This story is part of a series that highlights the challenges and solutions around housing in Southeast Michigan and is made possible through underwriting support from the Oakland County (Region L) Regional Housing Partnership.
Sean Wolski bought a 1,000-square-foot house with his partner three years ago in Royal Oak. But in the midst of a
housing affordability crisis in Oakland County and beyond, 29-year-old Wolski fears that milestone may not be replicable now. He notes that his house sold for $10,000 in 1960, which should make it worth about $107,000 adjusted for inflation. But its actual value is closer to $350,000.
"If we would have waited a month or two more, we would not have been able to afford this house, and now we would not be able to do it," he says. "And we probably want a bigger house. My house is kind of small, but if we want a bigger one in the future, I'm very doubtful that we'll be able to afford something in Royal Oak."
Wolski's experience led him to become a volunteer lead at
YIMBY Oakland County, a group working to end the county's housing shortage. He says his activism with the group is "personal" – he's concerned about future housing attainability for himself just as much as he is for his fellow county residents. He considers himself "super lucky" for having bought a house in Royal Oak, and he's aware that many others are not so fortunate.
"That's not fair, especially if you want people to work in your city," Wolski says. "We have an aging population. You need people to work in the hospitals. You need teachers. You need postmen. You need all those people, but they need someplace to live."
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Steve KossSean Wolski at his home in Royal Oak.
Wolski is just one of many stakeholders in Oakland County's housing market, from homeowners to nonprofit leaders to government officials, who are advocating to solve the county's housing crisis. We talked to several of them about what local, state, and federal policy changes would help to ease the county's housing shortage and boost affordability.
Oakland County housing policy
Local advocates consistently bring up one word when discussing ways to address the housing shortage: density. Because there's little vacant land available in the high-demand, bustling inner-ring suburbs on the county's southeastern side, housing advocates and some municipal governments are pursuing new strategies to allow for more housing units on developed sites. Royal Oak resident Katie Woock, another volunteer lead at Oakland County YIMBY, refers to this as "gently densifying" neighborhoods by adding duplexes, triplexes, or quad plexes.
"We don't have a lot of options for families except for buying a single-family home," she says.
This kind of housing is often referred to as "missing middle" – housing types that fall between a single-family home and a large multi-family apartment building. Some Oakland County communities are taking action to facilitate the development of such housing, which is often difficult to build due to zoning regulations that allow only single-family homes in residential areas. For example, Ferndale's
recently adopted zoning code established expanded permissions for duplexes, triplexes, and quad plexes in the city's residential districts. The city also allows accessory dwelling units, which are separate housing units built on the same site as an existing home. Woock favors both these approaches and is advocating for similar policies in Royal Oak.
"It allows people who might not be able to afford an entire single-family home to get the benefits of these established neighborhoods that we have, which I think is really important," she says.
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Charlie CavellCharlie Cavell.
Oakland County Commissioner Charlie Cavell, who serves southeastern-county communities including Ferndale and Royal Oak, says missing middle housing will become increasingly important as Michigan's population ages and older adults seek to downsize their housing. Cavell says the communities along Woodward Avenue in particular will need to "prioritize and appreciate density" and become more accessible to "people of all ages."
"I think you'll see this as the key to saving inner-ring suburbs," he says.
However, densifying communities in this way requires zoning reform. And communities' loftier goals don't always align with the zoning codes they adopt. Vern Gustafsson is the project director and planner for the
Pontiac Housing Commission and co-lead of the housing stock innovators working group for Oakland County's
Regional Housing Partnership. He says many local communities' master plans may recommend allowing denser housing types. But those same communities' zoning codes continue to allow only single-family homes, or occasionally duplexes, in residential areas.
"It doesn't really provide the full breadth of the types of uses," he says.
Ryan Hertz is the president and CEO of
Lighthouse, a Pontiac-based nonprofit housing developer and housing service provider. He thinks densifying Oakland County communities will eventually become a necessity as they become so unaffordable as to be unsustainable.
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Ryan HertzRyan Hertz.
"There's going to be a point, I think, where the disadvantages of the way that we plan for housing historically are going to be very stark," he says. "They'll so obviously outweigh the interests of folks who want their communities to look like they've always looked, and folks who essentially are very attached to unsustainable ways of providing housing for our local population. I think it's going to have to happen."
State and federal housing policy
However, in Hertz's opinion, solving Oakland County's affordability issues will require considerable action that falls outside the purview of municipal or county government.
"I think that there's probably a little bit of an uphill climb to try to commit local resources when this is such a ubiquitous problem and it's such an expensive problem," he says. "I think we should be targeting state or federal policy to the degree that we can as communities, and taking what's working at the local level and trying to push it upstream."
For instance, Hertz commends the state of Michigan for
passing a recent law outlawing landlords who own five or more units from discriminating based on a renter's source of income. The law will make it easier for renters to use public benefits like Section 8 vouchers. Hertz says Oakland County tried to take action on source of income discrimination but had few options to implement such a policy. Similarly, he says the Michigan State Housing Development Authority has taken the right tack in using $110 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding to encourage workforce housing development through its
Missing Middle Housing Program.
"There's a lot of efficiencies to be gained by just simply incentivizing and subsidizing the construction of housing," Hertz says.
Local housing advocates also hope to see changes at the federal level. Cavell suggests that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) rethink its approach to setting the county's Fair Market Rent (FMR), which is used to determine the amount Section 8 voucher recipients are awarded toward their housing. Oakland County falls under HUD's broader Detroit-Warren-Livonia Metro FMR Area, in which the FMR for a one-bedroom apartment is currently $1,090. That falls far short of the median rent in Oakland County: $1,319 in 2023, according to the state of Michigan's
Housing Data Portal. Cavell thinks HUD should set a separate FMR for Oakland County that better reflects housing costs in the county.
"There are hundreds of people that are couch surfing or living in shelters or paying for hotel rooms when they could live in apartments in Metro Detroit, but they're not able to," he says.
Cavell, Hertz, and Wolski all agree that additional federal resources are needed to incentivize affordable housing construction. Hertz says the federal government hasn't innovated on affordable housing development policy since it created the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit in 1986, and new tools are needed. However, local advocates feel uncertain at best about the possibility of expanded support for affordable housing under President Donald Trump's new administration. Trump's first administration took steps to protect single-family zoning, but the
president has also advocated for zoning reform to lower housing prices.
"One thing that could be super impactful to people is some sort of executive order about making housing more affordable," Cavell says. "... Whether you do it the Republican way or Democrat way, I think people just want us to work on solving the problem and try something. That's why they call it a crisis, because people are desperate."
Taking action on housing
Oakland County housing advocates say the power to effect change on any of these issues lies with individual citizens.
"I really think public advocacy is really going to be the only thing that can course-correct us on the housing crisis," Hertz says.
Gustafsson encourages residents to get involved in the nitty-gritty of housing policy for their communities. He says that could mean running for local planning commissions or zoning boards of appeals. It could also simply mean speaking up in public meetings as a concerned citizen. Gustaffsson says it's important for residents to get involved in the process of developing not just the broad goals in municipal master plans, but the finer details contained in zoning codes.
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Vern GustafssonVern Gustafsson.
"It's very easy to get them participating in [master planning processes] because it's talking about the future," he says. "When you get into ordinances, it is talking about ... the setback between the lot line and where the building could be located. It talks about parking requirements. It talks about numbers. And it can be very dry. So you don't see that much going on where the community will come out until somebody decides that they want to build something."
Woock encourages interested residents to join Oakland County YIMBY, noting that the organization offers resources and events to help people learn how to comment at a public meeting for the first time.
"It's really kind of intimidating to show up to your first meeting," she says. "So what I did was I went to the first meeting and I didn't say anything. I kind of just observed how it worked, how people gave their public comments, how the commission reacted. And then the next time I went, I felt like I was ready to say something."
Hertz says pro-housing policy won't be prioritized in Oakland County or anywhere else "until there's a critical mass of people who our elected officials perceive as driven by that issue." Wolski echoes that sentiment, encouraging county residents to "just do something to let your local officials know that housing is important to you."
"Nine times out of 10, the only people that they're hearing from are people who are against new housing and against any sort of development," he says. "... You don't even have to go to a meeting. Just write an email. But just speak up. That's the easiest way."
Patrick Dunn is the managing editor of Concentrate and a freelance writer and editor. He lives in Ypsilanti.
Sean Wolski photos by Steve Koss. All other photos courtesy of the subjects.