A multi-unit apartment building in Ferndale. The horror.
We live in distressing, dispiriting times, with no shortage of things to fret: climate change, the rise of AI, the return of the twice-impeached, convicted felon orange guy, etcetera. It’s one of the reasons I am grateful to live in Ferndale, which serves as a kind of bulwark against the encroaching madness and enshittification. We’re hardly perfect, but at least we’ve got bike lanes and walkability, an LGBTQ community center, the Rust Belt Market, local breweries, and so on.
So it was especially disappointing to see that for a noisy subset of residents, the biggest threat to Ferndale is apparently the specter of suburban-style single-family residential zoning losing its primacy.
The Ferndale City Council last month moved to eliminate single-family zoning as the exclusive residential development pattern in a narrow 3-2 vote that will open the door to allowing triplexes and quadplexes with a special land use permit. Accessory dwelling units will also be allowed on properties with a single-family unit or duplex. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that NIMBYism, opposition to change of any kind and toxic misinformation appears alive and well in our fair city, to hear the commentary from opponents.
First, a little background.
A complicated housing market
The city has been working on rewriting the zoning ordinance since May 2023, relying on public input through Plan Ferndale, the city’s adopted master land use plan from 2022, and input from four community sessions from summer 2023. The Plan Ferndale process ranked affordable housing as the top development priority for the city, and the new zoning allowances are an attempt to increase housing types, create more equitable housing policy and boost affordability.
Housing unaffordability has become a major problem nationwide, and the causes — and potential fixes — are complex.
One key contributor is a lack of supply due to a slowdown in housing construction that traces back at least to the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007. Local data on housing starts backs that up. There were just 4,541 housing permits of all kinds issued in 2023 for the Detroit-Warren-Dearborn metropolitan statistical area, down from a recent high of 17,399 in 2004, according to the Census Building Permits Survey. It was the lowest number since 2012.
Other contributing factors include rising interest rates and higher costs of building materials and labor, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, that have complicated developers’ ability to profitably build anything but high-end luxury homes.
As a result, housing costs have soared. A 2024 statewide housing survey by the University of Michigan and the Michigan State Housing Development Authority found that 51% of renters in 2022 were housing-cost burdened, meaning they spent more than 30% of their income on housing. Among homeowners, 24% with mortgages and 14% without mortgages were housing cost-burdened.
One resident who spoke during public comment said she moved to Ferndale five years ago after buying a home and estimated she would spend an extra $987 a month on her mortgage if she purchased it today, based on higher taxes, higher interest rates and other factors.
The median sale price for homes in Ferndale in December 2024 was $251,204, or $208 per square foot, up 4.7% since December 2023, according to Rocket Homes.
Meanwhile, Ferndale’s population is at a low ebb. Ferndale peaked in population in the 1960 Census at 31,347. It’s now estimated at 19,083. At 10,160 households, it equates to about 1.9 people per household — a change many attribute to the city’s long-running status as a magnet for young singles and the loss of families who want larger, more modern homes than are typically available in Ferndale.
Misinformation takes root
The 3-2 vote to relax single-family zoning came after extended debate by council members and public comment period. I watched the replay of the meeting so you don’t have to. There was plenty of paranoia, misinformation and near-hysteria on display.
Residents blamed the housing shortage on “opportunistic and greedy developers,” who supposedly scheme to keep some housing uninhabited (though no one bothered to explain how this is a problem in Ferndale, where I am not aware of the presence of uninhabited homes at any significant scale). Others condemned the proposal as a “corporate land grab” or voiced concerns about how the city’s aging infrastructure would support new development. Dubious allegations of racism flew.
Others seemed to equate the idea of allowing for higher density with residents losing their homes so that fourplexes can be built in their place.
The negativity continued afterward on the Fabulous Ferndale Forum on Facebook; I won’t link to it because that group is a worsening cesspool of griping and misinformation.
There are two ironies underlying the impassioned NIMBY resistance to ending single-family zoning.
A duplex in Ferndale.
First, Ferndale already has a number of triplex and quadplex units, though none that have been built in recent years. Council member Greg Pawlica said the last triplex or quadplex built in any of the city’s residential-zoned neighborhoods was 1965 on Central Street.
“This fear that some 1840s robber baron Snidely Whiplash is gonna swoop in and buy up huge swaths of single-family homes and knock them down and build quadplexes towering over their homes is unfounded,” Pawlica said. He noted that the new zoning rules restrict the heights of triplexes and quads. “This idea that a massive multi-unit structure can be built next to a single home is also unfounded.”
Secondly, the elimination of single-family zoning is not likely to have a dramatic effect on Ferndale’s housing mix or affordability on its own any time soon, given the complex issues facing the housing market at large and the city’s relative lack of vacant properties on which to build. That’s similar to what’s happened in Minneapolis, which famously eliminated single-family zoning in 2019 but hasn’t seen a dramatic uptick in new housing construction.
That doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right thing to do. Southeast Michigan’s population is expected to grow between 2010 and 2040, thanks mostly to seniors rather than new residents (one reason for the inclusion of ADUs,) while young people who are attracted by Ferndale’s quality of life are put off by rents approaching $2,000.
Pawlica said Ferndale since 2010 has gained more than 1,000 housing units but lost nearly 900 people.
“You either have to provide what the population is wanting or you will continue to lose population,” he said.
Across the US, private equity is pushing to expand multi-unit dwelling zoning. Not because private equity has a love for inclusive, affordable housing. Because it is highly profitable to disrupt single family home ownership. Ultimately, quality of living in a community suffers as it transitions from a single to multi-unit model. Maintenance of the housing stock declines. Improvements made by landlords are not aesthetic or community interest driven, but solely economic. No one makes money planting a new tree; no one plants new trees on a rental property. No one money makes money voting for a school improvement millage.
Private equity investment is THE driver here, not some laudable egalitarian impulse. Ferndale’s housing stock – which for a near-in suburb to a very large urban metro area (with an international border, no less) – is relatively cheap. It will be incrementally absorbed by private equity and transformed into a pure rent monopoly asset, with the exception of the high value homes on the west side within a block or so of Woodward. Everything else in Ferndale is inventory. If anyone thinks that outcome will make Ferndale “better” or represents a governmental impetus to act in the “interests of the people” that person is perhaps not paying attention. Take a hard look at the real estate signs in town. Observe how many are placed by “real estate” companies you have never seen or heard of prior to the last few years. Many are buying agents of the private equity programs.
Pawlicka’s quote about an 1840s robber baron tearing down homes is a straw man argument intended to convert debate about a real and observable concern into a joke, and hence to stifle debate, not encourage it. Pretty shameful for a public servant. Makes me think of the signs that say “make lying a crime again”.
Private equity is not going to waste money tearing down anything, much less building anything. They will convert existing homes, which will then each become part of a larger rent-producing portfolio of assets. “Quadplexes towering over homes” is not the concern. Subdividing existing dwellings and eliminating individual ownership is the goal. The goal is well advanced and is aided (wittingly or not, you judge which is the greater failing) by the likes of Pawlicka.
Answer – if you own a home in the zone of interest fix it to market standards and as soon as a sellers’ market returns dump out and flee. There would be another answer if the city government was other than rubes, ideologically driven, or complicit, but they are not so there is not.