1.6 Million Visitors and Counting

Our gateway communities received over 1.67M visitors this past year, exploring and enjoying our National Park’s beauty and our local hospitality. This influx has continued to rise with the increased awareness and national notoriety of an area we all love and call home.

All of us know the congestion and the parking issues we experience in the summer months can be painful. We also experience the long wait times to be seated and served at a restaurant due, in part, to not having the staff.

To accommodate this ongoing influx, we need to provide affordable housing for our community builders, including firemen/EMTs, school district employees, law enforcement employees, road commission employees, as well as our permanent and seasonal workforce supporting the local business community.

While permanent community builder housing is the primary goal, we recognize the beneficial overlap between permanent workforce homeownership and rentals.

Potential Solutions in Leelanau County

We continue to investigate the suitability of opportunities that may become available for workforce housing in our communities in southern Leelanau County. We are working to facilitate the development of both rental and homeownership opportunities for community-building families and households.

Accomplishing this goal would be a WIN for our community in terms of providing attainable housing for essential community builders. By providing quality housing to our community builders, we’re ensuring they can live where they work—helping to create a more connected and stronger community for everyone.

How Can You Help?

There are several things you can do now to help SBGC in our efforts to mitigate the crisis in workforce housing in our gateway communities:

1. Please subscribe to our e-newsletter. This sign-up link can be found at the bottom of our homepage.
2. Follow us on social media. We are actively posting updates on Facebook and Instagram.
3. Please support us with a donation or volunteer with us.