Who can afford to live in Leelanau County?

It was one of the key questions in the air last week as Housing North Executive Director Yarrow Brown presented to the Leelanau County Board of Directors about her organization’s efforts to address the county’s well-documented housing shortage. Whether its teachers, emergency medical technicians, or law enforcement officers, Brown said that almost no one in the local workforce can actually afford to rent or buy a home in Leelanau County.

“We have a chart that shows occupations and what their wages are, and if they can afford to rent or own in each county,” said Brown, whose organization serves not just Leelanau but also the rest of the 10-county northwest Michigan region. “There’s a green check mark if they can, and a red X if they can’t. And I can tell you that Leelanau has almost all red X’s, based on about 25 occupations.”

Those occupations include EMTs, who Brown said make an average of $35,720 per year, compared to the median two-bedroom monthly rent in Leelanau County of $2,450. Elementary school teachers are another example, she said, making an average of $61,650 per year compared to the median cost to own a home in Leelanau, of $4,961 per month. Based on those numbers, an EMT or a teacher would be spending virtually all of their annual earnings on housing.

“These numbers are averages; they’re not perfect,” Brown told commissioners. “But you shouldn’t be paying more than 30 percent of your income on housing. Once you get above that 30 percent, you’re considered cost-burdened, and we do have quite a few people in our region – not just Leelanau – that are cost-burdened…”

Speaking to county commissioners at an executive board session last Tuesday, Brown crunched these numbers and others around Leelanau’s housing crisis – and talked about how Housing North is working to bridge those gaps. Housing North is kicking off its third year of a partnership with Leelanau County, an alliance aimed at bringing more housing – and particularly, more affordable or workforce housing – to the peninsula. The good news, Brown says, is that progress is definitely happening; the bad news is it’s pacing behind where it needs to be.

“We are seeing some units being built in Leelanau County, but we’re nowhere near the goal, which is to have 2,300 units to meet the need between now and 2027,” Brown said at Tuesday’s meeting, referencing the Housing Needs Assessment Housing North conducted in Leelanau County last year. To be exact, that assessment identified “an overall housing gap of 2,335 units through 2027,” including 382 rental units and 1953 for-sale homes.

In terms of progress, Brown’s report tallied 271 units built in Leelanau County this year, plus another 89 units that are currently in progress, for a total of 360 units. That number represents 15.4 percent of the housing gap identified in Housing North’s 2023 assessment, but falls short of the 580 or so units Leelanau County would need to build each year just to reach the 2,335-unit goal by the end of 2027. As proof that demand is still outpacing supply, Brown’s report noted the overall rental vacancy in Leelanau County, of just 0.2 percent.

Brown seemed confident that Leelanau will be able to accelerate the growth of its housing stock in years to come. In 2024, she said, Housing North has hosted focus groups, conducted surveys, attended public meetings to advise on zoning reform, and formed a new housing collaborative with Leelanau Peninsula Economic Foundation, the Sleeping Bear Gateways Council, and the Housing Action Committee. That collaborative group is currently working on a housing action plan, which it hopes to present to county commissioners in November or December.

“We’re not done with the plan…but we’ve been collecting data and information to be able to inform this plan, with the goal to bring some clear action items that we hope the county commission will actually drive forward and help us with,” Brown explained.

Other priorities include finding a way “to leverage revenue bonds or bonds for housing and infrastructure”; encouraging local communities “to create policies to allow developers to use the new housing tools, such as Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) or Housing Tax Incremental Financing (HTIF)”; creating new funding opportunities for housing development in Leelanau County, such as a county-wide housing trust fund or a “revolving loan fund using the Brownfield Redevelopment Authority or other tool”; and establishing a Leelanau County Housing Commission.

While Brown acknowledged that there are challenges to housing development in Leelanau County – such as the fact that only four communities on the peninsula have water and sewer infrastructure in place – she also told commissioners that their county already has many of the tools in place necessary to create change. Housing North, she vowed, will play the role in guiding communities throughout the county on how to use those tools to bring about more housing.

“You have an active land bank; you have a Brownfield [Redevelopment Authority]; you have the tools in place in Leelanau,” Brown said. “It’s just making sure the units of government and other partners know how to use them.”

Housing North will address its work in Leelanau and other local counties at its 10th annual Northwest Michigan Housing Summit, scheduled for October 24-25 at the Hagerty Center in Traverse City. Registration for that event is currently open.

Specific to Leelanau, the Housing Collaborative recently reopened a housing survey that will inform its action plan for the county. The group initially launched that survey in April, but received just 360 responses, mostly from people who Brown said are already “comfortably housed.” The collaborative has reopened the survey in hopes of reaching “a broader audience,” Brown said.