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Neighborhood Institute in the news
In an interview with The Daily, Kirk Westphal, director of Neighborhood Institute, a local pro-housing and urbanism advocacy group, said he hoped the city would focus on the promotion of new housing above other planning concerns.
“If we keep our eye on the prize for housing abundance and housing choice and allowing a variety of housing types to be built, particularly the types that developers are building and want to build, that should be the north star of our plan,” Westphal said. “I think if we discover 10 years from now that hey, we really should allow for something new or different to be built, we can pivot at that point…”
“More so than any city council I’ve seen in the past 20 years, there is an enthusiasm to accommodate the needs of students and renters like never before,” Westphal said. “There’s a pretty solid recognition that although renters have a shorter tenure in general in the city as a group they are just as important as homeowners … so it’s really heartening to see students and other renters coming to Planning Commission and advocating for the people who will inevitably come after them.”
…In July this year, Ann Arbor community members staged a 'Die In' outside City Hall to bring attention to the issue.
Kirk Westphal helped organize the event.
“About nine years ago, City Council passed a resolution that says they commit to Vision Zero by 2025, meaning we're going to bring the number of serious deaths and injuries down to zero,” said Westphal. “That clearly isn't happening. In fact, last year was the worst year for deaths and injuries on our roads in the nine years since we've declared Vision Zero.”
“In broad strokes what we're seeing is just limited supply," said Kirk Westphal, executive director of the Neighborhood Institute, an Ann Arbor-based organization focused on housing and transportation policy. "And the supply is being limited by zoning ordinances which were written anywhere between 60 and 100 years ago in the area that really haven't changed much in most areas."
Still, Westphal — a former member of the Ann Arbor City Council and the city's planning commission — is quick to note that the city has taken myriad steps in recent years to address some of those decades-old ordinances that he believes have exacerbated the housing issues found in Ann Arbor.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Kirk Westphal, former Ann Arbor city councilmember and protest attendee, said the data was not in line with the City Council’s Vision Zero goal to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries caused by traffic accidents by 2025.
“This was a grassroots protest to recognize that the city is not just missing the Vision Zero goal of zero serious injuries and fatalities by 2025, but we’re going in the wrong direction,” Westphal said. “So we’re calling on (the) City Council to take significant action because people are losing their lives.”
Westphal spoke to attendees briefly prior to the protest and emphasized remembrance of pedestrians who had been severely hurt or killed during the previous year.
“City Council has committed to Vision Zero — zero deaths and serious injuries by 2025 — and we’re not just not there, we’re not even close, and it’s getting worse,” said Kirk Westphal, a former City Council member who helped organize the protest and rang a bell 17 times in recognition of last year’s victims.