Housing Group, MSU Students Call for More Housing in East Lansing After Apartment Rejection

East Lansing missed an opportunity to add much needed apartment units when the City Council rejected a 10-story apartment complex at the July 21 City Council meeting, housing advocates told East Lansing Info in a Zoom call the week after the meeting.

At the July 21 meeting, the council approved a 12-story apartment complex to be built on Grand River Avenue at a site that has hosted the Student Book Store and other businesses. At the same meeting, the council rejected a proposal to build a 10-story apartment complex at a site that is currently the Bailey Street Parking Lot. 

Before rejecting the proposal, members of the City Council cited concerns about parking, traffic congestion and the building’s compatibility with nearby properties. 

Even with the approval of the 12-story project, housing advocates are concerned about the rejection of the 10-story apartment complex, a project that they say would help reduce a housing shortage that exists locally and statewide. 

Statewide, Michigan is short 119,000 housing units of demand and that shortage is pushing up prices, said Joel Arnold, the policy director for Abundant Housing Michigan, an advocacy group that argues for policies that make it easier to build housing in Michigan. 

Arnold, who is a 2015 Michigan State University graduate, said East Lansing’s housing shortage can be seen in the drastic increase in rent prices in the city. He said when he was a student, his half of rent for a two-bedroom apartment two blocks from campus was $550. 

Arnold acknowledged that rent prices in the proposed Bailey parking lot apartment complex would have been expensive, but said that adding housing units in the city would ease the demand for housing and bring prices down in the broader market.

“Even building more expensive housing is good on net for affordability because it reduces pressure in other parts of the housing market,” he said. “Those kids are going to come to Michigan State anyway. They’re not coming to Michigan State because someone built this building, they’re coming to Michigan State because they want to get a degree, and so they’re going to be here. It’s just a question of where.”

MSU student and housing advocate Savannah Thomas said living near campus is important for students because walking to class can eliminate the need for a car and car insurance. Although housing near campus tends to be expensive, she said, avoiding transportation costs can offset some housing expenses.

Thomas said she shares Arnold’s belief that increasing the housing stock could help to reduce the price of rental units. 

“If you’re a student who has a job and is trying to support themself, you’re getting priced out [of East Lansing],” she said. 

Arnold said the city should examine where things sit now that the proposal has been rejected. A top concern from business owners and residents was that the apartment complex would reduce the amount of parking downtown. However, the majority of the Bailey Street Parking Lot is privately owned, and Robert Metzger, a member of the family that owns the lot, told ELi they plan to block off their spots in October anyways. 

“The ultimate outcome of this policy decision is that people both get no parking and get no housing,” Arnold said. “Instead of 205 new homes, East Lansing will get a blocked-off, vacant lot. I think that should make us think about the way we make decisions.”

Initially, Minnesota-based Tareen Development Partners proposed a 13-story building that included two stories of public parking to replace the spaces lost on the Bailey lot. However, the height of the building triggered a requirement that 25% of units be dedicated to affordable housing or another purpose that diversifies the city’s downtown housing stock. 

The cost of building public parking and meeting the diverse housing requirement was not feasible, developers said, indicating they may be able to make a project work if the requirement were reduced to 10% or granted a tax break. After the City Council did not vote on Tareen Development Partners’ initial proposal at a meeting in March, developers pulled the pitch, later returning with the 10-story proposal without public parking. 

Metzger told ELi city leaders told him in 2022 they were not interested in signing another long-term lease for the parking lot, and urged his family to have the land developed. Over the four years since, the City Council has rejected two different apartment proposals at the site and other ideas have fizzled out before receiving a vote. 

Lila Abdullah is an MSU student and a member of the city’s Housing Commission. Abdullah also co-founded the Spartan Housing Alliance, a student organization that aims to get MSU students involved in local government, particularly with decisions that impact housing. She was troubled by the process the project went through before it was rejected, as the city didn’t clarify expectations, like a parking requirement, until late in the process. 

Abdullah said it’s critical that the city communicate clear guidelines early in the process and enforce zoning rules equally. 

“For any city, when they make a review process inconsistent or unnecessarily difficult for a developer, they’re risking a reputation,” she said. “Cities are competing with other cities to develop and to bring in developers to build things … Down the road if a city continuously [has] an inconsistent review process, they might see developers steer clear of them because of that reputation.”