
Kalamazoo is a few thousand residents smaller than it was a quarter-century ago. Despite that, the city has a housing shortage. That’s because household size is shrinking. More people are living alone. There are more empty-nesters in the homes once filled with children. With fewer people under each roof, the city needs about 2,300 more housing units by 2030 to accommodate future growth, based on a 2022 Kalamazoo County housing study by the Upjohn Institute. To get there, Kalamazoo officials have spent recent years taking a hard look at its zoning codes, so that zoning is part of the solution instead of part of the problem.