Strongtowns' Housing Policy

Strongtowns' finally has guidance on housing policy in the form of "The Housing Ready City toolkit (PDF)". It is six simple land-use reforms:

• Allow single-family home conversion to duplex or triplex, by right.
• Permit backyard cottages in all residential zones.
• Legalize starter homes in all residential zones
• Eliminate minimum lot size requirements in existing neighborhoods.
• Repeal parking mandates for housing.
• Streamline the approval process.

How does Grand Rapids score on being a Housing Ready City? 1.5 out of six (6), or 25%. That's an F (fail). That's "Permit backyard cottages in all residential zones" [less than a year ago] and a bit of "Streamline the approval process". The "Housing Crisis" has been blazing for over a decade; the city felt the need to develop the "Great Housing Strategies" document in 2015! And, here we are. The state of housing policy in Grand Rapids represents a failure on a generational scale. We should have done something a decade ago, the time we can do something is now.

Links

• Is Your Town Housing Ready?, Strongtowns
  • "The Housing Ready City toolkit (PDF)"
• Great Housing Strategies, 2015 ... the city has taken the page down
• The Great Housing Strategies document (PDF, 2015), UrbanGR
• Housing Supply Accelerator Playbook v3 (2024) PDF, National League of Cities & American Planning Association
• Housing Kent Data Dashboard, Housing Kent 2024-04
• Housing Kent: State of Housing 2024 Report, published 2025-02-17
• Housing NEXT Needs Assessment Update, 2022-2023
• Housing NEXT: Presentation (PDF), Report (PDF) [July, 2020]
• The state of Grand Rapids housing costs: A 10-year review, Rapid Growth Media 2018-08-23
• Cracking the affordable housing conundrum with creative solutions, Rapid Growth Media 2018-04-05
  • Hows that creativity working out? The city of Grand Rapids constructed less than 700 units in 2024. What we need are clear, bold, simple policies to blow out the bureaucratic pipes. Top-down managerialism has failed. We need to be building that many housing units a month to achieve market stability; or 22 units a day to meet the need for 14,106 units by 2027. Our current policies place us, comically, below that number.