Ann Arbor is in the grip of a housing crisis, with affordable options nearly impossible to find. Avalon Housing, a leading developer of affordable housing in Ann Arbor, recently announced that they received over 7,000 applications for just 20 units of affordable housing open to the general public. These 20 units are part of a 50-unit development, with 30 units reserved for individuals exiting homelessness. While this speaks volumes about the urgent need for housing in Ann Arbor, it also serves as a glaring indictment of our community's approach to housing policy.

As a pastor, a community organizer, and a member of the Ann Arbor City Planning Commission, I’ve spent years advocating for affordable housing in this city. This isn’t just an abstract issue for me—it’s deeply personal. Over a decade ago, I attended the first county meeting to discuss what should be done with the vacant 13-acre site across the street from my church. Sitting in that meeting with my interns, I felt hopeful that we could create something transformative for our community. That hope has sustained my advocacy ever since and is one of the reasons I volunteer as a planning commissioner.

Now, more than 10 years later, affordable housing is finally being built on that land. It’s a hard-earned victory, but one that feels bittersweet. While these units will make a real difference in the lives of those who get them, they don’t even begin to address the broader crisis. The sheer volume of applications—7,000 for just 20 units—underscores the scale of the problem and the inadequacy of our current housing policies to meet even the most basic needs of our community.

The Unified Development Code: A Barrier, Not a Tool

The truth is, our housing policies, as shaped by the Unified Development Code (UDC), make building the kind of housing our city desperately needs far more difficult than it should be. The UDC is a gatekeeper, not an enabler, and until we change that, we’ll continue to see projects like this delayed—and the people who need them most left waiting.

The UDC is the document that dictates where and how housing can be developed in Ann Arbor. It outlines zoning, setbacks, density, height restrictions, landscaping requirements, and more.

First adopted on September 4, 1923, the UDC was a modest seven pages with just four zoning districts. Today, it has ballooned to 319 pages, encompassing 34 zoning districts, 9 character districts, and 1 overlay district. This dramatic expansion has not facilitated housing; instead, it serves to restrict it through a dense web of regulations.

The UDC’s core premise is not to promote development but to impose controls, often acting as a gatekeeper that makes it exceedingly difficult for developers—particularly affordable housing developers—to get projects off the ground.

Incremental revisions have only entrenched these barriers further. Changes like parking requirements and overlay districts, rather than addressing systemic issues, have compounded the challenges of building affordable housing. As Ann Arbor’s Planning Manager, Brett Lenart, aptly notes, “well-meaning local policies can cause large-scale inequality.” [1]

To illustrate this, let me share three recent examples of affordable housing projects in Ann Arbor:

• Packard Road Project: An affordable housing developer has land under contract on Packard Road and sought to build housing there. However, they had to use a “Planned Unit Development” (PUD) because no existing zoning category in the UDC allowed for the type of housing they wanted to build. A PUD requires developers to create custom zoning, adding layers of complexity, cost, and delay.
• State Road Project: This developer faced the same issue. Despite having land under contract, their project could not proceed under any current zoning category. They too had to create a PUD to accommodate their plans.
• Avalon’s Adjacent Property Expansion: Avalon Housing wanted to add units adjacent to one of their existing properties. Their design, however, exceeded the allowable length for any existing zoning category by just 14 feet. This minor discrepancy forced them into the PUD process, once again slowing down a project that could provide much-needed housing.

Housing Delayed is Housing Denied

These examples highlight the systemic barriers embedded in the UDC. If the city’s largest affordable housing developer cannot build housing without jumping through these hoops, what hope is there for smaller developers? The PUD process is costly, time-consuming, and overly complex. It delays projects, and as I like to say, housing delayed is housing denied. Each delay in these processes represents another family spending years in uncertainty, struggling to find stable housing.

Ann Arbor prides itself on being a progressive city, and we now have a pro-housing majority on the City Council. But what good is a pro-housing council if it doesn’t use its majority to implement the policies that brought them into office? While the Planning Commission authors the UDC, it is the council’s legislative responsibility to amend it—or at least instruct the Planning Commission to enact revisions and policy updates that align the UDC with the comprehensive plan’s vision for land use. Without these updates, even the most ambitious vision will remain just that—a vision.

Before anyone argues that the city’s comprehensive planning process will solve these issues, let me clarify, the comprehensive plan does not control the UDC. These are two distinct documents. The comprehensive plan outlines a vision for land use, but the UDC dictates how that vision is actually implemented. Even after completing the comprehensive plan, aligning it with development goals will require significant amendments to the UDC. Since the last comprehensive plan in 2008, updates to the UDC have been incremental at best. With a new comprehensive plan on the horizon, it’s entirely possible we’ll spend the next decade amending the UDC just to match it.

6,980 Families are Waiting on Action

In the meantime, while the pro-housing council waits for the comprehensive plan and its Planning Commission to propose amendments, 6,980 families are waiting too—families who urgently need the affordable housing that the UDC continues to obstruct.