Too much of the conversation about northeast Indiana’s housing shortage centers around single-family homes.
Home ownership is great, but short supply has led to rising prices and new construction has become pricey to the point that the average local household is likely to struggle to afford a stick-built home retailing for $250,000-$300,000.
Few young adults in the first few years of their career are going to be financially capable of jumping straight into home ownership.
So when you don’t have the money to buy a home (and if you’re not living back home with Mom and Dad), where do you live?
Rentals.
And, like most of the housing situation in the region, there’s a severe dearth of rental properties.
The region has plenty of jobs, but good luck getting someone to relocate here to fill a position. Finding a place to rent in many communities is a serious chore, especially as the region lacks the visibility online of well-advertised complexes urban areas like Fort Wayne have. You can’t just punch “apartments Kendallville” into Google and expect to find something.
Meanwhile, the complexes that do exist are stuffed to capacity. Two recent examples that have popped up in our routine local reporting: the 150-unit Carriage House complex in Kendallville is 100% full with a six month waiting list, while the new 50-unit Enterprise Pointe in Angola had 49 of 50 units less than a month after it starting taking applications.
Demand is obviously outstripping supply.
What’s worse is that local attitudes on rental properties can be described as chilly at best, downright hostile at worst.
Last summer, Auburn rejected a zoning change for a proposed 48-unit complex after neighbors complained.
“We could all accept something being built and developed there, but not apartments,” one Auburn resident said.
“We’d like to see homeowners there,” another added.
“It’s clear that what we have here is a ‘not in my backyard’ to multi-family,” said an attorney representing the neighborhood.
There were similar sentiments when Kendallville was discussing possible futures for the former East Noble Middle School prior to it becoming the Community Learning Center. Back then, residents at a town hall meeting to discuss ideas didn’t bring much that they did want, but they were fervently united against a possible rehab project for it to become rental housing, especially low-income housing.
Mention the words “low income,” “income adjusted,” “rent assistance,” or “Section 8” and you’ll see pitchforks and torches at the next public meeting.
But the reality that no one wants to face is this: Much of northeast Indiana is low-income. And it could clearly benefit from more modern low-income rental space, giving low earners a good place to live.
The region could also benefit from more mid-income rental space, as well as senior rental space. With home prices the way they are, we’d wager even a Class A upscale apartment complex would be spoken for the second it opened.
Any and all residential development is needed.
But if local leaders are so focused on only single family homes that are too expensive for first-time buyers to get into, that’s not really solving the problem.
Like Angola, communities should not only be open to rental development but also seek it out. That includes having the courage to support low-income developments under reasonable conditions.
Solving the housing crunch is complex, long-term problem, but building from the bottom up by increasing rental supply has to be part of the solution.
© 2024 KPCNews, Kendallville, IN.