Arecently published study from Up for Growth, a national housing advocacy and research group, found housing underproduction in Michigan has reached 87,491 homes — a 311-percent increase since 2012.
Nationally, the underproduction of homes worsened from 1.6 million in 2012 to 3.8 million in 2019, according to the 2022 Housing Underproduction in the United States study. Michigan ranks 16th among states for the severity of its housing deficit, per the study, which measures the gap between the number of homes available and the number of homes needed.
Data in Up for Growth’s study confirm the housing underproduction trend that Home Builders Association of Michigan (HBAM) has been tracking for the last decade.
“There should be 25,000 to 30,000 homes built annually in Michigan to keep up with aging housing stock, said Dawn Crandall, HBAM’s executive vice president of government relations. “We were exceeding that in 2005 when a little under 55,000 single-family permits were pulled, but we really haven’t even been building to break even to alleviate older housing stock since then.”
The Up for Growth study examined housing underproduction levels in all 309 metropolitan statistical areas throughout the country, as well as all 505 non-metro regions using U.S. Census data. Estimates were calculated by using a target number of households to achieve affordability and a target vacancy rate and subtracting a designated community’s total housing units, including…
