Ann Arbor nonprofit's affordability solution: Thousands of new housing units in walkable communities

How long does it take for you to go from your house to school, a grocery store, work, or a park? Urban planners like those at the nonprofit Equitable Ann Arbor Land Trust (EA2) increasingly want the answer to be a 20-minute walk, no matter where you live. 
Brian ChambersBrian Chambers.
"We’re trying to bring housing in for moderate-income households that are working for public entities – the university, city, public schools, daycare entities, health care entities," says EA2 board member Brian Chambers. "This is a moderate-income initiative."

Ann Arbor is a victim of its own success in some ways. The University of Michigan (U-M), Ann Arbor's tech industry, and the town's cultural scene have all flourished since the rise of the information economy in the '90s. Ann Arbor's worst-kept secret is that this growth has also contributed to a housing affordability crisis that hit the city long before similar issues impacted most other areas of the U.S.

EA2 was founded in 2019 to solve this problem from an urban planning and housing development perspective. Founded by real estate developer and U-M lecturer Peter Allen and fellow developer and U-M grad Sarah Lorenz, EA2's website presents the nonprofit as "an intermediary and broker for all future development in Ann Arbor." It advocates for the "20-minute neighborhood" concept, or the idea that residents' basic needs should be within a 20-minute walk. That approach has worked well in other cities, but remains novel in the Midwest.
Christopher TaylorChristopher Taylor.
"Our city was not designed with that principle at top of mind. However, it’s also true that we are undergoing changes, so I think it is a useful lodestar for us to consider as we reflect on our comprehensive use plan and ultimately work to affect its implementation," says Ann Arbor Mayor Christopher Taylor. 

Sizing up Ann Arbor's housing crisis

The cost of housing is a crisis across American communities big and small. EA2 has conducted studies documenting how this has been especially true for communities that are centers of the knowledge economy.

Chambers' research found that U-M has added 13,000 students and 21,000 staff in the last two decades. The university has not been building dorms nearly fast enough to meet demand, and private housing construction has been low enough that most new units are pricey.

Other similarly sized college towns like Princeton, N.J.; New Haven, Conn.; or Ithaca, N.Y., have run into even worse housing cost issues. According to an EA2 analysis of Zillow housing prices, Princeton saw a 129% increase in house prices from 2000 to 2022, while Ann Arbor saw only an 8% increase over the same time frame. Chambers' analysis found that while many smaller college towns are even less affordable than Ann Arbor because wages there are lower, Ann Arbor is "on the path to catch up" to the low affordability of larger cities like Austin.

In the meantime, housing in Washtenaw County is so expensive that even U-M has had problems with staff being unable to find a place to live. The university has formed a specialized task force to find systemic solutions to prevent a ridiculous scenario – a new hire who has to say no to U-M because Ann Arbor is simply too expensive for them to survive. Responding to the idea that you have to be upper-middle class to buy in Ann Arbor, Chambers quickly raises that threshold – "Upper class," he interjects.

EA2 is aiming to solve some of these problems. By focusing on a nonprofit model, EA2 hopes to scramble the pattern of conflicting market motivators and generate the workforce housing that Ann Arbor needs to remain economically functional. 

Building an affordable Ann Arbor

One of EA2's key proposals is to establish a nonprofit community land trust (CLT). CLTs develop housing and then share equity in the resulting units with residents, usually also employing deed restrictions to preserve affordability by limiting future sale price. The approach draws on a model popular in Vienna, where nonprofit outfits build condominiums or rental buildings that can range from low-rise buildings to the size of Ann Arbor's Tower Plaza, just a train or streetcar ride away from the historic center. Singapore uses a similar model. 

EA2's CLT would require that at least one member of each applicant household is: employed by a major employer such as U-M, Michigan Medicine, or Ann Arbor Public Schools; qualified for a home loan; and making 30% to 120% of the area median income. 

EA2 has proposed 16 projects of various scopes around Ann Arbor. They run from just a few hundred to several thousand units per project, and are always transit-oriented. While transit-oriented developments can come in a variety of forms, the primary features are an emphasis on bus stops, rapid-bus systems, or train stations instead of on parking, and mixed-use buildings. Mixed-use developments usually include streetfront retail, sometimes a floor of offices or studios above, and several floors of apartments on top. 

In Ann Arbor’s case, EA2 wants to take the strategy you might expect, anchoring housing development around Blake Transit Center and Kerrytown’s Amtrak station. EA2 is calling for adding 6,775 apartments around these two key locations. 

However, EA2 also sees a problem in that both Blake Transit Center and Ann Arbor's Amtrak station are too far away from U-M's North Campus and the eastern half of the Medical Campus. So EA2 is calling for two new transit-oriented development sites – one by the VA Hospital and one near the Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor. Both are on the city's lower-density north side. EA2 is calling for a series of four-story buildings in the two locations that would bring a total of 2,400 new housing units. 

EA2 also has big plans for substantial mixed-use development on U-M- and city-owned land along Fuller Road. EA2 is calling for $1.9 billion worth of new housing, retail space, offices, laboratories, and daycare facilities on four parking lots currently used by U-M's Medical and North campuses. EA2 says the sites could provide 100,000 square feet of new retail and bring 10,000 new residents to rental and for-sale housing within walking distance to job centers. U-M did not respond to an interview request for this article.

Transit-oriented development is already in the works in Ann Arbor as the city experiments with encouraging mixed-use development along Stadium Boulevard, Washtenaw Avenue, Plymouth Road, and other major thoroughfares. U-M is also in the early stages of exploring expanding its own bus system into a more substantial "transit connector" system. Andy LaBarre, Washtenaw County commissioner and the A2Y Chamber's executive vice-president and director of government relations, sees economic promise in these ideas.
Andy LaBarreAndy LaBarre.
"I think this concept is not an altruistic envisioning. There’s some data that points to the commercial merits of this, the economics," LaBarre says. "I think you’re going to see more of this, particularly in a post-Covid world."

Criticisms of the 20-minute neighborhood

A common criticism of Ann Arbor's current status quo is that "luxury" housing dominates much of the city's recent construction. Chambers says that's a bit of a misnomer though, as these developments charge "what the market will bear" in a city that still doesn't have enough housing units. He cites benchmarks from the Luxury Housing Marketing Institute, which defines luxury housing for Washtenaw County as units priced over $750,000, marketed primarily to investors.

"Housing that goes up in Ann Arbor, and gets labeled 'luxury,' rarely if ever gets marketed to investors," Chambers says. "... [Developers] want people to feel good with a pool and a lounge – but trust me, they are not marketing to luxury investors on the whole. They want to fill it with students." 

For others, the 20-minute neighborhood concept suggests an effort to trap residents inside specific communities, similar to some of the more dystopian American public housing experiments of the last century. Proponents usually counter that a 20-minute concept is in fact the opposite, opening up more choice in housing options (not just single-family homes, but duplexes, triplexes, and apartment buildings) and offering residents the ability to live car-free.

There is also a persistent worry that the quirky culture Ann Arbor has prided itself on for generations will get lost under a fog of corporate branding and ever-increasing prices. Chambers argues that that culture itself arose out of another period of massive population growth. The city's population more than doubled between 1940 and 1980. 

"It was a period of cultural dynamism, and Ann Arbor took on the trappings of a very progressive town. But the basis of the population going back to 1940 was very conservative," Chambers argues, adding that plans like EA2's are "lining ourselves up for potentially another growth period." 

And then there is the fear that building more housing will result in Ann Arbor’s historic buildings being destroyed. However, much of downtown Ann Arbor is already protected under historic districts. Chambers emphasizes that getting a building's historic designation rescinded for demolition is a nearly impossible bureaucratic hurdle to clear.

"We’re not likely to change those through the comprehensive plan. So, the question we should ask is: what other development should be pursued in the downtown core that takes advantage of the two regional transit centers?" Chambers says. 

Chambers also takes pains to dispute stereotypes, often rooted in racism or classism, that mixed-income development will bring in crime or otherwise be detrimental to the surrounding neighborhood. He emphasizes that EA2 aims to provide solutions for the middle class since the cost of housing for fully employed middle-class professionals is now so scarce. 

"These are critical workers, who are playing vital roles that are critical to our local economy, working for public entities or child care entities, that have employment and are looking for housing within three miles of their area of employment," he says. " … It is for those middle-income workers, who are critical for this economy." 

A final barrier that could hamper EA2's efforts is the Trump administration's ongoing efforts to slash federal spending. The administration recently had a high-profile funding standoff with Columbia University. Chambers anticipates that U-M, which figures prominently in EA2's proposals, could see similar challenges – with major implications for Ann Arbor as a whole.

"[U-M] is the largest research university in the nation. It’s probably going to get more than a haircut. I don’t know and nobody wants to see that," Chambers says. "So will that future still occur in Ann Arbor? It’s yet to be seen."

Drew Saunders is a freelance business and environmental journalist who grew up in Whitmore Lake, Michigan. He graduated from Eastern Michigan University with a Bachelor of Science degree in journalism in 2016, and earned an Master of Science degree in journalism in 2019 from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.