TRAVERSE CITY — Housing was the topic of discussion during a study session held by Traverse City Commissioners Monday night.
During the study session, city officials heard from the Fair Housing Center of West Michigan, Michigan State Housing Development Authority, the Office of Rural Prosperity, Housing North, and the City Attorney.
Planning Director of Traverse City Shawn Winter says “So there’s many aspects that affect housing. Two key ones are affordability and availability. So the Planning Commission has been working for a few years on the availability by modifying zoning requirements to allow more housing types. The city Commission, on the other hand, has more of a purview over incentives and tax abatements that can help bring that type of development to life.”
Since it was a study session no decisions could be made.
Winter, says he feels more confident about being able to combat the problem after hear from the invited participants.
He adds “we were encouraged by the dialog that they acknowledged the situation at hand. The difficulties with with, addressing the housing crisis. And we were happy that they provided us with what we felt was a strong starting point.They expressed interest in some of these tools. They, as we anticipated, would like more information. So we’re working internally to pull that together so they can have a stronger understanding and make a more informed decision. ”
Winter says there was one aspect to the problem that stuck out the most.
Winter tells us “one thing that there seemed to be a strong interest in is the State enabled Attainable Housing Facilities Act, and this is a up to 12 year, 50% tax reduction for dwellings or projects that are 1 to 4 dwellings. So small scale projects. And the city seemed to be interested in this because they’re hearing a lot of discussion from residents that they would like to be part of the housing solution.”
Winter says he expects the city to discuss what they learned at future meetings in order to make more informed decisions about how to solve the housing crisis.