The city lacks the legal ability to require property owners to include affordability as a criterion for getting permits. So, that’s something we should work on with the state to get. I’d further say that the city has a commitment to affordable housing, which means that we want to encourage others to (focus on affordable housing) through some kinds of preferential treatment for developers.” Mayor Taylor, Feb. 2018, speaking to U-M students.

In Ann Arbor, U.S. Census data show that 55.8 percent of those who live in the City are renters. Officials from HUD estimate that more than half of those renters are what’s referred to as “rent overburdened.” These are people who pay more than 30 percent of their gross income on housing. In Ann Arbor, a household making less than $3,543 a month would be considered overburdened when renting an apartment at or above the median rent. 

Since 2009 when Taylor was elected to City Council, throughout Ann Arbor rents have risen almost 20 percent. Median rents in Ann Arbor have risen 19.5 percent since 2009, according to federal housing data:

Mayor Taylor (since his 2014 campaign) and the current members of City Council have been talking about the need for more “affordable housing.” Yet, data show that insofar as housing is concerned, Ann Arbor has become more economically segregated and unaffordable, particularly in its downtown.

The City’s effort to charge over $84 per hour to retrieve the public records is an alleged violation of the Michigan Freedom of Information statute. The Statute requires the governmental entity charge the public records requestor the rate of the lowest paid employee capable of doing the retrieval work. The newspaper appealed the estimated charges to Interim City Administrator Milton Dohoney and is waiting on his reply.