Candidates for two Michigan Legislature seats offered competing views on housing costs, Line 5, healthcare, and local control Monday night at the 2026 Cherry Pie Debates.
The biennial event, hosted by the League of Women Voters of Leelanau County, the Leelanau Enterprise, Interlochen Public Radio and the Glen Arbor Sun, featured Rep. Betsy Coffia and her Republican challenger, Edwin Dean of the Northport Village Council in the 103rd House District. In the 37th Senate District, Sen. John Damoose faced his Democratic challenger, Kate Gallup of Cedar.
The League of Women Voters of Leelanau County and the moderators wrote the questions, and the candidates could not see them in advance.
The first question on housing noted that Leelanau County has the state’s highest median home sale price at just over $600,000, and asked what the state can do to increase affordable housing.
“Right now it is extremely expensive to build an affordable home here in Michigan, which is why developers are incentivized to build multi-million-dollar homes,” Dean explained, adding that local approvals cost about $100,000 and take about a year and a half, and proposed allowing development “by right” when property is already zoned for housing.
Coffia said she is pushing to let communities tax short-term rentals to pay for housing and infrastructure and that a similar proposal was rejected during the previous legislative season.
The exchange grew more pointed when Dean argued that subsidies do not address the root causes.
“If we’re going to do subsidized housing, I mean, essentially, this is a form of socialism.”
Coffia responded, “is it socialism or is it a morality issue?” she added, “I don’t care what label you want to put on it. We have an obligation to one another as fellow human beings.”
Damoose pointed to several efforts to increase housing, including $5 million secured for a Traverse City area educator housing project involving multiple school systems. He also said short-term rentals and vacant homes need to be part of the conversation.
“If somebody visited from another planet and heard us talk about our housing crisis and drove through this town…and saw 75 of the homes being boarded up, they’d say, what’s wrong with these people,” Damoose said.
Gallup, a self-described millennial struggling with housing costs, emphasized increasing housing supply while strengthening tenant protections. She also proposed converting some short-term rentals to year-round housing and using short-term rental revenue to support infrastructure.
Read more in Thursday's newspaper and online with more coverage of the Cherry Pie Debate 2026.
