Only the government would use taxpayer money to pretend to solve a problem rather than actually solving it at no financial cost. This is how Michigan makes housing law.

The state could use more housing. While Michigan’s overall population is stagnant, the number of actual households increased by 200,000 in the past decade. The Great Lakes State is also a popular tourist destination and place for people to have second homes. The Michigan State Housing Development Authority says we need 190,000 more housing units just to “curb a crisis.”

Michigan lags the rest of the country in issuing housing permits. The number of housing units permitted each year has declined since 2017. Overall housing permits are one-third to one-half of the number of permits pulled in the 1990s and early 2000s.

In her State of the State address, Gov. Whitmer proposed a plan to spend $1.4 billion on 10,000 units. “The rent is too damn high, and we don’t have enough damn housing,” Whitmer said. “Our response will be simple: build, baby, build!”

The governor has the right idea but not the right plan. There is a lot the state can do to encourage more development and lower the costs of housing. Changing the rules to build matters more than how many more subsidies the state offers.

Similar plans to give subsidies to select developers and non-profits for limited and specific types of builds have not worked. Corporate welfare simply cannot create enough housing to meet the actual demand. Instead of spending an astounding $140,000 per unit, state lawmakers should simply allow builders to build.

How? By eliminating or curtailing barriers to housing, usually in the form of local zoning codes. These include where and what people can build, minimum housing sizes, parking spots, requirements that houses look similar to one another, setback limits and more.

Metro Detroit has some of the strictest zoning laws in the country. Tourist destinations across Michigan also severely limit where people can build, the types of housing they can build and how residents can use their own property. Some of this is beginning to change – Traverse City and Ann Arbor have begun loosening up their zoning codes – but it is not enough.

State lawmakers need to get involved. Unless codes are directly related to public safety (like traffic rules), these regulations should be reviewed. In blue states, like California, and red states, like Montana, state lawmakers have limited the number and types of regulations municipal governments can place on housing providers.

These solutions work. Rent and home prices have begun to come down in the United States. Why? “The influx of record-high new multi-family homes exerted downward price pressure on median asking rents [in 2023],” according to a recent report from Rent.com.

It is simple supply and demand. Michigan’s housing needs have not been met by a corresponding increase in supply because of government restrictions. State lawmakers should prevent onerous local regulations that are blocking people from developing their own property as they see fit.

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