Elkader survey part of latest attempt to solve housing crisis
By Willis Patenaude, Times-Register
Over the last two decades, and possibly even longer, housing has been an issue in the city of Elkader, so much so that numerous studies have been done looking for an answer on how to solve the problem.
Just last year, the Clayton County Development Group (CCDG), in partnership with Upper Explorerland Regional Planning Commission, completed the latest Clayton County Housing Study (CCHS). In addition to that, the city of Elkader, after being awarded a grant late last year, recently participated in the Iowa State University Extension and Outreach Community and Economic Development’s Rural Housing Readiness Assessment (RHRA).
Phase one of that assessment, which required completion of a short survey by residents, wrapped up April 17.
According to the press release, it will “provide input for the Housing Steering Committee’s spring strategic planning sessions. During these sessions, an action plan will be created to address Elkader’s housing needs with the goal of ensuring that current residents and potential residents of Elkader are able to find safe, secure and quality housing that meets their needs and fits within their budgets.”
While the final report of the RHRA is about a month away, it’s likely to conclude similar findings as previous studies, including the CCHS, which highlighted several issues that were discussed last year with then-Main Street Elkader Director Samantha Baumgartner, who is now serving as the point of contact for the committee. Issues included an aging and declining population, lack of available land, problems attracting developers and affordability.
According to the CCHS, the median household income for Elkader is just over $54,000. While comparable to surrounding towns within Clayton County, it lags behind the state as a whole. As a result, about 54 percent of respondents to the CCHS survey indicated they would “need financial assistance” to build a new home, and almost 30 percent have considered downsizing as a way to save money.
It’s not just money that’s an issue for residents. It is also the availability of houses, especially in the lowest range of affordability of $49,000 or less, which are for those with household incomes of less than $24,999. That’s around 24 percent of the population.
The CCHS showed that, currently, there are 69 such units, but to fulfill the actual housing need would require at least 88 more, meaning there is an evident shortage of them, leading the survey to ultimately conclude that “Elkader has many low-income residents who are housing cost burdened…and that there is a demand for housing that would be affordable to people of lower incomes.”
One area where Elkader does not have a shortage is within the household income ranges of $25,000 to $75,000, with affordable housing values set between $50,000 and $149,000. In this group, which makes up about 37 percent of households, there is a surplus of available units—over 225 of them combined. The shortage returns once you exceed a household income of over $75,000, which comprises around 37 percent of households.
Based on this information, the CCHS concluded the top priorities in resolving this crisis are rental units, followed by single family housing, rehabilitated existing houses, senior housing and upper story housing, with a list of incentives for home remodeling, new home construction and housing purchases, typically by way of tax rebates for specified periods of time.
With one study already completed and analyzing the issues and offering potential remedies, what then is the need for the RHRA? According to both Baumgartner and Elkader City Administrator Jennifer Cowsert, this survey will consider other factors, ask more “specific quantitative questions” and assess only Elkader, not the entire county.
“We know there is a need for more housing, but to best tackle the problem, we need to drill down and figure out what is needed—townhouse versus ranch, downsizing versus growing family, cost needs, etc.,” Baumgartner explained.
It was additionally noted that the survey is only a piece of data being used during this process. The city also completed a housing workbook that outlines all the other data on housing that’s been collected over the years, including information pertaining to rentals, downtown vacancy, city codes and vacant land maps, among other things.
According to Baumgartner, this “allows the city and our committee to tackle the problem with solutions that are designed to meet the true data driven needs for housing of our town.”
However, there are a few issues none of the surveys or studies can solve. Two of them are a lack of land owned by the city of Elkader to use for housing development and the lack of developers willing to invest in building new homes.
On the latter issue, as recently as 2018, the city participated in the Housing 360 program and a developer actually came to Elkader to look at potentially building new houses. According to Cowsert, they haven’t been back since, and that’s in a long line of developers who simply can’t make the economics work. In the words of Baumgartner, it always comes back to return on investment.
“Developers are able to turn a bigger profit in urban areas where there are more development incentives and where housing prices are higher than our local area,” Baumgartner added.
On the former issue, that being the lack of city-owned land, this means any available land for development is owned privately, and it’s unclear whether or not the city has openly talked with those landowners or even gauged their willingness to sell to developers. Cowsert indicated that talking with them is something the RHRA will instruct the city to do. Outside that, there is an assumption the landowners want to sell, at least as far as the city is concerned.
On this topic, Baumgartner said, “In the past, landowners have been contacted to gauge interest in selling to develop. We’ve had some missing pieces (like an action plan mapping out which land options, developer contacts, utility needs, etc.). There are many pieces to developing and the more pieces that are in place the better outcome for potential development.”
Baumgartner, like Cowsert, believes the RHRA will provide such an action plan once it is completed. “The survey data to outline the specific needs and barriers of Elkader’s housing market will be helping us to create an action plan to grow housing. This could include a plan to attract developers or could include different solutions,” she said.
The finished report should come sometime next month, at which time the Housing Committee will work to execute it to solve this crisis. Baumgartner said the crisis “is a good problem to have,” when put into perspective, because it means there are more people who want to move and live here than there are houses available.
