“So, why isn’t Ypsilanti a good long-term solution for Ann Arbor’s affordable housing issues?”

That’s how the story in today’s Ann Arbor News about the work of a consulting firm brought in by the County to assess where we stand relative to affordable housing begins. The onus, it would seem, is on Ypsi. The question isn’t, “How can we better serve the poor?”, but “Why can’t Ypsi just deal with it?” And, yeah, that kind of ticks me off. As we’ve discussed before, I don’t much like the suggestion on the part of some Annarbourites that our community exists primarily in order to keep those they see as undesirable out of their beautiful neighborhoods and away from their successful, well-funded public schools.

Again, I should be clear that it’s not people with lower incomes that I have an issue with. I purposely chose to live in Ypsilanti, knowing full well that many in this community live in poverty. And I did so not because I saw an opportunity for gentrification, but because I genuinely love this diverse, quirky, beautiful, albeit occasionally crazy, community. And, for what it’s worth, I couldn’t imagine myself living in Ann Arbor. So these aren’t the ramblings of a man who wants Ypsi to become a quiet little bedroom community of Ann Arbor, with a downtown PF Chang’s and soaring property values. And these aren’t the rantings of a man who wants to build a wall in order to keep out Ann Arbor’s economic refugees. I know a lot of folks moving here because they can no longer afford Ann Arbor, and they’re great people. No, these are the rantings of a man who is pissed about the commonly held belief in Ann Arbor that, once the poor have been pushed beyond their borders, they’re no longer their problem. And I don’t much appreciate the, “Well, that’s what Ypsi is for” sentiment that permeates these conversations.

And before you start posting here, saying, “I live in Ann Arbor, and I’m not like that,” I’ll concede that there are some pretty good folks in Ann Arbor who genuinely care about things like diversity and equality, and see the wisdom of a more coordinated, regional approach to issues like those we’re discussing today. Unfortunately, however, my sense is that they’re an increasingly small and quiet minority. Sure, the recent ballot initiative concerning the funding of our new multi-district public transportation system went the right way, and more folks in Ann Arbor voted for the measure than against it, but it shouldn’t have been a close contest at all. And I found that fact to be incredibly discouraging… all the talk from well-off Annarbourites about “our tax dollars” and how they should only go toward providing services that “we” use, completely neglecting to see the obvious, which is that these services, to a large extent, are being used by people who once lived in the increasingly gated communities of Ann Arbor, only to be forced out… people who, by the way, still work in their community, doing their dry cleaning, stocking the shelves of their favorite stores, caring for their children, and preparing their food.

I would have thought that a proudly liberal community that once rallied against apartheid in South Africa might be better at picking up the telltale signs of segregation under their own noses, but maybe it’s harder to see when you’re in the middle of it, when it’s your property values and school rankings that you’re concerned about… Sure, in theory, you love the poor, but why can’t that new affordable housing complex be built in Ypsi, right?

So the folks to our west are seriously asking, “So, why isn’t Ypsilanti a good long-term solution for Ann Arbor’s affordable housing issues?” Why, in other words, can’t we live in the paradise that we deserve, with good schools and streetlights that work, while the poor live on the other side of 23, sending their kids to questionable charter schools in darkness?

We’ve talked, here on the site, about the decreasing availability of affordable housing in Ann Arbor for years, but apparently it just recently became a real thing that folks there are talking about. I think it was our friends at Concentrate who declared in December, “Is Ann Arbor affordable? Nope. And it’s official.” Not even the middle class, they said, “(can) afford to live in Ann Arbor.” It’s one thing for me to say it, it’s another to have an entity like Concentrate, which is generally all about economic development and entrepreneurship, says it. When I saw that headline, I knew we’d finally reached some kind of tipping point. I don’t know that it will change anything, but at least people are now beginning to talk about it, and that’s a good thing.

The genesis of this Concentrate article, if you’re recall, was the release of the initial findings connected to the Washtenaw County’s Affordable Housing Needs Assessment, a study commissioned, not by Ann Arbor, but by the County. And it was this study, now completed, that the Ann Arbor News was writing about today. Here’s an image from the first page of the study, followed by a clip from the Ann Arbor News.

So, why isn’t Ypsilanti a good long-term solution for Ann Arbor’s affordable housing issues? “It’s a logical question,” says Rob Krupicka, a Virginia-based consultant hired to study housing affordability in Washtenaw County. “The challenge is that Ypsilanti is getting close to 30 percent poverty, which puts it in company with some cities that you really don’t want to be in company with,” Krupicka told Ann Arbor officials Monday night. “When you get close to 30 percent or more in poverty, your ability to recover from that becomes almost impossible.” If low-income people continue to concentrate in Ypsilanti while Ann Arbor grows wealthier, the result is an unhealthy imbalance, essentially socioeconomic segregation, and the region’s affordable housing issues won’t be solved, Krupicka said during a special joint session of the Ann Arbor City Council and Planning Commission… Krupicka said the “balance problem” between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti is the most troublesome issue the county faces. “You are increasingly becoming a county with an area of concentrated wealth and an area of the opposite,” he said. He said communities in the country that grow the best and the most sustainably are the most socio-economically integrated. “And you all are kind of moving in the opposite direction where you have a hot housing market and you have a not so hot housing market; and you have folks with high school degrees or less, and folks with college degrees or more,” he said. Krupicka cited statistics suggesting, since 1979, the people in the top 10 percent in Ann Arbor have seen their incomes grow by almost 20 percent, while the people in the bottom 10 percent have seen their incomes decline by almost 15 percent. “So the first way this imbalance is manifesting in your economy is those at the top are doing much, much better, and those at the bottom are doing worse,” he said, adding that equates to a lot of lost economic potential for the region…

Of course, it’s nothing we didn’t already know, and it’s kind of funny that we had to pay someone from out-of-state to come in and tells us, but I suppose it’s good that the conversation is finally being had. Hopefully people in Ann Arbor will take it seriously. And hopefully it’s not too late.

As for the report, if you’re interested, it can be found here. Of particular interest to readers of this site are the Implementation steps, which begin on page 38. Here’s a bit of that.

As I’ve yet to make my way through the entire report, I reached out to former Ypsilanti City Planner Richard Murphy and asked for his thoughts. Here’s what he had to say.

It’s not just affordable housing in Ann Arbor – it’s “housing affordability and equity” throughout the A2/Ypsi urban area. The findings are nothing terribly new – housing costs in Ann Arbor are high and rising, while a disproportionate number of our area’s low-income residents live in Ypsi and Ypsi Township. (But many still face affordability challenges here: 23% of Ypsi City families with incomes between $35k and $50k pay an unaffordable share of their income for housing.) The framing of solutions is more novel, and better addresses the regional nature of the market than most commenters who focus on one municipality or one neighborhood: in order to share the “burden” of affordability and the benefits of access to education and job opportunities equitably within the region, Ann Arbor / Pittsfield need to increase the supply of housing at all levels of affordability, while Ypsi City / Township need to increase the demand for housing – Ypsi City is currently “short of its fair share” of working, college-educated households by almost 1,400 households. (The township is short by about 3,000.) I think a lot of folks in Ypsi are going to jump to, “see, I told you we need fewer poor people” (or fewer renters), but that’s not the conclusion of the report at all – it’s that, as a Washtenaw County priority, Ypsi (and the Township) need support in being competitive with Ann Arbor, Saline, or Canton for households whose incomes let them be choosy. And they’re not shy in laying out the level of solutions needed, e.g. “Create a unified Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti School District”, to address the biggest barrier for attracting those households, or “Acquire and demolish obsolete pre-1930 wood-framed houses throughout the Township” to help right the supply/demand. Considering that this is a *county* analysis/plan, I’ll be interested to see how they start using their resources to lead implementation on some of these.

I guess now we’ll have to wait and see what everyone does with this report, and how much, if any, effort is put into exploring the possibility of a “unified Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti School District,” for instance. One would hope the people of Ann Arbor would see the wisdom in it, but I’m not hopeful, given recent history. And, to be fair, the people of Ann Arbor have other priorities right now, like the rollout of an ambassador program, which would put a small army of people on their lovely downtown streets, doing things like “opening doors for people,” and “lending umbrellas.” This, as they say, is necessary in order to “enhance the user experience.” Sure, it’s projected to cost them $900,000 over the next three years, but it’s not like there are more pressing needs, like providing housing for those who can no longer afford to live in a community where there’s talk of hiring paid door openers to improve user experience.