Housing shortage threatens growth

CELINA - Sustaining small communities requires ensuring enough people come to town to replace the people who die or leave.

Mercer County is the only county in the region to show positive population growth during the past five years, Mercer County Community Development Director Jared Ebbing said.

"It's only like 0.8 percent, but it's still positive. The trend line is there," he said.

"Auglaize County's population has held its own or slightly decreased since the last census," reported Gregory Myers, Wapakoneta Area Economic Development Council executive director. "So we have not grown significantly," .

Both counties' economies are experiencing current and potential job growth and state-low unemployment rates. However, both Ebbing and Myers report a lack of good medium-priced single homes or apartments where new employees can live.

"The potential problem is when I hear people say, 'We had a potential hire on the hook, and they turned the job down. A good-paying job, great opportunity, they turned it down because they couldn't find a house or a place to live quick enough.' That's troubling," Ebbing said. "That repeats itself over and over again. That's one problem that I'm starting to hear from companies."

Myers agreed.

"The concern is, as our employers have been telling us, if there is not housing available for new hires, then chances are they're going to move to other locations in the region, and that's not going to help population growth in Auglaize County," Myers said. "So it's important that we begin to look at the issue and see what kinds of solutions are available."

Both economic development organizations teamed with their county commissioners last week to present results of a survey taken of area employers and housing professionals in February. The results confirmed what Myers and Ebbing have been hearing. A need exists for medium-priced single-family homes and apartments for workers at the growing local firms.

"The Realtors told us this is the smallest available housing market that they've seen," Myers pointed out.

"It's not a catastrophic issue. It's a good problem to have, but we don't want it to become a problem that would inhibit our community's growth," Ebbing added.

Barriers include the lack of available ground for new housing and the high cost of land if a location can be found. Housing developments are not springing up as they did in the 1980s despite the demand for dwellings. According to the county auditor's offices in both counties, new construction permits show about 70 new homes a year in each county in the past five years.

After having received results of the survey, the commissioners and economic development leaders called for a public meeting last week to brainstorm possible solutions. A group of company officials, real estate professionals, builders and developers has begun to continue the conversation to search for possible answers.

"The companies that are here today are growing, and they need more employees, and it's highly likely those employees are going to need housing options, unless we want them to live in someone else's county and drive here," Myers said.

"We all want the same thing, a strong community moving forward," Ebbing said. "If we don't at least talk about this, the fear could be that people would just live in other counties and just drive down. That would just hollow out the communities."

On the companies' end, things are humming along quite nicely, Myers and Ebbing reported. A local jobs website posted 4,500 jobs in 2017, compared with just under 10,000 jobs in the previous four years, according to Ebbing.

"Our companies are the core," Myers said. "The people who employ other residents of our county and pay them wages allows that wage-earner to buy a house, to buy an automobile, to pay the utility bills to send their kids to school, all of those things depend on our companies providing jobs and wages. It's all totally interconnected. The prosperity of any one town in Auglaize or Mercer County is directly linked to the employers who are here and their future success."

Looking for small population growth is not a threat to the quality of life in today's small communities.

"We don't want a 20 percent growth, but in order to keep up with those no longer with us you've got to have a positive number," Ebbing said. "Positive to sustain our communities and our schools more than just the status quo. To me it's a true community development issue. It's what we want our communities to look like in five, 10, 20 years."