Communities throughout Michigan and many states are burdened with the same question; how to make housing affordable?

Harbor Springs may struggle with – what is ‘affordable’ – and by whose measure? What one neighborhood needs is assuredly different than the needs of another neighborhood.

We listen to the City of Harbor Springs and its’ committees try to plan to recreate a predominantly resort community into a year round ‘affordable‘ community. The goals are for year-round sustainable jobs, a vibrant year-round downtown and the housing for each need. This will take some creative supply vs demand reckoning.

The new zoning approved in May 2024 is simply creating smaller lots with porches closer to the street; breaking up one or two dwelling footprints into two or three lots for development; thereby offering choices to a current or new landowner resident. This zoning creates pocket communities within the 1.3 sq. mi. municipality.  Small lots next to larger lots, lots of off-street parking, some with almost no parking.

The new zoning will remove trees, homes for wildlife and shade for us, and it adds driveways for more off street parking in the back yards.  The awful sounding name of the “by right” ADU’s replaced our old fashioned and historical version of “carriage houses”. Why?

In the hopes of the new zoning, these newly allowed “by right” carriage houses are the new choice for responsible cost effective standard, and appear to fulfill the insatiable desire for affordable homes in Harbor Springs. They are to be small homes for our kids who will soon grow up, temporary housing for employees that eventually may want families and roommates or to entertain in what used to be your back yard, and  if the “ADU’s” are  up the stairs above a garage they can also be for family members and nurses.  No short-term rentals will be allowed. Have these choices and all the ramifications ever been thought out? The entire town needs this conversation. What one neighborhood needs is assuredly different than the needs of another neighborhood.

Finally, it is true, after two years of hard work and dozens of meetings, the Planning Commissioners, the hired City Planners and the City Council have come up with the same solutions every other community guided by City Planners and a State government Redevelopment Ready Community mandate suggests. They are eager to assist turning access to property into a State-wide growth panacea that will solve every community’s problem.

Protecting and preserving older communities like ours that have traditions founded in community insight,  and the neighborly manners of neighborhood problem solving has worked for us for 50 years. It’s time we go back to community inputs, not State templates.

We can and should solve this and any other burdensome community dilemma on our own, with feedback from conservative and liberal mindsets, with full-time and part-time residents, with community hospitality staff, local safety service folks, families of young (and old) and business owners alike.

We need to ask ourselves – Who do we want to be as a community? – What problems do we need to solve together? Vote Yes for the Repeal of Ordinance #439 and let’s start over,  building on the good works done to date, but with the community of voices.