(Spencer)– The Spencer Area Jobs Trust is conducting surveys related to housing needs in that community. Kiley Miller of the Iowa Lakes Corridor Development Corporation tells KUOO news one of those is the Employer Housing Assistance Survey…
“The city of Spencer, Spencer Area Jobs Trust, a nonprofit economic development group here, is committed to ensuring there’s quality housing available for both current and future residents. But really to make that happen you have to start with understanding where you are right now. So the city hires, the Spencer Area Jobs Trust, hired an outside firm to lead a housing market needs analysis and what they’re doing right now is gathering data. And this employer survey asks essentially what are companies currently doing now to help their workers find and secure available housing.”
Miller says they’re asking the survey be completed and returned by Friday, July 17th…
“This process is rapid and we’re going to end up with a strong set of recommendations for how to encourage new home construction in our, in the city of Spencer, that actually supports workers. And so as quickly as possible if folks can get that information back it will sure help with the process.”
Miller says the information gathered by the survey will be important on two fronts…
“One, it will help community leaders establish strategies for drawing new housing and developing new housing and that could be anything from hey, we need more ground; to maybe we need to tweak our incentives and our tax relief, etcetera. The other thing we’ll be able to do is go out and tell housing developers this is the document in demand. We believe there’s room for, you know, whatever number of new single family homes, new multi-family properties, etcetera.”
Miller says another study that’s currently being conducted is the Housing Stakeholder Survey…
“Folks if you’re out there and you’re interested in having a comment about housing, generally and specifically in the city of Spencer, this is a great opportunity to share that comment. It’s going to ask you questions like do you feel like, well what do you feel is an affordable home? How much are you willing to pay for your home? What do you currently pay now? Understand this is all anonymous information. But it’s obvious, right, if we go out and say we need a whole bunch of $400,000 homes and folks are actually looking for $200,000 homes, then we’re going to miss the boat. So that’s the kind of information we’re gathering.”
