Affordable housing in Leelanau County is in short supply. That isn’t actually burning news. It wasn’t even news in 1995, when I became an Americorps worker whose mission was to help start a five-county housing nonprofit organization called HomeStretch. What makes it relevant, even urgent, today is that housing in the county—for workers with college degrees, skills and good jobs, families, people with low incomes, seniors, young adults—is evaporating more quickly than the water levels on Lake Michigan. When the basic needs of a community aren’t met—whether through a confluence of circumstances, lack of initiative, an adverse business climate, or refusal by its members to take action—then the whole community suffers.
