East Lansing resident Adam DeLay has announced his intent to run for East Lansing City Council in November’s election. The longtime resident and MSU alum joins fellow Spartan alum Liam Richichi and three other candidates in eyeing one of the two open positions on the board.
DeLay currently works at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, helping state legislators address constituent issues related to programs like Medicaid and food assistance. He previously worked in Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office, former Senator Debbie Stabenow’s office and in the state legislature.
DeLay graduated from MSU in 2010 with a bachelor's degree in social relations and journalism. He previously ran for the city council in 2021. In the time since, DeLay expressed that the city has had a lot of poor decision-making the current council has been taking.
"Whether it involves the city's finances, whether it involves the city's inability to address the concerns of residents, affordable housing, those are some of the issues that I'm really focused on," DeLay said.
"In our residential neighborhoods, residents have been raising numerous complaints about traffic, whether it's speeding or reckless driving," DeLay said. "We want to see more stop signs, more enforcement. We want to see things like either traffic circles within the neighborhoods or local islands that they'll put in between the streets to try to slow traffic down."
DeLay said he thinks there's been some progress by the city council to look at ways to address some of the issues, but said it's been "very slow-moving." DeLay criticizes the city’s slow response to community petitions and its reliance on the Department of Public Works' input over resident feedback.
"I happen to be of the opinion that if you have a lot of residents telling you 'we want to see this' and from a resident standpoint saying, 'no, I don't want this,' it seems very simple then what the solution should be but a lot of times, unfortunately, the city gets lost in bureaucracy," DeLay said.
City’s "hostility" towards students
Another issue DeLay is running on is what he described as the city’s hostility towards the student population, specifically the lack of businesses open during the summer period when many students leave MSU’s campus.
"You go downtown now in the summer, and Albert Street is closed," DeLay said. "And we have what's called Albert El Fresco. It's very popular. It's been shrunk in the past few years, which is unfortunate because it has been less popular and it is always open and closed right around the time students come and go because the mentality is we don't want that around when the student population is at maximum right in the fall and spring."
Tackling landlord, apartment sign-up issues
Another issue DeLay is campaigning on surrounds housing and landlord issues, specifically the pressure students face from landlords to renew leases within weeks of moving in. If elected, he will address those issues.
In 2021, East Lansing’s city council passed an ordinance that prohibits landlords within the city's borders from showing or leasing units to other tenants for the next rental cycle until 150 days after the term of the lease began.
The ordinance, championed by former East Lansing mayor Aaron Stephens, ultimately did not go into effect due to the governments of Lansing and Meridian Township not passing similar laws by the East Lansing Council-imposed deadline of Aug. 10.
DeLay called what many students experience with housing "a very frustrating situation," specifically due to many seniors not knowing if they’ll be staying in East Lansing after graduation.
"We'd love it if we could have students stay here after they graduate and retain that talent and get jobs up here," DeLay said. "But we don't make it easy either because we don't provide the affordable housing or the ones we do have, we make it impossible for them to figure out what their future plans are going to be."
DeLay went on to criticize the sign-up process that many students go through each year.
"Students are treated like cattle when it comes to apartments," DeLay said. "The day they go to sign them, there's a huge crowd outside the leasing office. You've got to try to fight to get your spot. And so I think by delaying that process through that proposed ordinance, which ultimately was unsuccessful, that's just something that we can do to try to improve those relations."
Symbolic relationship between Michigan State University and East Lansing
Referring back to improving how downtown East Lansing operates during the summer towards students, DeLay said that is just one example of how MSU and the city can improve relations and "bring together both sides of Grand River."
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"When I ran four years ago, I met with the president of ASMSU at the time, and I think it's partly working with the administration," DeLay said. "What do you want to see out of the city but also with those student organizations that I think really have their finger on the pulse? That ordinance I talked about was something that ASMSU at the time was very involved in trying to push."
On the subject of affordable housing, DeLay said there is no coordination with MSU and East Lansing on creating more housing.
"The university is going to keep building housing on its property, apartments, things like that," DeLay said. "There's really no coordinated effort to address the issue."
DeLay mentioned how after graduating, he and his wife moved around the area, from Lansing to Delta Township and Lansing Township.
"Finally, after 10 years, we were able to afford to live here and buy a house," DeLay said. "How do we work with the university to say, we want to retain talent? We want people to stay here when they graduate. We want to grow the city."
DeLay continued by saying that listening to the needs of residents, stakeholders and organizations whose role it is to represent different groups of people is crucial.
"You listen to them and then you implement or try to implement the things that they want to see and I don't think there's a ton of that going on currently," DeLay said. "I think that this city is the university, hands down. So to try to make that as positive a relationship as possible is crucially important."
Affordable housing for current students, post-grad individuals
Around the time DeLay graduated, high-rise apartment complexes like The Hub and The Abbott started to be built in Downtown East Lansing. Many residents at the time, including DeLay, didn’t like the idea.
But over time, DeLay’s opinion started to grow from skeptical to supportive.
"I think those have been positive, not just to provide housing, but it also just elevates the city as a whole in terms of where it wants to go and what it wants to be as a Big Ten college town," DeLay said.
DeLay said about four years ago, there was a question of whether East Lansing needed more student housing or if the market was saturated.
"At the time, it kind of felt like these high rises were sufficient," DeLay said. "I don't know if we want to be building any more of them."
However, East Lansing not only made its footprint in being a Big Ten college town, but along with MSU’s student admission numbers skyrocketing, so has the demand for affordable housing.
Adam described a broader issue: while East Lansing residents oppose both, more high-rises and the conversion of neighborhood houses into student rentals, they offer no alternative. This leaves students with few housing options. He supports continued housing development but acknowledges the need to gain community buy-in.
He proposes a dual-track approach: build dedicated student housing and also develop housing for recent graduates or young professionals — units that fall within a specific income bracket to exclude both high earners and current students. He stresses that affordability is not just a student problem but extends to post-graduation life when many are trying to remain in the city.
DeLay also emphasizes the importance of reliable transportation, particularly for students and graduate students who end up living farther from campus due to housing limitations.
"To make sure that wherever we build it, it's easy to get to campus, to get to class, otherwise, if you're building it out of nowhere and there's nowhere to get there, then you're not really addressing the problem because no one's going to want to live there," DeLay said.
Increasing awareness of East Lansing politics, local elections
DeLay expresses optimism about a recent change in Michigan election law that could increase student participation: the permanent absentee ballot list. With more students automatically receiving ballots, they may become more aware of local elections. This, in turn, incentivizes candidates like himself to reach out more actively. He sees this as a turning point that could drive up historically low turnout.
"We need to let them know who we are," DeLay said. "I think that hopefully now the way election laws are structured in Michigan, it encourages both sides, both the candidates and the voters to reach out to each other."
DeLay pointed out that in previous years, the turnout for East Lansing City Council elections has ranged around five to six thousand voters, and hopes that this November’s election will bring more voters.
