Affordable Housing – Page 9 – Easterday Construction Co., Inc.

At a meeting Thursday evening I was asked why MCEDC (Marshall County Economic Development Corporation) is included in the Affordable Housing Task Force for Culver and I didn’t give you the best answer. Let me see if I can do better here.

One of the things that came from the MCEDC BEAR meetings was the need for more good employees. In the last six months the unemployment rate in Marshall County has dropped another percentage point to 4.5%. (Doug Anspach, former PEDC Director, used to say that at 4% unemployment everyone that is able and willing to work is working.) Since no one is stepping up to address this employment issue, we have added “Workforce Development” as one of our four main action items in the MCEDC strategic plan. Housing is just one of the issues that needs to be addressed under workforce development.

On Saturday, I sat in on another focus group meeting on the Culver Comprehensive Plan. This one was specific to the Lake Maxinkuckee Environmental Council and Fund. It was a fairly good discussion and several achievable goals were added to the consultant’s list for the plan. I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t more discussion about why goals from the previous plan weren’t met and how to achieve that, but overall I thought it was positive.

As with every single Culver meeting on the Comprehensive Plan that I’ve attended, the subject of affordable housing came up. This is such a nebulous term that is thrown around with people at the table talking about houses currently available in town for $70,000, others talking about the $125,000 to $250,000 range and also the eco-friendly housing project that has been floated around which is looking at the $250,000 range. To help me get a handle on it, I asked a banker friend to break it down. (This is all in big fat round numbers, so don’t get too picky on my math, please!)