The village of Northport is laying the groundwork for attainable/workforce housing within village limits.

The village council last week approved two ordinances that are designed to incentivize the construction of such housing or the conversion of existing housing to this use. These ordinances take advantage of relatively recent state laws or law changes that are specifically aimed at municipalities looking to encourage such housing.

By approving a PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) ordinance and an attainable housing facilities exemption ordinance, the village is laying the groundwork for potential future projects that could provide a much-needed boost to the housing stock in a county where prices have soared far beyond the regular person’s reach.

“These don’t guarantee that all of the sudden you’ll have attainable housing developments coming in, but they are important tools to incentivize this type of development for a specific segment of the population,” Northport Village Manager Jered Ottenwess tells The Ticker.

Both ordinances give tax breaks to developers who build new housing or convert existing housing into workforce housing. They both apply to the entire village and are targeted at rental properties for those who make below 120 percent or the area median income (AMI), or what Ottenwess says amounts to around $85,000 a year.

There are no specific attainable housing development proposals being considered at this time, Ottenwess says. Any multi-unit development, whether taking advantage of these new ordinances or not, would be subject to council approval.

The ordinances are the latest in Northport’s focus on the issue of workforce housing, which is projected to become a major problem both there and throghout Leelanau County and the surrounding region unless corrective action is taken.

“For years, it seems like, we’ve been waiting for something or someone to come in and help us out – someone to champion this cause,” council President Chris McCann tells The Ticker. “What we’ve learned as a village council is that we have to be that champion.”

The ordinances represent a promising path forward, McCann believes.

“For the last six months, especially, we've really gotten to work on some of these ordinances that allow nonprofit and for-profit developers to take advantage of these tools that the state of Michigan is allowing us to use as a municipality,” he says.

Village leaders want Northport open to people of all economic backgrounds on principle, but they also understand that a lack of housing for working folks will eventually lead to big problems with the very economics of the village.

“We’re talking about the working professionals in our community, our EMTs, the people that work for some of our successful businesses,” McCann says. “They’re having trouble attracting new employees…because there’s no place for them to live in the community, and the commute may be more than they’re willing to make.”

The tools involved in both ordinances are in addition to a change in state brownfield laws that now allow developers to recover some development costs for attainable housing developments through brownfield tax-increment financing. Such financing was previously focused on blighted sites.

All of this together could be necessary to attract developers during a time when the cost to build is sky-high. If they’re going to only rent to people below a certain income, they need something else to help it all pencil out.

“Attainable housing developers want to stack the PILOT and AHFE with brownfield funding to maximize the affordability…of new projects,” Ottenwess says.