Workforce housing taking positive steps forward with new programs

Goal of committee is to “get 80 percent of the community behind workforce housing and supporting it”

The Custer County Workforce Housing Committee (WHC) held a regular meeting on March 6. Among the items on the agenda were the status of the seven lots in Silver Cliff deeded to the Upper Arkansas Area Council of Governments (UAACOG) for self-help housing; a presentation on community outreach strategy in the wake of the new community Housing Needs Assessment (HNA) being conducted; and a revisit of plans for a 12-lot workforce housing development in Silver Cliff, which included discussion of whether or not it was time for Custer County to consider forming a Housing Authority.

Barry Keene reported that UAACOG Housing Director Cameron Fancher was working on getting candidates for self-help housing, and that he was planning to direct Fancher towards Stacy Terrill, the coordinator for the Custer County Kids Council (CCKC), who in the previous month’s meeting had mentioned the hardships that the families she was seeing were finding with housing in the Valley.

Keene also reported that he had just received the project plan outline from the companies hired to for the HNA. He said that “it dovetails neatly with new DOLA requirements” for housing grants. Committee member Pamela Ouzts outlined a community outreach plan she had designed to go along with the data collection process. Ouzts reported that she had been doing “a lot of one-on-one” meetings to start, talking about what workforce housing is and why is it needed. She defined one of her approaches as “meeting with loud voices” in the community, either for or against an issue, so as to “give me a better idea of addressing what the concerns and fears are.”

“The goal is to get 80 percent of the community behind workforce housing and supporting it,” Ouzts said: “To see if we can get the community to be proud of the workforce housing effort.” She stressed that reaching out to the faith-based community to help spread the message about workforce housing might help in “dealing with the stigma attached to affordable housing – applicants [for housing] will be few at first because people are too proud to admit they need it.” The goal, Ouzts concluded, “is that by the time the Workforce Housing Committee is presenting at government meetings no one can say, ‘Why is this the first time I am hearing about this?’”

The WHC discussed various messaging strategies, such as how to have an online presence and navigate social media as well as in-person gatherings such as town hall meetings, and getting people to share their personal stories about housing insecurity. Ouzts said that she was willing to do a beta design for a webpage as well as Facebook and other social media accounts. Keene called for a motion to authorize her to do so. The motion carried unanimously.

The WHC also discussed ways and means of getting the 12-lot “Villages” project in Silver Cliff developed in the possible absence of UAACOG being able to serve as the Housing Authority. “We have faith in them but we have to develop a Plan B,” Keene said. A Housing Authority would be important for this project’s continuance as neither the towns nor the county have expressed any interest in owning any of the projects or taking on any of the debt needed to develop them. Keene and Bob Fulton said they would do more research on the subject.

Greg Quinones, attending as a member of the public, talked about the duplexes he and his family are developing. He said that their “grand plan” had been to retire to Silver Cliff, but decided to develop affordable workforce housing after conversations with WHC member Steve Lasswell while he was still Silver Cliff mayor. “We ended up trying to match workforce housing needs with what we could afford to develop,” Quinones said: “We have four duplexes going online, and we are hoping to have them move-in ready by May 1. All utilities are included with rent because of the solar arrays and heat pumps we put in.”

– Elliot Jackson