GR makes ‘significant’ changes to housing rules: Here’s what they mean
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — The Grand Rapids City Commission on Tuesday approved changes to its housing ordinances, now allowing for more unrelated roommates in one home and changing requirements for accessory dwelling units.
Like many cities in West Michigan and across the country, Grand Rapids is facing a housing crisis. A 2022 housing needs assessment from Housing Next found that Kent County needs to add 35,000 housing units by 2027, including around 14,000 in the city of Grand Rapids.
A new data dashboard from Housing Kent paints a stark picture of the crisis countywide: The costs of entry-level homes have skyrocketed over the last two decades, going from around $66,000 in 2001 to $205,000 in 2022, while the median annual wage only rose from $27,480 to $42,730.
The current median wage is 31% below what someone would need to buy an entry-level home in Kent County, the data dashboard shows. Renters, meanwhile, need to make $47,840 a year to afford the median rent, $5,110 more than the current median annual wage.
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Among other solutions, housing advocates have been calling for zoning reform, a task the city of Grand Rapids took up in in the spring of 2023, when Housing Next presented its housing needs assessment. Led by Planning Director Kristin Turkelson, a team put together five recommendations for changes that could increase the housing supply in the city.
After multiple meetings and discussions, including a Planning Commission public hearing on Jan. 25, the city commission voted unanimously Tuesday evening to approve the zoning changes.
“I don’t see that our community can continue to grow if we don’t continue to increase our housing supply,” First Ward Commissioner Drew Robbins said prior to the vote.
He added that he recently helped his brother and sister-in-law move to a home in Wyoming after they couldn’t find a house they could afford in the city of Grand Rapids, where they had been living for more than six years. The couple works in healthcare and business management, Robbins said, and they don’t have children.
“(They) looked for a house for quite a long time and wished that they could call the city their home and they couldn’t,” he said. “If they can’t afford living in our community, sometimes I wonder who can.”
Second Ward Commissioner Milinda Ysasi said while there were many opinions shared at public meetings about the zoning changes, “what we have seen … is that we know that individuals feel the strain of the availability and the affordability of housing in our community.” She added that some are leaving the community because of the high cost of housing.
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Some, including the John Ball Area Neighbors Board, oppose the zoning changes, as the new master plan that will soon be implemented also addresses the need for more housing.
“Given the significance of the master plan in shaping the long-term vision for our city, we believe it is imperative that any zoning text amendments align closely with its objectives,” the John Ball Area Neighbors Board wrote in a letter to the city commissioners. “Approving amendments prior to finalizing the master plan could risk inconsistencies and conflicts between the two, potentially undermining the efficacy of both documents and leading to unintended consequences for our neighborhood.”
The five zoning changes are all incremental, small-scale changes to grow the city’s housing supply, Mayor Rosalynn Bliss told News 8 prior to Tuesday’s meeting.
“Housing has been a critical issue for a number of years. We know that we continue to have a housing shortage, and supply directly impacts cost of housing,” she said. “We’re working — not just in the city of Grand Rapids, but really with our partners across the county and other cities — looking at what we can do to be a part of the solution. The city has put funding aside for affordable housing fund, and we’re investing in those affordable housing projects to the best of our ability, but the reality is we need to identify where we can do smaller infill housing, and we’re hopeful that some of the recommended changes can help encourage that.”
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Here are the five zoning changes, set to go into effect on May 23:
ACCESSORY DWELLING UNITS
The commission voted to change the requirements for accessory dwelling units, small independent homes on the same property as another home. Those accessory dwelling units are typically built over a garage, Bliss noted.
Previously, ADUs could only be built on single-family, owner-occupied properties. Now, there is no owner-occupied requirement, and they can be permitted alongside single- or two-family homes.
The zoning changes also streamlines the review process. It removes parking requirements for ADUs and changes the height and setback requirements.
The change gives homeowners looking to add an ADU more flexibility, according to a FAQ from the city on the zoning changes. They can make the decision to rent out their home even after adding an ADU, and there aren’t requirements regarding who they can sell the property to.
The change also makes it easier to finance, the FAQ says, as requiring owner occupancy makes an ADU a higher-risk loan from a bank’s perspective. This opens the possibility of adding an ADU to more homeowners, the city said.
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ADUs still cannot be used as a short term rental such as an Airbnb, the city also noted. The city only allows single rooms in an owner-occupied home to be rented out on a short-term basis, and up to two adults can stay overnight.
SIX UNRELATED ROOMMATES
Up until now, up to four unrelated occupants could live in a home. Now, that limit has been increased to six.
The change does not mean six unrelated people could cram into any home in the city. There are minimum area requirements, such as 150 square feet in the living room and 100 square feet in the dining room, compared to 120 and 80 for homes for three to five unrelated occupants.
“I think a great example of that is some of the work that the nonprofit Well House is doing,” Bliss told News 8. “They take houses, they renovate them, people can rent out an individual single room. … Right now they can serve up to four people in those houses. So potentially they could — if that house is large enough and they meet the building code requirements — then they could increase that to six people.”
GROUP LIVING
The requirements for single-room occupancy homes, or group living homes like shelters, were also changed. Zoning for single-room occupancy homes formerly only supported large facilities in commercial districts, Turkelson previously told News 8.
Now, small-scale SROs will be allowed in residential zone districts.
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The zoning change lays out a tiered review process for small-, medium- or large-scale SROs and increases tenancy requirements from 32 days to 90 days. It also requires that SROs submit a Good Neighbor Plan when a special land use is required.
MORE UNITS IN ONE BUILDING
Also changed was the small-scale residential infill requirements, but only for homes in traditional neighborhoods.
The requirements for lot area and width for homes with two to six units were reduced, and the requirements for established lot area and width were removed. Multi-family developments with two to six units will also be allowed on certain network or link residential streets.
Existing homes that have one or two units can be converted to have more units.
In the FAQ, the city notes a concern that single family homes could be demolished and replaced with a three- to four-unit rental unit. But the city said it would cost around $885,000 to buy the home, demolish it and build the new building, and then the units would likely need to be rented out for around $2,400 a month.
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“There must be potential renters in the market who are willing to pay $900 per month more than they would pay to rent an existing, older two-bedroom unit in the same neighborhood,” the Q&A states.
There are currently 40,622 rental units spread out across 16,041 buildings in the city’s residential rental registry, the city’s FAQ says.
PARKING
Finally, the zoning changes eliminate parking requirements for developments of six or fewer units on certain streets in traditional neighborhoods.
They also change the required distance to transit from 300 feet to half a mile for parking reduction.
In the documents for Tuesday’s meeting, Mobile GR said it supports eliminating parking requirements in traditional neighborhoods and in fact would support removing the requirements throughout the city.
It noted there are around 122,500 on-street parking spaces throughout the city, and on average 21.7% are in use. Just over half of those parking spaces are in traditional neighborhoods, which average 30.4% occupancy.
“Based solely on this data, there is excess parking capacity across the City and in Traditional Neighborhoods to absorb additional housing development and the proposed Housing Policy Zoning Ordinance Text Amendments,” the documents say.
It noted that parking permit programs, like the one in the Belknap Lookout neighborhood, could be put in place in neighborhoods where more than 75% of parking spaces are in use at peak times.
WHAT’S NEXT?
“The zoning text amendments represent significant changes from existing policies. However, it’s important to remember that these changes are heavily informed by past community-informed and community engaged planning work, current Community Master Planning (CMP) work, state and national zoning reform publications and best practices from around the country,” Turkelson said in a Tuesday release from the city. “It shows the City’s willingness to advance critical housing discussions and recommendations prior to the adoption of the Community Master Plan. The text amendments align with the community feedback we have received in the CMP process. They were carefully considered and developed along with community feedback to help increase housing supply, diversify housing types and increase housing affordability.”
The documents note that there is not a big culture in West Michigan of homeowners wanting to rent out space on their property. It said it hopes 2 to 5% of homeowners will take advantage of some of the zoning changes over the next decade.
It also hopes the changes could help slow down the pace of higher-income households buying and moving into homes in historically lower-income neighborhoods.
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The market currently favors homeowners over landlords, the documents note, as “the current average price to purchase an older home in Grand Rapids cannot be justified by local rental rates. In other words, many landlords cannot recoup their costs when buying older homes given the repairs that may be necessary to satisfy code requirements.”
The FAQ notes that historic districts will likely be impacted the least by the changes, as those homes are typically more expensive.
Based on what has happened in other cities that have had similar zoning reform, the city believes around 5% to 15% of new housing will be small-scale in established neighborhoods, the FAQ says. Between 85% and 95% is expected to come from larger developments.
The city will track the results of the zoning changes, and an update will be shared at an Economic Development Project Team meeting in half a year.
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