• Jocelyn Benson says she wants to build Michigan’s housing supply and drive down costs with a bevy of new tax credits and reforms
  • The Democratic gubernatorial candidate is also pitching a new tax on Airbnbs and limits on home sales to private equity firms
  • Benson’s proposals come amid affordable housing pushes from the Legislature, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and others

GRAND RAPIDS — Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson on Monday outlined what she called an “affordability agenda” for Michigan housing, proposing tax breaks for down payments, a new tax on Airbnbs and a plan to block big investment firms from gobbling up homes.

“I want every single family who wants to call Michigan home to be able to afford a home in the community they want to live in,” Benson told reporters after a roundtable in Grand Rapids, where she discussed housing issues with advocates, local elected officials and social services workers.

Joining a push that has seen broad and bipartisan interest, Benson said she wants to see more homes built in Michigan and boost the availability of affordable housing options for lower-income residents. 

“We need to eliminate a lot of red tape” around zoning, building requirements and inspections, she said. 

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“I want to make it as easy to build in this state as it is to renew your driver’s license,” added Benson, who currently serves as Michigan secretary of state.

Among other things, Benson said she wants to:

  • Offer a tax credit for families who are “ready to purchase” homes “but struggling to save enough”
  • Expand the Michigan Homestead Property Tax Credit, which currently provides property tax relief to homeowners or renters with total household resources of up to $71,500
  • Ban private equity and large investors from buying single-family homes in the first 100 days they’re on the market
  • Track short-term rentals like Airbnbs and tax them to “fund local issues,” while still allowing municipalities to regulate or ban those rentals
  • Require “tougher inspections and enforcement” for apartments to protect renters and punish “absentee landlords who neglect their properties”
  • Expand rental assistance for “families struggling with costs”

Benson has not yet filled in several details of the plan, including how she would pay for various provisions. She told reporters she has not yet landed on a specific dollar amount or structure for what a tax credit to assist with down payments would look like, for instance. 

“What is needed in some communities is different than what’s going to be needed in others,” she said, suggesting tax credits for down payment assistance should be broadly available for first-time buyers but also “second-time homeowners as well as people moving up in the system” to larger homes, which would free up housing stock for first-time buyers. 

Benson emphasized that her proposals will be founded on “flexibility and data.” Part of her housing proposal involves creating a single repository of statewide housing data to track Michigan’s housing needs, and she suggested that database would be leveraged to flesh out the proposals.

To date, about 10% of Bridge Michigan readers have identified housing as their top concern in Bridge Listens, our unscientific survey of election-year issues facing Michigan. Weigh in now. 

Michigan entered the year with a 119,000-unit housing shortage, according to the State Housing Development Authority. Closing that gap has been a priority for term-limited Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who last year announced grants to helps companies build affordable worker housing.

Benson, who is competing to replace Whitmer, is one of the first Michigan gubernatorial candidates to roll out a housing plan.

Republican Tom Leonard has said he’d like to eliminate “needless regulations” and “unnecessary mandates like rent control” while lowering property taxes in some fashion. Independent Mike Duggan has said he’d like to create a state housing fund “for cities willing to adopt model ordinances that make building easier.”

In Congress, Republican John James last year proposed federal legislation to reform what he called “costly green building codes” overseen by the Department of Energy. Benson, by contrast, would like to see new homes built with energy efficiency in mind to keep utility costs down.

Housing has been a politically hot topic for years, and Benson’s proposals come amid a series of other policy pushes aiming to increase Michigan’s housing supply and drive down costs.

A bipartisan group of state legislators last month rolled out a broad package of bills that would overhaul zoning requirements statewide. It’s faced pushback from local government officials, but a participant in Monday’s roundtable with Benson called it a “really important” proposal. 

In her final State of the State address last week, Whitmer appeared to endorse the zoning reform push and called for a “state-level affordable housing tax credit” to subsidize construction “for working-class families.”

Benson said Whitmer’s proposal is “an important one” but added “we want to build on that” by “eliminating a lot of the long-standing certification processes” in order to get housing developments breaking ground more quickly.

At the federal level, President Donald Trump also proposed banning home sales to private equity firms in January, something that Democrats have joined in supporting, but policies haven’t seen movement in Congress.

Republican state House Speaker Matt Hall has argued part of a far-reaching tax overhaul plan, which would eliminate the 6-mill property tax that funds K-12 schools, would make housing more affordable.

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