Latest / Conversations with Mark / Conversation with Mark, featuring Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce
Transcript
- Mark Huizenga: Well, thanks joining us again. This is another podcast, Conversations with Mark. Today, we're joined by Josh Langer from the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce. ⁓ Josh Langer a senior vice president of advocacy here at the Grand Rapids Chamber. He's a good of West Michigan, and ⁓ he's really got an expertise in housing. So today we're going to talk about housing. And I think a lot of times, Josh, when you think about what people have to say about housing is they're concerned about this notion of affordability affordability doesn't necessarily mean inexpensive. Can you talk a little bit about what affordability really means in this marketplace and maybe how we've come to that conclusion about what affordability means? ⁓ Yeah, I think ⁓ you a really good point, Senator, that people have different views of what affordable means. The kind of traditional big A affordable is that, is housing that someone with very low income, typically like 30 % or less of the area median income can occupy. But traditionally now we're talking about affordability like it's 30 % of someone's income. So what's affordable to someone ⁓ that's $100,000 and ⁓ what's to someone earning $60,000 can be a big difference. What we really want, and we wanna take this back up to like a ⁓ higher level of discussion, is that we have options at different price points so that our community has options for everyone, whether you're a school student or graduating high school and heading into a career, heading off to college or maybe graduating college, or you're ⁓ someone that's retiring and ⁓ looking downsize, we really want people, regardless of their type of work or their stage in life, to have some type of option. And so I our community has done a lot to try to deliver that and we've taken a lot of steps. But it's also a really challenging problem. And it's one that we still want to stay focused on in the next few years here. When I watch the news and hear housing, the housing crisis isn't unique to West Michigan or Grand Rapids. I hear it in New York. We're talking about rent controls there again. We're talking about places like Dallas or Denver. All over the country, people talk about housing as being a crisis. How did we how did we get here? mean, it's This can't be just one factor of Grand Rapids is growing and maybe it's not just growing cities, but it seems like it's it's got a complex multiple reasons multiple people and organizations or Situations to blame for it. Well like many things in your job Things are complex if it was easy we'd have already fixed it And so when you look at some of the fact especially the last 20 years you go back to the Recession What we saw is what home builders used to build? tens of thousands of homes in Michigan every year. And we are still well below that mark ⁓ every year since then. ⁓ at the same time, ⁓ ⁓ Michigan as a whole has been pretty flat, West Michigan has been growing and not just growing in terms of population, but growing faster in terms of households. And so really when you're trying to say, do we need? You're looking at households ⁓ versus we have available. ⁓ And been under producing for a while. And so what we want to see is a market response to that demand. And that means how do we best match what the next five, 10, 15 years needs with what's available? And so a lot of times we talk about missing middle typologies because those are kind of the popular for folks. And it's things we don't necessarily do well. I think our our market has been better at responding to large lot single family and large apartment complexes. And people often looking at opportunities like live in a duplex. It's slightly more affordable by its nature. Maybe it's an unwalkable neighborhood or maybe, you know, a smaller apartment unit, or maybe they just want to live in a townhome and buy it for themselves. How do we bring some of those to our community, whether it's Walker, Granville, Grand Rapids? We're trying to see how we can get those options available at all price points. You talked about the housing stock and the fact that in 2008, the financial crisis occurred. And it seems like it really hit Michigan harder than a lot of other places. just have ⁓ quick story. It's anecdotal, I guess. But when wife and I built her house, we hired a drywaller to do a bunch of the work in there. And then we put a little addition on our house. And I called the drywaller up and said, hey, can you do a ⁓ little for me here? And he said, Mark, I don't do drywalling anymore. ⁓ And just was like, well, great. What do you do now? He's like, well, since the 08 crisis, I don't do drywall at all anymore. In fact, I fix ATMs. it seems like we have this shift of people that like it's everyone's got to take care of their families, but he had to make a shift out of construction and into a completely separate industry. seems we probably have more of that. But, you know, in the last, I don't know, maybe five or 10 years, especially we've seen one more people go into the trades, whether it's electrical, ⁓ plumbing, drywall, or what have you, all the different components that build a house. Do you think that had an impact on West Michigan as well? Yeah, absolutely. And if you ⁓ we've got members in a lot of the trades and a of them are doing really well and they're really busy to the point where you you talk to an owner ⁓ and you ask him to do something and you feel bad like, yeah, I just got off a triple shift because my brother-in-law called in sick ⁓ and now, you know, I'm happy to jump into this meeting. that's pretty common. And it is good you're noting there is big shift. I think West Michigan and across the country. that the trades have kind of making a rebound, but it's going to take a while. And at the same time as some of those shifts, we've seen inflationary costs. So the price of shingles is more than it used to be. The price of wood is more than it used to be. ⁓ some of that has kind of come back down, but that all has an impact. as a region, we can't make certain things cost less. What we can do is look at, ⁓ what ⁓ we allow to be built? Can ⁓ allow for more ⁓ homes? Can we allow for more? You designs that are more affordable by their nature that can help mitigate some of these things there is no easy button and we're not gonna solve it overnight but we can set a stage that's gonna allow for for more growth over time and Hopefully that has a positive it will have a positive impact not only on cost but on our communities I think it's also interesting when you look at the houses that were built and the ⁓ and the ⁓ in our community if you think about how Granville was built out or maybe jenison or even through the 80s, what happened in Kentwood. really not building too many neighborhoods like that. It seems like things have changed and I don't know, is it a cultural shift from what people want because we're seeing greater density? ⁓ seeing even houses on the West side, for instance, areas that were, ⁓ you kind of sleepy and quiet, but a house goes as demolished and somebody, instead of putting one house there, they're putting a three or a four story building in there. Is it affordability? Is it what people want? Or is it really both? I think it is both. One of the areas we've been really focusing with some of our partners in town is looking at like what you're seeing those corridors where you've got you've got thriving neighborhoods off of them. And you might have some lots that you're like, why isn't someone doing something here? And we're trying to figure out how do we get projects in those areas to make financial sense so that someone will do something there. ⁓ And also smarter, not just for ⁓ The person making the investment or the builder it's smarter for the community because if we sprawl out putting new ⁓ sewer and in putting new Roads in extremely expensive and we start talking about building it out for not that many homes it never really makes tax financial sense for a community ⁓ and public and all those things so ⁓ we really our governments to look at how they approach land use and how they approach Zoning restrictions and say how do we make better use of the the existing infrastructure? have because not only is it smarter, but it's also in higher demand One of the things that I think really was an aha moment for me is when we talk about Shrinking household sizes and the type of homes that people are using for you mentioned Kind of those urban ⁓ neighborhoods. I in Fulton Heights. It's a great urban neighborhood I got in before things got really expensive fortunately for me ⁓ And I want other people to have those opportunities because I can step out of my home in a nice warm Grand Rapids summer. I can walk to a lot of great places and walk home. I'm only a mile and a half from my office downtown, but it's a really quiet, great neighborhood for families thrive. We want to see more of those places and every community is going to have to figure out what's best for them. But we want to make sure that we're thinking forward because the easiest thing to do is to keep doing what we've been doing. And unfortunately that hasn't produced the best outcome yet. And so I'm really thankful though. think a lot of our communities, Kentwood Walker have looked at certain things. Grand Rapids has done a lot of zoning land use changes over the years and is seeing ⁓ the benefits of that. I know like Gaines Township, Sparta, a lot of places are saying, okay, what can we do? What does best look like for us? And so wanna be a resource there and we wanna talk about the issues so that ⁓ folks know it's time to really jump on it. Yeah, and you can talk about different communities and what they like, but it's also there isn't a one size fits all. You can't just say, hey, we're going to do X, Y, and Z and expect that everyone's going to like that. I remember even when I was on the planning commission at the city of Walker, they talked about something that they referred to as live work. I think people know what that means now, but to take a two or three or four story building and put a bakery or a restaurant on the first floor and then live above that. think that when my parents first got married, they would have thought that's crazy. But people today, they expect and hope that it's local, that it's walkable, that they can get a great cup of coffee or they can meet for a donut or get some food from the bakery. I think there's this resurgence of people that want those walkable. And even you start to see little food markets, whether it's Aldi or Meijer, that's walkable from the neighborhoods. People, don't just like that. They seek that out. And we're really actually meeting a certain ⁓ when we do that kind of thing. Yeah. And you can't, I mean, everyone's going to be different. So do we wanna not have large single family homes in the West side of Walker? No, we wanna have those too because some people want them. But in areas like, like I said, some of these neighborhoods, there's a huge demand. That's why the prices have gone up so much. If you would have told me 10 years ago, Ada would be this thriving village. Like I think it's shocking to people how well it's doing. So the question is for places like Walker or places like Granville, what do you want your... community look like and trying to match what's possible with what your vision is. And it can look a little bit different everywhere, but it's great to have options. So let's try to see where the demand is. And a lot of times it's those walkable amenity rich neighborhoods and figure out how do we build just a little bit more of that because what folks are drawn to right now. You've been really influential here at the Grand Rapids Chamber in helping to shape that and helping communities to learn these things. But beyond that, you've done a tremendous amount with policy. And I think sometimes people want to know what the state's doing to make things better. How can we help things become more affordable? lot of people probably don't know about MISTA, Michigan State Housing Development Authority. They're an entity that's funded by the state through the budget process, but they're a standalone entity. They do a lot of really creative things right here in our community and frankly, across the whole state, of course. ⁓ can you talk a little bit about what an impact an organization like MISTA has in West Michigan? ⁓ Yeah, I found them to be a great partner and they've really been leaning into ⁓ being more of a collaborator with regions and with stakeholders and organizations in those regions, especially through these regional housing partnerships they've ⁓ there's statewide housing partnership board that I've been ⁓ fortunate serve on. ⁓ But do everything from administer housing vouchers ⁓ where individual low income can get into a market unit or they can invest in projects. invest in some of the work we've been working on like homelessness response. They've also invested in projects like what ICCF did with the Seymour school and taking this dilapidated building had been closed for I think two decades and turning it into kind of entry level condos for families to purchase in a thriving neighborhood. Yeah, entry level but beautiful. Beautiful. They did an amazing job. Every time when I first got out of the car and looked at the back area where they have this courtyard, I remember telling the team that I'm like, this is transformational. it's, you know, a couple dozen units, I believe. So it doesn't seem like it's moving the world, but man, what an impact that will have on those families that get the opportunity to live there. And I think sometimes you just got to look at it like a project at a time. And how do we continue to find ways to get things done? Because it's hard. It's hard to build. You go, you talk to lots of builders, I'm sure, right? A lot of them look like they hang their head like man. It's it's hard out here that there's a lot of pressures but you know, they keep showing up and they keep trying to do it and I think the the communities ⁓ Are more aware of the challenges and the reasons behind the whys behind this and so ⁓ I'm the next five years Grand Rapids Kent County We're gonna continue to do great things. know an interesting story. I had a conversation with a leader of a church from that's a statewide organization And she was telling me that they were probably going to have some excess capacity. Churches were closing across the area. And she said, we just don't know what to do, but we want to do the right thing with the property we have. I said, well, let me, ⁓ me connect you to the folks from MISTA and see what we can do. And, was one of the easiest calls, but most influential things that I could have done, I think, because it was a simple connection. ⁓ And she back and said, we know that we can use this property that's access to us and use it for housing, housing stock that could be available. for market rate housing across the entire state of Michigan. So I think, I guess what I have to say about housing right now is that there is something for everybody, but it's also kind of hard for everybody to do at the same time. It's hard to say, but there's always- There's a reason we're talking about it right now. It's probably the number one issue I talk about with people because it's challenging without question. ⁓ ⁓ it's a win-win. I think if we can create options at all price points, if we can invest in what communities want to see, Not only does it support just at the housing level, but think about how it brings the ability for folks to have a really high quality life. And that's really what we're about. Whether you're a business association, a city, we're really just about wanting to have the best here. We want to be selfish for our region. Take care of our people. Yeah, we want to have a thriving place. We want to be the best in the country. And I think we've taken a lot of steps, but there's a lot of work ahead. Well, thanks, Josh, for hosting us today. And thank you for your knowledge on housing. and for making a difference in our community and actually our whole state. So thank you so much. Thank you, Senator.