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Suttons Bay Man Starts Nonprofit to Address Affordable Housing

is only six months old, but with big aspirations – to end the affordable housing crisis in Leelanau County and Northwest Lower Michigan.

Larry Mawby, owner of Mawby Vineyards and its sparkling wine, saw his own staff struggle with finding housing.

“The idea for affordable housing came to be something that is very real to me in my days as a vintner,” says Mawby. “The vast majority of our employees did not live in the county. Most recently, I think we had 50 employees and four of them lived in the county the rest of them lived in Traverse City, Benzie County mostly because of the affordability.”

Mawby isn’t the only one. He says a recent survey by the Suttons Bay Chamber of Commerce resulted in most if not all businesses responding that workforce housing was an issue.

The solution is a community land trust – or it’s one of many tools in the toolbox for fixing the problem.

The Community Land Trust through Peninsula Housing gives them ownership. They would then lease the land for 89 to 99 years. A developer or homeowner builds the home and the trust keeps the shared equity with whoever builds the home. The home is sold to the homeowner at about 75 percent of the appraised value – a discounted rate. Then they agree to a 25 percent return on the increased value of the home should they sell. That allows the trust to keep the housing affordable.

Affordable housing has been an issue for years. Many organizations have tried to bring forward solutions with different housing projects, but the housing only stays affordable for a select number of years.

Yarrow Brown, Executive Director of , says this has been an ongoing issue. She says the trust is a tool that adds to working with existing land banks, brownfield redevelopment authorities and looking at a tax incremental financing for affordable housing.

“We need housing yesterday and we need a lot of it,” says Brown. “In Leelanau County we need close to 700 units in our ten county region. We need up to 15,000 units. Those are for people who are currently living here also those who would move here to get employment or come here to live.” 

The only way forward is for the communities to invest in the trust. Nonprofits and units of government can invest.

“The challenge to maintaining the permanence of the land trust is to have the capital both the financial and human capital to keep the organization going,” says Mawby. “I think we want to make sure that the dollars that we invest that there’s philanthropic dollars there’s also state and federal dollars through grants and low interest loans, and so on, that they’re committed to making housing affordable and that it should stay affordable. We don’t want to keep redoing this every 10 or 15 years.”

The first goal is have affordable apartments available and then work on single family duplexes.

“There are all kinds of housing needs. People really need the space of a single family home some people really need the space of a studio apartment and there are array of needs and I hope we can be instrumental in satisfying all of those,” says Mawby.

The soonest homes would be available is by 2024.

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