Metal Roofing in Flint, MI.

Genesee County has no county building program. On the state's jurisdiction list, every city, village and township in the county runs its own building permits except the Village of Otter Lake, where the state does. Which office you deal with depends on which side of a city or township line the house sits.

Inside the city, permits and inspections go through the Building & Safety Inspections office at City Hall, 1101 S. Saginaw St., and inspections are booked by phone. The city's current building permit application says work started before the proper permit is issued can bring fines of up to $1,000, that $75 of the permit fee is non-refundable, and that payment is due within five days or the application is canceled.

The City of Flint's FY27 fee schedule prices reroofing permits, but the fee schedule, the permit application and the Building & Safety page we read don't say which roof jobs need one, and they don't address metal roofing or laying a new roof over an old one. The state's construction code act says a building permit is not required for ordinary repairs (MCL 125.1510) but doesn't say whether replacing a roof counts, and the state's list of work exempt from a building permit (R 408.30505) has no roofing entry. Ask the Building & Safety office how your project is classified rather than assuming either way.

A Flint mailing address doesn't settle which office is yours. Flint Township, Burton, Grand Blanc (city and township), Davison, Flushing, Mt. Morris and Genesee Township each appear on the state's jurisdiction list as having their own building program. Ask that office about its forms and fees.

Flint has local historic districts, Carriage Town among them. The city's Parcel Hub map has a "Flint Local Historic Districts" layer that shows the general areas and properties classified as locally historic, but the city says it is not meant to show the exact location of each district, so confirm with the city whether your address is covered. Under Michigan's Local Historic Districts Act, work that affects the exterior appearance of a building in a district needs a permit, and the Historic District Commission has to act first, normally by issuing a Certificate of Appropriateness. Ordinary maintenance that doesn't change how the exterior looks is not covered. The city's application says work can't begin until the HDC, zoning and building approvals are all in hand.

The commission reviews against the Secretary of the Interior's Standards. Those Standards favor repairing deteriorated historic features over replacing them. Where a distinctive feature is too deteriorated to repair, the replacement should match the old one in design, color, texture and, where possible, materials. Whether your roof covering counts as a distinctive feature is the commission's call.

The city also posts a 1981 Civic Park Home Preservation Manual written for owners in that neighborhood, that urged repairing original slate roofs with slate, not asphalt or wood shingles, and said that if a large amount of deterioration led an owner to consider another material, the entire roof should be replaced rather than patched. The city lists it among its miscellaneous documents and doesn't say whether the commission still applies it. We found no current city guidance on putting a metal roof on an existing house in the districts, so if your house is in one, talk to the Zoning Division before you plan on metal.