This story is part of a series that highlights the challenges and solutions around housing in Southeast Michigan and is made possible through underwriting support from the Oakland County (Region L) Regional Housing Partnership.
Navigating zoning regulations can be a complex process even for those who do it on a regular basis, like Bill Chalmers, president of Rochester Hills-based
Cartessa Real Estate Company.
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Bill ChalmersBill Chalmers.
"It's a patchwork right now," he says. "Some towns have the information. Some don't. Some have it up to date. Some don't. It's very difficult to try to find a simple zoning map and a zoning ordinance. It's certainly not consistent."
A new project is aiming to demystify Oakland County zoning for developers like Chalmers, as well as government officials and residents, by creating a single map that shows residential zoning designations for the entire county. The project was initiated by the Housing Stock Innovators Working Group of the Regional Housing Partnership (RHP) for Oakland County, one of
15 partnerships funded by the state of Michigan to address local housing challenges in keeping with Michigan's 2022
Statewide Housing Plan.
The RHP has contracted with the
Michigan Association of Planning (MAP) to collect zoning information from across Oakland County and create the map. Kirsten Elliott, president of the Troy-based
Community Housing Network and one of four leads for Oakland County's RHP, says creating such a map is no easy task.
"[The zoning map is] making all of this information transparent, because right now it's buried in all of these different municipalities' areas or on their websites," she says. "Some of it's searchable. Some of it's not. Some of it is literally microfiche scans."
Vern Gustafsson, co-chair of the Housing Stock Innovators Working Group and project director/planner at the Pontiac Housing Development Corporation, says the goal behind creating a zoning map is "to help communities ... facilitate a better understanding of zoning." He hopes the project will also help those communities pursue zoning reform "to whatever level they want."
"At least the zoning map provides that tool that's so critically important as a first step," Gustafsson says.
Building a national zoning atlas
The story of Oakland County's zoning map actually begins in Connecticut, where lawyer, professor, and architect Sara Bronin led an effort to create a zoning map for the entire state in 2021. Responding to widespread interest in that project, Bronin launched the
National Zoning Atlas, which maintains a collection of similar maps nationwide, the same year. Leah DuMouchel, director of programs and communications at MAP, was one of many who took an interest in the Connecticut project.
"I've been a planner for 15 years or so, and this is something that I hadn't quite understood – how little understanding we have of how those individual zoning ordinances work together to shape how land is used in the aggregate," she says. "This was really painting a different understanding."
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Steve KossLeah DuMouchel.
MAP and the National Zoning Atlas forged a partnership that has resulted in five counties in Michigan's western and northwestern Lower Peninsula being added to the atlas. Now, DuMouchel says, a full-time MAP staffer will go through all Oakland County municipalities' zoning ordinances, answering 107 questions about housing in each zoning district to create the county's map. The map will initially be made available on a dedicated website, and its data may eventually be incorporated into the National Zoning Atlas as well.
DuMouchel says a comprehensive zoning map covering a county, region, or state is a simple but innovative way to take stock of housing development opportunities.
"Because you can only control your community, there's kind of a tendency to look at your zoning map and to say, 'Okay, this meets more or less the needs of my community,'" she says. "... In Oakland County, in southeast Michigan, we're shoulder to shoulder with other communities that are doing things differently. And so there is a tendency to say, 'The needs that we're not able to meet, there are other communities that can meet them, right?' It's not until you really are able to take a step back and look at the county scale [that you can see] the opportunities across the entire county for the kinds of housing that we need."
Simplifying zoning for residents, governments, and developers
Local housing advocates see the zoning map as one tool to help solve Oakland County's
housing affordability crisis. The state of Michigan's
Housing Data Portal shows that Oakland County's median rent outpaced the state's median rent by 20% from 2012 to 2022, the most recent year for which data are available. In 2022, 43% of Oakland County renters were cost-burdened, meaning they spent more than 30% of their income on housing. Just under half of them were severely cost-burdened, meaning they spent over half their income on housing. Meanwhile, the number of vacant and available homes in the county fell by almost 40% from 2012 to 2022.
Many local housing advocates see increasing the supply of multifamily developments – as small as duplexes or fourplexes – as a way to address the housing shortage and lower the county's average rent. DuMouchel says zoning maps can help debunk common misperceptions about housing development.
"Some of the findings really are shocking even to people who work deeply in this space, like myself," she says.
She notes, for example, that in the five Michigan counties where MAP has contributed to the National Zoning Atlas, the percentage of residential land zoned for housing with four or more units is consistently small, between 2% and 5%. That even includes urbanized areas like Kent County, home of Grand Rapids.
"Just knowing that sort of has an impact on the conversation," DuMouchel says.
In addition to providing a resource that helps inform residents' understanding of zoning in their communities, zoning map organizers also hope that local governments will make use of the tool.
"There are communities themselves who often ... want to know: 'What are other communities in my region doing and how are they doing it?'" DuMouchel says. "So, when they are considering reforming their own zoning, it allows for an opportunity to find out what the regional context is like and niches that they could fill and places where needs are not being met."
As a result of the National Zoning Atlas' work in Kent and Ottawa counties, Gustafsson says some firms have studied areas where zoning amendments could allow for greater density in transportation corridors, commercial areas, and job centers. He says he hopes Oakland County's map will "provide the resources needed to make good choices."
"I'm not saying every community is going to be embracing it, but at least the data is there for them to make some good decisions in regards to how they can move forward in regards to their own future land use plans," Gustafsson says.
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Steve KossVern Gustafsson.
Organizers also hope the map will make it easier for developers to build new housing. DuMouchel says that under the current conditions, it's difficult for developers to determine where they might be able to build a duplex or fourplex.
"You need to basically engage with the zoning ordinance of every single community that you might want to be in," she says. "You probably need to speak with the planner, even at the beginning of the project, to have an understanding of what those constraints are. And then you can maybe go drive around, only to find out that that context isn't really what you had in mind anyways."
Chalmers emphasizes that he and his fellow developers have "enough endurance and stamina" to get housing built with or without a zoning map, and that the map will not be a "panacea" for housing challenges.
"Affordable houses can get built whether we have the map or not," he says.
But, Chalmers adds, having the map available will be "fantastic."
"That would save a tremendous amount of time," he says.
Zoning map launch
DuMouchel says a website for the county zoning map is being built now and will go live in the next couple of months. The map itself has a target completion date of December 2025. While the map will focus only on residential zoning, DuMouchel sees additional potential for the zoning map concept. She raises the possibility of creating a similar resource for commercial or industrial zoning.
"There's a lot of ways to apply it," DuMouchel says. "But right now, the pressing need is housing. And that's the question we're tackling."
As the second-most populous county in Michigan, DuMouchel says it's particularly important for Oakland County to take on the task of creating a zoning map.
"I just really commend the RHP for seeing that this work needs to be done, and being willing to kind of charge ahead and take the lead on it, because it is hard when it's so fragmented for someone to take the lead," she says.