Why A2 Should Pause The Plan

  1. 📊 Unrealistic Projections: The proposed Comprehensive Plan ignores expert projections and data entirely, and is woefully deficient as both an American Planning Association sustainable city planning document and in meeting Michigan legal requirements.

  2. 💸 Hidden Costs Will Burden Vulnerable Residents: Building 30,000+ units requires billions in new infrastructure spending with no funding plan. The resulting tax and utility increases would disproportionately harm fixed-income seniors, low-wage workers, and economically vulnerable residents—the very people the plan claims to help.

  3. 🤫 Inadequate Public Engagement: Only 2% of residents participated in an open, unscientific poll with no controls against duplicate submissions. The plan admits that college students, newer residents, and low income residents were underrepresented in the survey. Despite this lack of input and the city choosing not to mail notices to all residents when planning began, it makes sweeping recommendations that affect every neighborhood.

Join over 2,400 Ann Arbor residents in demanding the city suspend work until these issues are addressed and robust public engagement has taken place.¹²

Petition Progress

2404 of 2500 signatures

Plan Claims vs Facts

The Draft Comprehensive Plan, dated April 7, 2025, is based on assumptions that aren't supported by authoritative data or expert analysis. Compare the plan's claims with the facts, get the memo to the city, or hear why:

⚠️ Claim: The draft plan is fully researched and “data-driven.”

✅ Fact: Professional planning rules say you must show where your numbers come from and how much growth will cost. Those sections are blank¹ —despite being required in the RFP and contract with Interface Studios, and completed and paid for as of March 3, 2025.

⚠️ Claim: Ann Arbor will gain 63k – 113k more residents by 2050.

✅ Fact: The region’s official forecast (SEMCOG) shows only ≈12 k more residents.² Census estimates say we’ve actually lost ≈4,500 people since 2020.³

⚠️ Claim: The city must build 30k – 45k new homes.

✅ Fact: With the smaller population increase, SEMCOG projects just ≈4,700 additional households—about one-tenth of the target.² We need smaller and affordable housing.

⚠️ Claim: Local jobs will jump by 30k – 50k.

✅ Fact: SEMCOG expects ≈18,700 new jobs, the State of Michigan ranks 49/50 for unemployment, the University of Michigan forecasts slow recovery, and has frozen hiring in response to federal funding cuts.⁴

⚠️ Claim: More market-rate construction will make housing affordable.

✅ Fact: A 2025 NBER study finds income growth—not zoning limits—pushes prices up, so adding expensive units rarely lowers rents for everyday families.⁶

⚠️ Claim: The plan lines up with A2Zero.

✅ Fact: Buildings produce 37 % of global CO₂, and 11 % is “embodied” in materials. Constructing 30k – 45k units here would emit roughly 1 million t CO₂-e—about the same as running 200k – 300k extra cars for a year—undercutting A2Zero’s carbon budget.⁷

⚠️ Claim: Infrastructure costs are covered.

✅ Fact: National studies put basic roads, pipes, parks and public facilities at $81k – $113k per new home. That results in a publicly-funded infrastructure financing gap of $2.4b – $5.1b (≈$81 m – $170 m every year to 2050) that the plan never explains who pays for and how.⁸ The Plan also fails to account for and provide costs for replacing Ann Arbor’s existing infrastructure, much of which is at or near the end of its designed lifetime.

⚠️ Claim: The plan advances affordability, equity, and sustainability.

✅ Fact: Higher land values plus new taxes or fees make entry-level homes harder to build. Cost hikes fall hardest on seniors and lower-income residents, while the extra CO₂ and tree loss undermine A2Zero goals.⁷ ⁸

⚠️ Claim: Public engagement has been broad and meaningful.

✅ Fact: Fewer than 2% of residents filled out the unscientific online poll⁹ (which allowed repeat and out-of-town responses); no neighborhood-level meetings were held.¹³

⚠️ Claim: “Don’t worry—this is only a roadmap; details come later.”

✅ Fact: The draft already directs staff to rewrite zoning to allow multi-unit buildings on every residential lot and to scrap single-family districts, so the big decisions are effectively locked in now. (See pp. 1–2 of the draft plan)

⚠️ Claim: Success stories in Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, and Austin prove form-based codes work everywhere.

✅ Fact: Those cities mostly use hybrid zoning; Austin’s full rewrite (CodeNEXT) actually failed. Citing them as universal successes is misleading.

⚠️ Claim: The Planning Commission is conflict-free.

✅ Fact: The chair markets local real-estate investments for a private family office and was Oxford Companies’ chief real-estate officer—at odds with a statute that calls for a broadly representative, impartial commission.¹⁰ ¹¹

⚠️ Claim: The plan meets state law and APA standards.

✅ Fact: It omits required data on population, jobs, housing variety, infrastructure, transit and costs—violating both the APA’s Sustaining Places checklist and Michigan’s Planning Enabling Act.¹ ⁹

Get The Memo To The City:

May 2025 Vacancy Rates:

The City of Ann Arbor's Draft Comprehensive Plan relies on vacancy data from 2022, which does not reflect the most current market conditions. More recent data from multiple sources, including CoStar Real Estate Information (May 2025), the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) for 2023, and SEMCOG (July 2024 estimates), indicate significantly higher vacancy rates than those cited plan:

Specifically, the Draft Comprehensive Plan states on page 48: "Current vacancy rates are extremely low, creating an unhealthy balance between supply and demand: owner vacancy is 1.1% and renter vacancy is 3.1%."

However, May 2025 CoStar data shows a market-rate rental vacancy of 6.9%, a figure that falls within the 5-8% range often considered indicative of a "healthy" housing market, a definition acknowledged within the Draft Comprehensive Plan itself.

  • Market Rate Units: 6.9% vacancy (23,664 total; 1,633 vacant)

  • Student Housing Units: 5.3% vacancy (11,913 total; 631 vacant)

  • Total Vacant Units and Beds: 6,018 (including student + market-rate)

The selective use of older data misrepresents current housing availability, directly misinforms residents, creates a skewed public engagement process, and undermines public trust. The Draft Comprehensive Plan must be updated to incorporate the latest available data to ensure an accurate foundation for future planning and development strategies.

Note: The City of Ann Arbor pays for CoStar and has access to the same real-time vacancy data (City of A2 OpenBook):

📢 Make your voice heard by Emailing or Calling the Ann Arbor City Council and demand they Pause the Plan Now!

Contact an individual Ann Arbor City Council Member, or all:

🎁 Bonus Memo!

Water and Wastewater Plant Capacity Evaluation (Rel. 5/6/25)

“The City would need to develop a new approach to delivering additional drinking water capacity to meet the projected build-out.

Previously, as part of the City’s 2024 Water Facility Plan, the City utilized long-term growth projections developed by the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG), the regional planning body, which resulted in the determination that the existing plant capacity was sufficient for a 50-year horizon. A 50-year horizon is typically used for planning major WTP projects, which can require a decade or more to develop.

The City is already in the process of planning for replacement of the oldest portion of the WTP. The pace of anticipated build-out considered under the Draft Comprehensive Land Use Plan would alter the current planning process so as to avoid constructing components that would be undersized before the plant construction is complete.” 

-OHM Advisors (City Consultants)