Ellie Abrons + Meredith Miller 

“In The Mix” 

There is an urgent need for housing across the country and here in our own community. The causes of this shortage are varied and complex: high land costs, labor shortages, outdated zoning, NIMBYism, rising material costs, and increasing supply chain complexities, to name a few. Unsurprisingly, the people most negatively impacted by this shortage are those in the lowest-income brackets – the poorest 20 percent of households in the U.S. spend over half of their income on housing costs. To address this crisis here in Ann Arbor, members of our community and local government have been tackling various hurdles. In 2020, voters approved a property tax designed to raise $160 million for affordable housing. The Planning Commission has been working to update land use policies, zoning, and development processes to make it easier, cheaper, and quicker to construct new housing. And in 2019 City Council directed the Ann Arbor Housing Commission to evaluate ten under-utilized, city-owned properties to see if they could be used to build affordable housing.

Grounded within Ann Arbor’s particular housing pressures while also looking broadly at models of housing, this studio partnered with the Ann Arbor Housing Commission and worked on one of the more challenging city-owned sites under consideration for affordable housing development. Collectively, the studio projects offer a comparative range of mixes: mixes of programs, housing typologies, domestic arrangements, private/public relationships and approaches to affordability.