Tahir Noronha, a Rackham student and past president of the Urban Planning Student Association, said he held about 200 renter workshops last year as part of two renter workshops he hosted to get feedback to help revise Ann Arbor's comprehensive master plan. We spoke with over 300 University of Michigan student renters. The city is in the process of updating the plan that guides city decisions.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Noronha said what he consistently hears from renters, even students in high-cost-of-living areas, is that they feel rents in Ann Arbor are too expensive. .
“I don't think you'll find a student who agrees that Ann Arbor is cheap,” Noronha said. “During these events, I talked to students from cities known for their low prices like New York and San Francisco, and even they felt that Ann Arbor was insanely expensive.”
Ann Arbor rental rates are determined by a variety of factors, including the number of potential tenants looking for a place to live and the rental units available on the market. The newspaper spoke to local activists and experts and examined data on rentals in the city to better understand some of the factors influencing the city's rental market.
January report by Rent. Michigan has the third-highest rate of rent growth among U.S. states, according to John Leckie, a former Rent Inc. researcher. He told Bridge Michigan in September 2023 that part of the rise in rents in the state is due to renters moving from more expensive cities in the Northeast and West to more affordable cities in the Midwest. said that this was the cause.
Kit McCullough, a University of California lecturer who teaches architecture and urban planning, said the change has changed the demographics of Ann Arbor's population.
“The pandemic has really changed the demographics,” McCullough said. “I actually know a number of people who moved to Ann Arbor during the pandemic so they could work remotely. They suddenly wanted more space for less money, so Ann Arbor It’s hard to imagine it being more affordable, but it’s more affordable compared to the city we moved from, so we got more space.”
Mr McCullough explained that as a result of increased demand, supply could not keep up and rents increased.
“If you look specifically at Ann Arbor, the university, the city and the region have added jobs,” McCullough said. “Universities are adding more students. The demand for living in Ann Arbor is increasing, but little is being added to the supply. Especially when it comes to rental equipment, it's often student-driven. The student population is growing. However, the supply of apartments has not increased.
The graph below shows that the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Ann Arbor has increased by about $350 since 2014, outpacing rents in both East Lansing and Michigan as a whole during that time.
Ann Arbor's average rent growth rate does not necessarily reflect the experience of individual renters. Claire Arneson, a Rackham student and president of the Graduate Employee Association Housing Executives, said in an interview with the Daily that Ann Arbor tenants repeatedly say rent increases are unpredictable from year to year. Ta.
“Rents are going up significantly, but they're also going up in a very unpredictable way,” Arneson said. “I often meet students who say, “I've lived in this house for two or three years.'' Every year, the rent for the entire house goes up by $50, and this year the landlord is raising it by $200.”
Arneson said she experienced this herself when her landlord raised the rent on her apartment.
“Speaking for myself, the first two years I lived in my apartment, the rent for me and one roommate went up $50 a month.Then the next year, the rent increase was negotiable on the first offer. It was $250 until we lowered it,'” Arneson said.
McCullough said students generally expect to find housing off campus, putting a strain on the city's housing market. She also said the university's plans to build more student housing could help solve the problem.
“Compared to other systems and universities, the university has relatively little on-campus housing for students as a proportion of its student population,” Professor McCullough said. “Students' expectations for living off-campus have increased, which puts additional pressure on the supply of off-campus apartments. ) With new initiatives, universities are talking very openly about building student housing.”
Arneson said many of the city's renters are students who only stay in Ann Arbor for a limited time, making it difficult for tenants to form relationships with other renters in the building and share knowledge with each other. He said it is possible.
“If we have a large number of rental students, they will probably only be here for four to six years, depending on the degree program,” Arneson said. “The cast of tenants really changes, so living in that building and he doesn't build the same type of community among the tenants who have lived there for 15 years. It is not possible to convey knowledge.”
In Ann Arbor, many types of new construction developments, including homes with more than five dwelling units and homes not in residential districts, must go through the city's site plan review and approval process. This process includes meeting with city staff and submitting an application to the city. McCullough said the process for approving new development slows the construction of new housing and makes it difficult for small developers to build in the city.
“The development hurdles are very high,” McCullough said. “Politics is difficult. It's very dangerous. The zoning and development process is quite cumbersome. So the only developers who can go through this process are the big state-owned companies.”
Within the city, neighborhoods near downtown and the UM campus consistently have higher rents than other areas of the city, as shown in the chart below.
Noronha said walkability is a top priority for the student renters he spoke to during the renter workshop.
“Students place great importance on walkability,” Noronha said. “They seem to like areas that are really, really, really walkable. In fact, students like downtown, students like Kerrytown, and it's very clear why. I love that I can go, I can walk to the bar, and I don’t have to worry about cars coming and going.”
He also said he found that the students he spoke to generally preferred medium-sized housing in small apartment complexes as opposed to high-rise or traditional housing, which could be a useful message to the city. He said it was feedback.
“Some students were like, 'Oh, I like the one in the middle,' because a lot of students look at the tower and think, 'Oh, that's extravagant.'” It's expensive. Isn't it fashionable? ” Noronha said. “That gap is what we call the ‘missing middle’ in housing, which is actually something like a ground floor, two-story, or townhouse, with a common wall. It’s a lot of homes that we share.”
McCullough said changing city ordinances to allow smaller developments inside and outside single-family homes could make housing more affordable in Ann Arbor.
“The large apartment buildings that are being built today can only be built to charge very high rents because construction and development costs are very high,” McCullough said. “If we want a more affordable product, I think allowing and encouraging this small-scale development is a way to add housing without completely turning Ann Arbor into high-rises.”
Daily News Editor Abigail Vandermolen can be reached at: vabigail@umich.edu.