S

ince it was first founded, 
the 
University 
of 
Michigan’s 
Graduate 
Employees’ 
Organization 
has 
persistently 
pushed 
boundaries 
and moved the University forward. 
With its fierce advocacy for graduate 
student rights, the union has played 
a critical role in shaping campus 
conversations and leading cultural 
change. Unfortunately, however, the 
past three years have seen this once 
illustrious organization devolve into 
chaos. 
After the University made an 
extreme effort to reduce learning 
loss by bringing undergraduates 
back to campus in 2020 during the 
COVID-19 pandemic, GEO launched 
a strike in favor of remote classes. 
Despite the University’s rigid safety 
measures and ready availability of 
testing, GEO made the decision to 
go on strike, putting them at odds 
with both U-M administration and 
concerned undergraduates hoping for 
an in-person classroom experience. 
Since then, GEO has continued to 
push unreasonable proposals that 
have damaged the credibility of the 
organization.
Most 
recently, 
GEO 
made 
headlines 
through 
its 
extreme 
demands during ongoing contract 
negotiations with the University. With 
the organization asking for a $14,500 

raise to the minimum stipend for 
graduate student instructors and a cap 
on section sizes, and a caucus within 
it supporting the abolition of the 
Division of Public Safety and Security, 
GEO’s demands leave little room for 
compromise and risk starting another 
strike as the May 1 deadline for a new 
contract approaches. 
Perhaps the most curious aspect 
of the current round of contract 
negotiations is GEO’s demand for a 
“living wage.” To date, this demand 
has been the focal point of the 
organization’s campaign, with GEO 
marketing that graduate students 
are paid only 62% Ann Arbor’s 
living wage of $38,537. This claim 
is misguided at best and deceitful 
at worst. With the typical graduate 
student working approximately 16-20 
hours a week and being paid a median 
hourly wage of around $35 an hour, 
students are making almost double 
Ann Arbor’s living hourly wage of 
$18.67 an hour.
Furthermore, GSIs receive up 
to about $13,000 or $26,000 in 
tuition subsidies, depending on their 
in-state residency. These subsidies 
significantly lower the burden of 
student debt and combined with the 
typical GSI salary bring their total 
compensation from a part-time role 
above the full-time Ann Arbor living 
wage.
Despite their already high pay, 
GEO is demanding a $14,500 raise 
to their minimum stipend for 2,300 
GSIs. This figure would cost the 

University over $30 million per year. 
This demand seems both irrational 
and unnecessary. Ultimately, while 
GSIs play a critical role on campus 
through their positions as instructors, 
they are first and foremost students. 
Like any other degree, pursuing 
a graduate degree is a long-term 
investment in future earning — not a 
path meant to immediately maximize 
salary.
When asked for comment on this 
matter, GEO President Jared Eno 
responded that while subsidies and 
other benefits help lighten the load 
financially, “Tuition waivers don’t 
pay the bills.” Citing that “8 in 10 
grad workers are rent-burdened, 1in 
6 aren’t confident they could handle 
an unexpected $500 expense, and 
1 in 10 worry that they can’t afford 
enough food to eat,” Eno summarized 
many of the real struggles graduate 
students face. Yet, rather than 
arbitrarily 
increasing 
salary 
for 
all students, a more worthwhile 
approach would be to provide need-
based rent and food assistance. By 
expanding these targeted programs, 
the University could address the 
most pressing concerns of GEO 
without 
inflating 
already 
high 
salaries. Such an approach would 
ensure that GEO members could live 
comfortably without financial strain, 
yet still compensate them fairly for 
their positions as part-time student 
workers.

Wednesday, February 22, 2023 — 9
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Debates 
on the 
Diag

A 

September article in 
The Michigan Daily 
called for the end of 
single-family zoning in Ann 
Arbor. The author, Lydia Storella, 
cites several reasons to end the 
zoning category. Her first reason 
is the racist origins of single-
family zoning. Storella continues 
by saying that single-family zoning 
raises rent prices by forcing fewer 
residents to bear the high cost 
of land in Ann Arbor. Third, she 
points out that single-family zoning 
is single-use zoning, separating 
residents from the services that 
they frequent.
I echo Storella’s sentiments, but 
why stop there? The ills of single-
family zoning also apply to other 
kinds of zoning. They prevent 
a wider array of housing types 
from providing for more people 
and creating a more dynamic 
community. I am not suggesting a 
rubber factory be built at the end of 
your street, or the end of industrial 
and residential separation, but it is 
time for a new approach to how we 
look at our cities, one that does not 
try to fit them within the bounds of 
zoning codes that span hundreds of 
pages.
Ann Arbor has already made 
strides 
against 
single-family 
zoning. In 2021, Ann Arbor 
approved new regulations for 
accessory dwelling units in the 
city. Critics of the plan say that 
this 
measure 
constitutes 
an 
elimination of single-family zoning 
— in theory, the approximately 
22,350 dwellings impacted under 
this new policy would no longer be 
restricted to one family per lot. In 
effect, however, this has not been 
the case. Since 2016, only 34 ADUs 
have been permitted in the city, 
according to Brett Lenart, planning 
manager for the city of Ann Arbor. 
Eliminating single-family zoning 
would be a significantly more 
drastic change, yet it would do 
little to get over the real-world 
difficulties of building multi-unit 
dwellings.
Minneapolis 
recently 
eliminated single-family zoning, 

permitting a triplex in all zones 
that previously only allowed one 
unit. But in the first two years 
without single-family zoning in the 
city, only 97 units were permitted 
that previously would have been 
prohibited. Storella points out that 
the artificial constriction of supply 
is what keeps an upward pressure 
on rents in Ann Arbor. Yet, in other 
cities, the elimination of single-
family zoning has largely not 
appeared to help.
Storella also cites the end of 
single-family zoning in California 
in 2021. California’s bill was 
transformative, and a sign that 
housing policy reform has come 
a long way. But recent research 
from the University of California, 
Berkeley 
found 
that 
new 
construction activity in the first 
year after the bill’s passage was 
extremely minimal.
What 
comes 
after 
the 
elimination 
of 
single-family 
zoning is another big question that 
remains mostly unanswered. Some 
cities have rezoned the affected 
parcels to allow three or four units, 
but those numbers are ultimately 
arbitrary. In Ann Arbor, there is 
no guarantee that up-zoning a 
parcel from single-family zoning 
to a denser designation would even 
work to increase supply and put 
downward pressure on rents.
On top of that, Ann Arbor’s 
most common multifamily zoning 
code is plagued with issues that 
artificially restrict the supply of 
housing. City staff have referred 
to this code, R4C, as “broken.” 
Ann Arbor underwent a four-year 
process to overhaul R4C, but that 
effort ultimately broke down due to 
disputes over several technicalities. 
At the time of that process, 83% of 
structures zoned R4C were non-
conforming. According to Lenart, 
only nine new structures were 
allowed under the theoretically 
denser R4C zoning code in the past 
10 years. The issues with zoning 
are not relegated to the single-
family flavor: they afflict all kinds 
of zoning. 
In addition, getting rid of single-
family zoning won’t get rid of the 
myriad of other rules that currently 
restrict the development of more 
types of housing in Ann Arbor. 

Height limits, minimum setbacks, 
density limits, floor-area ratios 
and other requirements imposed 
on new construction further limit 
the ability of more “liberal” zoning 
ordinances to actually be more 
liberal.
In his book “Arbitrary Lines,” 
urban planning scholar M. Nolan 
Gray writes that zoning “works 
principally by what it prevents 
rather than by what it causes.” 
Why should planning limit itself 
to being a system that prohibits, 
instead of a system that creates 
and provides? Zoning definitely 
hasn’t been providing for Ann 
Arbor. All of Ann Arbor’s most 
lovable 
neighborhoods 
predate 
zoning, which has only been on 
the books since 1923. Zoning is the 
reason why City Place, a large, car-
oriented, suburban-style garden 
apartment 
complex 
on 
South 
Fifth Avenue, exists instead of the 
elegant Heritage Row proposal that 
would have blended the historic 
with the contemporary by adding 
new 
apartments 
behind 
nine 
meticulously 
preserved 
homes 
dating back to the 19th century.
The basis of zoning has been 
to exclude. Not to exclude safety 
or environmental hazards from 
residential neighborhoods, but to 
delineate class, separate race and 
force an inequitable system on the 
public.
Justice 
George 
Sutherland, 
authoring the 6-3 majority opinion 
in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty 
Company, the Supreme Court 
opinion that legalized zoning, 
writes that “the apartment house 
is a mere parasite.” Apartments, he 
explains, “take advantage” of the 
commons, ruining their residential 
surroundings. Ending the modern 
system of zoning as we know it 
does not mean the end of urban 
planning, nor the beginning of an 
era where factories get built next 
to elementary schools. Rather, 
the end of zoning is the hopeful 
beginning of a more intelligent 
era, one that is more egalitarian 
and one that is more focused on 
creating a built environment that 
allows people to live how they’d 
like and where they’d like. 

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Ann Arbor, MI 48109
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Co-Editors in Chief

QUIN ZAPOLI AND 
JULIAN BARNARD
Editorial Page Editors

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of The Daily’s Editorial Board. 
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

Ammar Ahmad

Julian Barnard

Brandon Cowit

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Shubhum Giroti

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Zhane Yamin

Nikhil Sharma

Lindsey Spencer

Evan Stern

Anna Trupiano

Jack Tumpowsky

Alex Yee

Quin Zapoli

JULIA VERKLAN AND 
ZOE STORER 
Managing Editors

Why stop at ending single-family 
zoning? End all zoning in Ann Arbor

Opinion

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

GEO’s contract demands are 
unreasonable and extravagant

ABDULRAHMAN ATEYA
Opinion Columnist

NIKHIL SHARMA
Opinion Columnist

Design by Haylee Bohm

Tuesday, March 7, 2023

Join the celebration:

Symposium • Ceremony 

Community Reception

Free and open to the public. 
For complimentary tickets and 
event details, visit:

myumi.ch/inauguration

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Stress relief

