Affordable, Healthy Homes

Nearly 40% of Michigan’s residential housing units were built before 1960.

This means ongoing costs for rehabilitation and maintenance, and higher energy costs. Utility costs add about 25% to housing costs, which negatively impact our vulnerable populations the most. Compound that issue with the fact that 60% of Michiganders are already spending more than they can afford on housing, and those repairs can be daunting.

Our vision for change

Enact Affordable, Healthy Homes legislation, a proposal that would provide holistic funding and program support to create more affordable housing; improve the quality, energy efficiency and safety of existing affordable and low-income housing; and reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions from all housing. 

• Allocate $100 million to create and pool resources into a whole-home retrofit program to improve quality, safety and energy efficiency of existing affordable and low-income housing
• Allocate $30 million to fund workforce development initiatives to attract, train and retain contractors for weatherization and home building projects.
• Ensure energy efficiency of new housing by introducing a bill to reform the state’s uniform building construction code adoption process that would remove the seven-year cost test and require the state to adopt the new international codes every three years.