Michigan is about to legalise duplexes and ADUs statewide — and not one bill touches your covenants
Michigan is about to legalise duplexes and ADUs statewide — and not one bill touches your covenants
2026-09-12 · Michigan · Legislation · Pending — not yet law
What happened. The Michigan House has fourteen pending bills that would strip local governments of the power to block duplexes, accessory dwelling units, small homes, deep setbacks and parking minimums. All fourteen are in committee. And every one of them is drafted the same way — “A zoning ordinance must not…” — which binds a municipality and nothing else.
None of them reaches a private restrictive covenant, a subdivision declaration, or a condominium master deed.
The package
Introduced 24 February 2026 and referred to House Government Operations, where all of it still sits:
- HB 5585 (Rep. Luke Meerman, R-89, 26 co-sponsors) — ADUs permitted by right, approvable only on a nondiscretionary administrative basis with no public hearing, where the ADU is 800 sq ft or 75% of the primary dwelling, whichever is less, set back at least 5 feet from rear and side lines. ADUs excluded from density calculations, no parking requirement, no owner-occupancy requirement.
- HB 5584 (Rep. Joey Andrews, D-38) — duplexes by right in any district allowing single-family, with no bulk or size rule preventing a duplex with at least 1,000 sq ft of habitable floor space per unit, and a cap of one parking space per unit.
- HB 5583 (Rep. Matt Longjohn, D-40) — in or adjacent to a metropolitan statistical area, setbacks capped at 15 ft front, 5 ft rear and side.
- HB 5582 (Rep. Kristian Grant, D-82) — no more than one parking space per dwelling unit for multifamily, and no residential zone may exclude a mobile home.
- HB 5581 (Rep. Tom Kunse, R-100) — no minimum dwelling area above 500 sq ft.
A second wave followed on 16 June 2026 — HB 6082 to 6085 on ADU frost protection, non-fire-rated windows, an installation tax credit, and sewer connections. Plus HB 5530, 5531 and 5532 on minimum parcel size, site-plan documentation and protest petitions.
The asymmetry, stated plainly
If this package passes in full, a Michigan homeowner in an unincorporated township with no covenants could add an 800-square-foot ADU with no hearing, no parking space and no owner-occupancy condition.
A homeowner two miles away in a platted subdivision with a 1978 declaration prohibiting accessory structures, or in a site condominium whose master deed requires board approval for any building, could not. The statute would have removed the township's objection and left the association's untouched.
That is not an oversight anyone is hiding. It is how Michigan land-use preemption has always been drafted, and it reflects a real distinction: the Michigan Zoning Enabling Act is a grant of power to local governments, and taking power back from them says nothing about private contracts among landowners.
What this means for a Michigan board, in both directions
The comfortable reading: your covenants survive. An association that wants to keep single-family character in the face of statewide upzoning can do so, and its documents become more load-bearing as the municipal layer thins.
The uncomfortable reading: the association becomes the only thing standing between an owner and a legal, state-endorsed use. That is a different political position for a volunteer board than being one of two gatekeepers, and it will produce pressure — from owners who want the ADU, from owners who bought expecting the restriction, and from a legislature that has publicly declared the restriction to be the problem.
Three practical steps
- Read your declaration for the actual words. A prohibition on “accessory structures” is not the same as a prohibition on a second dwelling unit, and a covenant limiting a lot to “one single-family dwelling” is doing very different work from one that requires board approval for construction.
- Watch for statutory cross-references. Declarations that permit whatever the zoning ordinance permits will import the new state floor automatically. That drafting is common and it is the fastest route to an unintended result.
- Decide the policy before the first application. An association that has never discussed ADUs will discuss them for the first time under time pressure, with an applicant in the room and a statute on their side. Deciding in advance is cheaper.
The same gap in the short-term rental bills
It is worth knowing that the pattern repeats. House Bills 6026 and 6027 would create a statewide short-term rental framework and bar a local government from banning short-term rentals outright. Neither contains any provision reaching private covenants or condominium bylaws. An association's rental restriction would be entirely unaffected.
Anyone telling Michigan owners that these bills would let them rent over their bylaws is wrong, and it is worth a board saying so before the misunderstanding turns into an application.
What to watch next
Whether House Government Operations moves any of it. The House returns 15 September 2026 with no committee meetings posted, and everything not enacted dies at the end of December. The Michigan Municipal League and the Michigan Townships Association oppose the package on preemption grounds, and Bloomfield Township, Clinton Township, Romulus and Sterling Heights have passed formal resolutions against it.
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