Leelanau Christian Neighbors (LCN) has announced the recent purchase of a house located at the corner of M-204 and Co Rd-641 in Lake Leelanau — a strategic acquisition aimed at mitigating the affordable housing and rental crisis in Leelanau County. This initiative was made possible through LCN’s Affordable Housing Fund, underscoring the organization’s commitment to aiding those with inadequate resources the opportunity to live and thrive in the community.
A housing collaborative including the Leelanau Peninsula Economic Foundation, Sleeping Bear Gateways Council, Housing North, and the Northwest Michigan Rural Housing Partnership will hold a series of community focus group meetings in June. The dates are: June 4 at the Glen Lake Community Library in Empire; June 6 at the Leland Library; June 12 at the Friendship Center in Suttons Bay, and June 13 at Northport School. Each event is 5-7 pm. Join the Leelanau County Housing Collaborative for these interactive evenings to help bring Housing for ALL to Leelanau County.
Peninsula Housing, the community land trust dedicated to providing secure, affordable housing for Leelanau County, has launched a newly designed website which, according to founder Larry Mawby, “reflects our work well, gives users more information about us, shows the projects we are working on, while inviting users to participate in our work.”
Peninsula Housing invites the public to participate in a workshop to explore housing options for 980 S Herman Road and 339 South St. Mary’s Street. A public meeting will be held on Thursday, May 2, from 6-7:30 pm at the Suttons Bay / Bingham Fire Station Community Room (201 South St. Mary’s Avenue in Suttons Bay). Peninsula Housing will present options for housing and amenities on two sites and community members will have opportunities to share their ideas.
Leelanau County businesses have found an innovative solution to the region’s vexing affordable housing and workforce recruitment crisis. County government, chambers of commerce, and local businesses will team up to build a vast tent encampment at the vacant and abandoned Sugar Loaf property, which was once a cherished ski resort and Leelanau’s biggest year-round employer before gangsters, con-men and real estate tycoons closed it for good nearly 25 years ago. “We had the same housing and workforce crisis in the metropolis of Traverse City,” said Rikardo Liko, former Traverse City chancellor and Leelanau’s current interim county administrator. “But the tent encampment in the pines in the Grand Traverse Commons solved all that. We found that hardworking people who can’t afford to pay $3,000 per month for rent in northern Michigan, and can’t afford a $1 million home on the water, could instead live in tents in the woods and keep our tourism and service economics afloat.”
The long-awaited New Waves project on Bugai Road at M-72 is breaking ground. The much-anticipated affordable housing collaboration between Habitat Grand Traverse Region and New Waves United Church of Christ is a reality. The basic site work and roads are in place, and on Tuesday, Oct. 10, at 3 pm shovels will break ground for the first homes to be built.
Do you own or rent property in Benzie or Leelanau counties with extra space in your home/property? Want to make additional income to offset the cost of owning or renting your home? Sign up to host a local employee in your home via the Sleeping Bear Gateways Council’s Housing Exchange.
The Sleeping Bear Gateways Council (SBGC) is hosting its annual meeting as a virtual event on Zoom at 5 p.m. on Thursday, August 25. The session will feature updates on the group’s projects as well as comments from leadership of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. All individuals with interest in the Sleeping Bear area are invited to join the meeting.
For college students and others seeking summer employment in Benzie and Leelanau counties, getting a job is often the easy part. The hard part comes in finding a place to live. “It’s a significant barrier to anyone who’s not local,” said Isabella Beshouri, a University of Michigan student who spent a month in 2021 finding a summer rental after being hired as an intern at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. That barrier is being lowered in 2022 and beyond through an innovative “seasonal employee housing exchange” sponsored by the Sleeping Bear Gateways Council (SBGC) and funded through grants from local foundations and the federal government.
As the housing market in northern Michigan continues to grow more competitive, some young entrepreneurs are finding creative solutions to their housing problems. Emily Grof is the architectural associate at the firm Design Smiths in Traverse City. She is one such creative problem solver who, with the help of Facebook Marketplace and Traverse City-based tiny-home builder Levi Meeuwenberg, has come up with a small solution for herself to the looming question of where to live.