From Detroit to the Upper Peninsula, Michiganians are struggling in a housing and rental market that is increasingly unaffordable and unfair. It’s hurting our economy, deters job creation and makes it impossible for a majority of residents to live in the communities where they work. The stories from hopeful homeowners trying to make their dream a reality break my heart every day.
A few weeks ago in Detroit, I met a single mother who used every dime in her savings to rent a home in a neighborhood she’d dreamt of living in her whole life. Then the ceiling in her kitchen fell in one morning as she wrote the rent check she’d saved up to pay all month. Shortly after that, the home’s plumbing failed and the ceiling in her bedroom collapsed. She had to move out and is still searching for a place to call home because of a neglectful landlord who cashed her rent checks while skipping repairs and cutting corners.
Her story echoed a tragedy last year, when two children died in a Detroit parking garage after spending months sleeping in their family car.
At a roundtable in Grand Rapids, I heard stories of parents having to choose between feeding their kids and paying their mortgage. In Marquette, nurses and teachers told me how much they wanted to stay and serve residents in the UP, but couldn’t find a place to live due to consistent housing shortages. A business leader in Muskegon said he was eager to create more good-paying jobs in the city but was worried about whether his workers would be able to find a home nearby.In every community, it’s the same story: A broken system hurting our economy and failing Michiganians.
We can fix this. We can do better for the millions of Michiganians who hope to build their life and raise their family in our state. If elected as governor, I’ll work with lawmakers and local governments to enact a transformational plan to make that happen.
First, we need to build homes faster and better by streamlining how we build. Restrictive zoning, outdated codes, skyrocketing property taxes and endless red tape strangle construction while more people compete for fewer homes. The result is predictable: Prices go up, and families get squeezed.
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This can be fixed in part by lowering the cost of construction and speeding up the building process. That means cutting approval times from months to weeks, funding affordable housing production and partnering with developers to build everything from starter homes to apartments. As we build more, prices go down.
We must also invest in starter and workforce housing, so young people can start their lives in Michigan and growing families can move out of starter homes, allowing new buyers to move in. We can also provide targeted mortgage interest-rate support to homeowners who did everything right but are struggling to make payments due to high interest rates.
And finally, we need accountability for landlords who neglect their properties and private equity firms driving up costs. That includes nipping the problem in the bud through restricting the sale of starter homes to private equity firms for the first 100 days they are on the market to give residents the chance to pay fair market value for their homes.
As Michigan’s Secretary of State, I know a thing or two about how to eliminate red tape and transform broken bureaucracies into models of efficiency and results. When it comes to housing, our current process is too expensive and complex, fails to hold bad actors accountable and places an unfair burden on new homeowners. We can change that with a state government that partners aggressively with local governments to streamline building, support new homeowners and end the corruption.
Solving this housing crisis is, at its core, ultimately about whether every Michiganian can afford to build a life and thrive in our state. From food to doctors’ visits, healthcare to electricity, the cost of everything is going up. A well-run, efficient state government that holds bad actors accountable and invests in people is the key to turning this around.
We must work together to make it happen, all across our state.
Jocelyn Benson is Michigan’s current Secretary of State and a candidate for governor.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Jocelyn Benson: The way to end Michigan’s housing crisis
