Two couples’ struggle to find seasonal housing in a seasonal economy

“You can’t expect everyone to get a job where they (have to move away and) can work remotely three months out of the year,” said Sam Brown, with his wife Laura. Photo by Mae Stier

By Mae Stier 

Sun contributor

As vacation rentals become more prevalent throughout Leelanau County, off-season rentals do as well. Off-season rentals are a semi-permanent solution for residents, and typically offer a nine-month lease to those who are willing to move out during the peak summer months. They can be a good fit for those with flexibility in their work or who need a short-term solution, but do not offer the type of housing solution that is necessary to support our increased summer workforce or maintain healthy communities. 

One couple who made an off-season rental work for them for a number of years, Sam and Laura Brown, moved to Leelanau County in August 2015. They were newly married and hoping to find a home to rent in the area. They looked in both Traverse City and Leelanau County, but the County appealed to them for its landscape and quiet. Just a month before they had planned to move, they still did not have a place to live, until a relative put them in touch with a landlord who had an opening in his home for a 9-month lease. Since they could not find any other options, they signed the lease and spent the next four years in a transitional lifestyle.

“It’s not like we really had other choices,” Sam Brown says. They moved in September 2015, with a lease that lasted until June 2016. “Come spring we started looking for something else and found nothing,” his wife Laura says, “So we (renewed our lease) and then hit the road.” Every summer they did something different to fill the three-month gap in housing.

“The first summer we got kicked out, we put an ad in Anderson’s Grocery Store (for housing).” A woman on Glen Lake responded and they lived with and worked for her for the summer. Sam worked a landscaping job and Laura worked at the Cottonseed in Glen Arbor. In September, they moved their belongings out of storage and back into their 9-month rental.

“The whole time we were at the house,” Sam says, “we were constantly weighing the pros and cons. I mean, it was affordable … that was the biggest incentive to go back year after year.” The landlord kept the rent low during the off-season months, allowing the couple to save money to buy a home in the future.

The following three summers were split between traveling and staying with friends and family members in the area. This lifestyle was possible for them due to Sam’s job. “I was freelance writing for One Up Web, a digital marketing agency in Traverse City. I just needed internet for that, so just a hot spot on my phone.” The couple admits that their circumstances were very unique, and that because of the difficulty of moving every nine months and packing their belongings into a storage facility for the summer, it is not a lifestyle that appeals to many. “Most people won’t do a seasonal lease,” Laura says. 

Whether or not people would be willing to do this type of lease may not even be the question, as many in the workforce in Leelanau County would not even be able to find this as an option. “You can’t expect everyone to get a job where they can work remotely three months out of the year,” Sam says. To live in a seasonal lease, you essentially cannot be working in the main industry in Leelanau County––tourism. You have to have the privilege of working for yourself or for a company that allows you to work remotely, and you have to have few enough responsibilities locally that allows you to leave for a season.

The reality that this type of housing solution is more readily available in the off-season poses a problem for a number of employers throughout the area, one of them being the National Park Service. The Park Service typically houses around 65 employees in their own housing units during the summer months. Most of the employees they house are seasonal and come to work for the Park from out of town. According to Tom Ulrich, deputy superintendent of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, as they approached the 2019 season, “we realized that the number of beds we had were likely to be surpassed by the number of employees coming in who would need beds.” A number of circumstances had contributed to the increased need for the 2019 season, including a number of locally-based employees who had retired and two housing units that were projected to be repaired throughout the season. 

Park administration realized that incoming staff would “have to go into the community to find housing, which is a really difficult thing,” Ulrich admitted. They decided to then put out both a social media and traditional news appeal to see if they could garner support from the community, and the response they received was both surprising and refreshing. More than 80 members of the community offered some type of housing solution to Park employees, ranging from offering rooms for rent in occupied homes to entire homes made available for employees to rent.

“We were pleasantly surprised by the great response,” Ulrich says, which he feels shows that regardless of what communities as a whole are doing to address the issue of housing in the area, “on an individual basis, community members are willing to step up.”  

Katie and Micah Webber found themselves in need of temporary housing when they returned to the area to work full-time for Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Photo by Mae Stier

One couple who found themselves in need of temporary housing as they returned to the area to work full-time for the Park Service was Katie and Micah Webber. They had been working at Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, but were relocated to Sleeping Bear in June of this year. “When we hire a permanent employee,” Ulrich explained, “usually while they are looking (for a house) we put them up in our housing, but that wasn’t available at the time.” Due to the unique circumstances with Park housing for this year, the Webbers had to find a short-term solution other than Park Service housing while they looked for a home to purchase in the area.

Thankfully because of the response from community members willing to house Park employees this year, the Webbers were able to move into a week-to-week lease in Honor. Their landlord “was thinking of making her home a vacation rental … for the summer, but (said she) would much rather rent it to someone who is local,” Katie Webber explained of their housing situation. They expected that their temporary housing wouldn’t be necessary for too long, as they had begun looking for a house to buy before arriving in the area, but the market has been more competitive than they expected. 

“We haven’t had the luxury (of looking in a particular part of the county) because we are just looking for something we can actually afford. We have been looking all over this entire peninsula,” Katie Webber explains, and they have not had any luck yet. They recently made an offer on a house that matched the asking price, but the home ended up selling to another offer that came in later that was much higher than the asking price. “This happens often, I think, in this market,” Webber suspects, “where somebody comes in with a cash offer that’s more––and it’s their second or third home, so it’s nothing for them––and then people who are looking for a permanent house are having a really tough time. I don’t think we are the only ones in this boat.”
The Webbers have decided they need to be a little more creative with housing as they approach the end of the summer. The rental home they found from the Park Service’s list of options may not be available in the fall, and they may not be able to purchase a home in the meantime. “We are just trying to figure out how we can approach things differently, because the approach we have taken hasn’t worked,” Katie says. 

That may mean buying more time by finding a rental with a nine-month lease while they continue to look for a home to purchase. Off-season rentals can be a short-term option for some, especially in a competitive buying market, but they rarely offer a long-term solution. Sam and Laura Brown admitted that they could have made their off-season rental work for maybe one more season, but they were eager to put down actual roots in the area and to be able to become more involved in the workforce and community. They were happy this winter when they were able to purchase a home outside of Empire. It required some work, much of which they have had to do themselves due to the high cost of labor, but they feel grateful to have a place they can call their own.

“Empire has so much to offer; it’s almost at risk of being loved to death,” Sam Brown says. “Towns on the edge of National Parks are at risk of getting too popular in terms of tourism, but I think we could do a better job of encouraging year-round residents. Incentivizing (landlords to offer) year-round leases would help, whether that’s a tax break or something of that nature.” He also surmises that “making the application process to rent your house on Airbnb or VRBO less easy,” may help more properties move into the long-term rental market.

For now, it seems that living in Leelanau County as a member of the workforce requires creativity and flexibility. But if the National Park’s experience with housing this summer is any indication, individual homeowners could become a part of the solution. “I keep having people say ‘don’t get discouraged,’ but it is; it’s discouraging,” Katie Webber says, “There has got to be some sort of solution. I know that there are people who, if they knew that there were young people here interested in buying a house, they might consider a lease-to-own. I think part of it is just people knowing there is a need.”