The Michigan Opportunity Radio Show ~ Oct. 24, 2026

Well, I mean, housing is foundational.

You can't excel in educational attainment.

You know, having a house is instrumental to physical health, mental health.

In order to keep a job, you need to have a stable place to go home to.

after you're done working.

I mean, when we're out across the state meeting with stakeholders, employers are so stressed at being able to attract people to fill their vacancies because there's not places for those folks to live in which they can afford.

We hear that across the board.

So It is directly impacting economic development, the expansion of employers, being able to attract new employers to Michigan.

They all ask about our housing market, what that looks like, and how we can, as a state, help make sure that there's affordable housing for employees throughout the state.

I remember even not to pick up.

I'm not trying to pick on San Francisco, but I remember even before COVID where San Francisco was having huge issues for people that were not the people that were like CEOs or the higher, you know, white collar jobs who just couldn't come work because they were living so far away.

The distance was so almost unaffordable for them to get the basic plumbers and things like that just to come in and do things.

Yeah, I mean, we have that same strain in our state right now.

You know, we're feeling that families really up the income scale in our state are struggling with housing.

So, I mean, you're looking at families making $90,000 a year that cannot afford to purchase a home in our state.

right? And that's not low income.

That's well above our median income within our state, and they still can't afford a place to call home.

So we really are working more and more with employers at trying to get them involved, to help with emerging developers, to get new folks in the housing industry, to really help us kind of fill that gap.

We're about I don't know.

I think our last number is about 170,000, 175,000 units short of where we need to be for housing today.

Now, that doesn't take into consideration all the work MEDC is doing in attracting additional employers and additional jobs to our state.

So we really have to be thoughtful about how we approach the housing crisis.

Yeah, and I used to be a city manager, but I know that you can't always predict what is going to be a successful sort of industry nearby you.

And they close down sometimes or they open up sometimes.

And all of a sudden that shift happens.