ann arbor is overrated. » Blog Archive

No Courage

Arbor Update has an excellent summary of the urban planning mayoral debate Friday night. As you can probably tell, it was a long debate, and the candidates seemed more similar than different most of the time. The one pivotal moment was an exchange about accessory-dwelling units (ADUs). Lumm characterized the council’s decision to drop the issue as one of “no courage.” Hieftje replied, “I don’t think you should force things down the throats of the neighborhoods,” and argued that only five or six apartments per year would be created under the ADU ordinance that had been considered.

At this point, a member of the planning faculty asked the only question of the night that got applause - essentially, is there a point at which the city needs to tell “the neighborhoods” (his own included) that they’re wrong? Lumm took the question first, reiterating that she thought that the ADU issue should have at least been discussed publicly in council. She even made good use of an old debate standby, the ordinary citizen’s story, by describing the situation of a 67-year-old woman she knew who could hardly afford to keep the house she’d lived in for 63 years without being able to rent part of it out.

When it was Hieftje’s turn to answer, he seemed slightly annoyed for the only time, saying that he’d already answered that question. Debate moderator Matt Lassiter pointed out that this was a different question from the first one that had led to the ADU discussion, and then Hieftje repeated something he’d said in response to that question, that both Democrats and Republicans on council supported letting the ADU resolution drop.

If this was supposed to make Lumm appear outside the mainstream of A2 public opinion, we can’t think of a better place to be. Throughout the rest of the evening, we found very little to disagree with from either candidate, and we’re not sure if it’s fair to define Hieftje by this exchange, but in a debate that was genteel to the point of one candidate (Lumm) apologizing for getting “political,” we’ll take our defining moments where we can.

10 Responses to “No Courage”

Thanks to AAIO and Murph for the great recaps. I’m reposting my own thoughts on the forum and those scary ADUs from a previous thread.

I thought both candidates did well, and that Lumm seemed quite well informed, contrary to some posts on previous threads, and the mayor is also very good in that sort of format. I was distressed though to hear the mayor say that he would not “shove anything down neighborhoods’ throats” when challenged on the city council’s indefensible decision to curtail the accessory dwelling unit initiative. First of all, this type of language has a long and reactionary pedigree in neighborhood politics in this country. Second what about the right of property owners to build an ADU and the right of people who work in this town to live here? Finally I was struck by the audience members who called this a failure of leadership and of political courage. The mayor simultaneously claimed that only 5-6 units per year would be built and then went on to speak of the neighborhood opposition as if it had to be treated as a legitimate expression of participatory democracy. If this is really only a few units then WHAT THE HELL were people so freaked out about? What is the point of having a Democratic super-majority and getting 3/4 of the vote if you don’t do something a little courageous once in a while?
posted by Matt on October 31st, 2004 at 3:22 pm
“If this is really only a few units then WHAT THE HELL were people so freaked out about?”

Because these units may actually go into *gasp* their neighborhoods.

The more I read about the way things work in towns like Ann Arbor, the more I believe that citizen input needs to be eliminated from the process on the per project level. The comment that they don’t want to give the citizen’s the equivalent to veto power shows a complete lack of understanding of how a developer/business person works. Vetoing a project and repeatedly tabling a project because of government delays are the *exact* same thing.

Dumbest thing I culled from Murph’s notes: the person living in fantasyland who thinks that developers need to “get used to making a few points less” on a project. Yeah, that’s exactly what they’ll do. No wait, they’ll just build their housing in Saline, Dexter or Ypsi. Hooray for sprawl.

Murph, can you tell me how on earth citizens have come to the conclusion that it’s the developers rather than the citizens that have to pony up for affordable housing?
posted by todd leopold on October 31st, 2004 at 6:14 pm
Todd,

This is a pretty complex issue. Some of the most successful affordable housing and race/class integration programs have been in places such as Montgomery County, Maryland, where policies of “inclusionary zoning” mandate that all new developments contain a certain percentage of affordable units. The basis for this policy–correct in my view–is that new developments receive so many subsidies from the existing tax base and government policies (sewer hookup, water, tax rebatements, on and on) that it is fair to mandate mixed-income zoning. So asking developers to play a role in helping create affordable housing is a sound policy in principle, although there are better and worse ways to do it in practice.

That said, I agree with you that citizens of the town ought to be more willing to put our money where our Democratic votes are. I believe that Ann Arborites voted down an affordable housing millage a while back, before I moved here so I am not sure when. Really there ought to be some combination of municipal/government and private developer contributions to affordable housing. But it seems to me that it is an entirely legitimate usage of the rezoning process to require that new additions to our community include a certain density and a certain affordability. For most of the last century most rezonings were for class-homogeneous developments that worsened segregation and exclusive housing patterns, and it is an appropriate public policy to require the opposite for the future.
posted by Anonymous on October 31st, 2004 at 6:58 pm
Jane Lumm mentioned in Friday’s debate that Ann Arbor often makes illegal requests of developers and they don’t sue, so I wonder how much of a deterrent the affordable housing requirements are if developers want to build here so badly.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on October 31st, 2004 at 8:34 pm
Todd, I can give a few possible factors.

1. People know that, if the developers have to provide affordable housing, they won’t be able to afford the development, and will just go away. And that’s what they want.

2. People think that building in Ann Arbor is desireable enough that developers will bend over backwards to do it, so we may as well have them do whatever we want.

3. Having the community do it (with the city as agent of community will) is GASP public housing, while requiring developers to do it is simply encouraging the market to provide affordable housing.

I think all of Carlberg, Lumm, Hieftje, and Reichardt said variations of “the community does need to start paying for affordable housing before it’s really going to happen, but the community just hasn’t decided it actually values affordable housing yet.” But note that affordable housing consumed about 45 minutes of each night’s forum, so there’s a lot to say–I can’t possibly do it justice here.
posted by Murph on October 31st, 2004 at 11:28 pm
AAiO, the demands Lumm was mentioning are called “exactions” (Lumm made a comment about “Ann Arbor being a very demanding and exacting city” when talking about this, and I still haven’t decided whether she knew she was using “exacting” in a technical sense.)–the Supreme Court has declared them to be illegal unless (a) the exaction is strongly linked to fixing some public harm caused by the development, and (b) the cost to the developer is roughly proportionate to the harm in question. So it’s kind of a game of chicken: the developer can either pony up and provide the exaction, or sue, spend a lot of money in court, and hope that the exaction in question doesn’t meet those conditions; the city can ask whatever they want, as long as it isn’t so blatant that the developer knows he has a sure case.

As Lumm mentioned, the city is pretty good at staying on the right side of the line and not actually getting sued–I’m not sure whether the affordable housing requirements on developments would pass the test (is the development *causing* a lack of affordable housing? probably not.) but it’s easier for the developers to build it than to sue. On the other hand, it pushes up the cost of the rest of the units, because the developer has to eat the cost of part of the affordable units, and so asks more for the others.
posted by Murph on October 31st, 2004 at 11:37 pm
Murph,

I’m not sure I understand this point. You’re the technical expert, not me, but I thought that municipalities had the right to require certain things in the rezoning process such as mixed-income housing. Would it be correct to say that if a developer wanted to get site approval on a specific plot that fit within the existing zoning, then this question of “exactings” enters in, but if it is a rezoning or part of a master plan then the city has the right to have certain minimal requirements? Isn’t mandatory exclusionary zoning of 2 acre lots or minimum house sizes the flip side of mandatory inclusionary zoning of specific densities or of mixed-income? Both legal if applied across the board without favoritism? So the city’s extra-legal angle would be the ad-hoc nature of the process here? Sorry, I’m confused.
posted by Matt on November 1st, 2004 at 12:51 am
The difference here is that in Maryland, inclusionary zoning is specifically required *by state law*. Michigan, however, does not have the enabling legislation to allow for inclusionary zoning. If A2 enacted inclusionary zoning, it is quite likely to end up being sued by someone and becoming a court case. Since the legislature has not specifically allowed nor denied the practice, it could go either way depending on who hears it (IMO).

An added problem with including low-income units into someplace like Ashley Mews is that they are appraised and taxed *as if they were market-rate units* even though they are not and can never be. That’s a serious problem because without some sort of City control over the units, no low-income housing unit will remain low-income for very long.

All that said, I am very much for inclusionary zoning, for _not_ grouping low-income housing, and including low-income units in new development. We just have a lot more to handle than the local zoning codes in order to do it. I’m also very happy to hear that Lumm took Hieftje to task for the ADU fiasco; a more embarassing lack of spine I can not imagine for him and everyone on Council.
posted by KGS on November 1st, 2004 at 9:37 am
KGS has it right: Ann Arbor can darn well write it into their zoning ordinances, but, since local zoning is just an application of power the state has handed down, and Michigan has *not* handed down inclusionary zoning either legislatively or judicially, there’s still a risk that a court case might knock it down. I think inclusionary zoning is probably safer than, say, requiring developers to contribute to offsite parks or roadways, but there’s still that chance.

At least, I hope that’s the way it works–otherwise this afternoon’s “Legal Aspects of the Planning Process” midterm might go poorly.
posted by Murph on November 1st, 2004 at 10:28 am
And, Matt, you bring up “flipside of exclusionary zoning”. Exclusionary zoning is something which is also challengable. NJ, for example, requires inclusionary zoning (every muni must provide their “fair share” of the region’s low-income housing needs, based on population) not as a result of legislation, but because of a court case that challenged a township’s exclusionary zoning and won. The only inclusionary zoning requirement / restriction on exclusionary zoning that I know of in Michigan is that local governments cannot zone out mobile homes or manufactured housing. I don’t think that either large-lot zoning or inclusionary zoning has been tested in Michigan courts yet.
posted by Murph on November 1st, 2004 at 10:31 am