GOSHEN — The city of Goshen is in the midst of a major housing crisis, and it’s going to take some significant work and community buy-in to have a chance at turning it around.
That was one of the major takeaways from a special multi-family housing policy work session hosted by the Goshen City Council and Goshen Redevelopment Commission early Friday morning at Shanklin Park’s Schrock Pavilion.
Helping to begin the discussion Friday was Greg Goodnight, former mayor of Kokomo and owner of Connecting Strategies LLC, who was invited to speak from his perspective about one of the biggest issues currently facing the city of Goshen: lack of available housing.
“When I came into office, we looked at our demographics, and we had a lot of people that worked in Kokomo that chose to live in other counties,” Goodnight said. “So, they were driving into work every day, cashing their paychecks on Friday, and taking that money back home and spending it in the communities they lived in.”
That same thing is also happening right here in Elkhart County, Goodnight explained.
As an example, Goodnight noted that according to the latest numbers available from STATS Indiana, there are more than 25,000 workers who currently commute to work in Elkhart County from the surrounding counties of St. Joseph, Kosciusko, LaGrange, Noble and Marshall.
“And I only looked at the top five counties,” Goodnight said. “But there are over 25,000 people that drive in every day, and take jobs here, and then go back to the communities they live in to spend that money.”
Goodnight also noted that there are about 8,900 jobs currently posted as available in Elkhart County.
“So, as I was doing the research for this, what I realized was, you don’t really have a jobs problem as I see it,” Goodnight said. “The problem is, you’re not capturing all your workers as residents.”
And lack of housing, he said, is one of the primary reasons why.
LOCAL PERSPECTIVES
Nick Kieffer, president of the Goshen Chamber of Commerce, offered a similar sentiment when speaking from the perspective of the local business community.
“I hear from the business community pretty constantly of the need for housing, the need for a place for their employees to move to,” Kieffer said. “Especially when they’re recruiting folks from out of the area, out of the state, they want to bring them in and want to keep them here in our communities, and right now they just can’t. So, the business community is heavily interested and invested in this process.”
And one way to start working toward that goal, he said, is for the community to start incentivizing projects such as multi-family housing.
“I think as a community, we need to be creative in that funding so we can spur some more of that development,” Kieffer said. “We need housing of all levels.”
Christina Clauss, of the Coldwell Banker Real Estate Group, was quick to agree, and made a point of explaining that housing is currently needed at all price points in Goshen, from low-income to high.
“These multi-units, it’s such a great opportunity to bring people in who otherwise would be moving to these other areas,” Clauss said. “And once they start living here, and getting engaged in the community, and the school systems, they want to purchase a home with a yard, etc. But we have to get them to stay here first, to be in the community with all of us, and to want to like it here.”
And that just can’t happen without available housing options, she said, which in turn likely won’t happen without some form of incentive for the potential developers of those housing projects.
“We just need all levels of housing, and, I think, incentives for the developers to bring that type of housing,” Clauss said. “We’re losing people to other communities. They’re driving here to work, we’re losing their kids from the school system, and I really think it’s important to have them stay in the community.”
To help drive home the urgency of the local housing crisis, Clauss noted that she had checked how many houses were for sale in Goshen the night before Friday’s work session, and there were only 12 that she could find across all price points.
“I mean, that’s $50,000 to $575,000,” she explained. “And I think last year there were 300 sales, and that number has been going down since 2011, consistently. And that’s all across the country, the inventory shortage. So, it’s important to get all levels of housing.”
“Unless we build stuff, that’s how we get ahead of this, is basically by bringing projects to this town, and adding inventory,” added Travis Bontrager, owner of Bontrager Real Estate. “And typically that’s been what we’ve done for decades. But this past decade, in this area and in the U.S., we’ve built nothing in comparison to our population growth. We’re so far behind. So, it’s a really almost insurmountable catchup at this point.”
Speaking from his perspective as a leader within the local school system, Goshen Community Schools Superintendent Steven Hope said he, too, has come face to face with the impact the city’s lack of housing has had on the Goshen community.
“My message is really that we need housing for everybody here in Goshen,” Hope said. “Indiana as a state has lost tens of thousands of students since the pandemic started. Even here in Elkhart County, even though the economy is great here in Goshen and Elkhart County, every school district in Elkhart County has lost students except for Baugo.”
And one of the biggest reasons for that, he explained, is the lack of available housing options.
As an example, Hope noted that GCS recently lost 100 students to the city of Elkhart, with the most common reason given during exit interviews being that it is less expensive to rent in Elkhart.
Alternatively, Hope said GCS also recently lost an additional 36 students to the Concord school system, with the most common reason for that exudes being the inability to find a quality home in the Goshen area.
“Goshen’s an easy sell,” Hope said. “It’s a great city, but there’s just nowhere to live. So, we need all levels of housing, and right now.”
For his part, Goshen Mayor Jeremy Stutsman pointed to the fact that this housing crisis is not just affecting the city of Goshen, but the entire nation, and it will be the communities who are successful at tackling the crisis early on who will ultimately reap the greatest benefits.
“Christina commented that this is an issue across the country, and I think that’s a key point that we need to remember,” Stutsman said. “There are communities all over this country that have started incentivizing these projects, and if we aren’t participating now, we’re going to be behind the game.
“The city of Goshen, we’ve grown more than the state in the last three years,” he added. “We’ve done a fantastic job of already filling in all of our available housing. We’ve got next to nothing for sale. I think our vacancy rate for vacant homes is only 2%. So, we’ve already filled in everything we can, and the only way to take a step forward at this point is to start getting new projects going.”
FUNDING ASSISTANCE POLICY
As part of that goal, Becky Hutsell, redevelopment director for the city, explained that she and her colleagues have been working on putting together a new, first-of-its-kind Tax Increment Financing Funding Assistance Policy with the goal of articulating to both current and potential developers the city’s desire to promote economic development within the city — including new housing projects.
Tax Increment Financing, or TIF, is a special funding tool available to local municipalities that spurs economic development which otherwise would not occur, Hutsell explained.
When a TIF district is created, property owners within the district continue to pay the same property tax rates as those outside the district. The difference is that tax collections, over and above the base value, are placed into a special fund that is then used to pay for project costs.
“For 20 years, we’ve had TIF districts, and we’ve never had an official policy,” Hutsell said. “But in hearing all of the different comments and feedback that has come our way, we said, ‘Well, what if we did?’”
While quick to point out that the new policy is still a draft and very much in its early stages, Hutsell noted that the plan moving forward will likely include formation of a committee that will work with her and her colleagues to continue gathering feedback, input, questions and concerns as they relate to the policy’s formation.
“We did want to be really careful with this policy, because we don’t want to rule anything out,” Hutsell added of potential future projects. “Every project we’ve done for 20 years has been evaluated on a case by case basis. There are no two projects that are ever the same, so we want to make sure that we are always open to looking at each for it’s own.”
Asked how long it will likely be before the policy is complete, Mayor Stutsman said he anticipates at least another five to six months of work before anything official is adopted.
“So, we’ll keep bringing information to you as quickly as we can,” Stutsman said. “We definitely don’t want to kill this conversation, so if you guys want to have future conversations about this, or other ways that we can be partnering with either industry, or schools, or whoever, to get this moving, I think that would be a great opportunity.”