Consultant previews city’s housing study

A consultant hired by the city to conduct its first housing study in more than a decade presented an overview of their findings to community members at Columbus City Hall Thursday night.

While the final report is not published yet, Director of Community Development Robin Hilber said it will be posted on the city’s website “probably in the next week or two.”

The study found there is a need for housing of all types in the city, from affordable housing to housing for seniors looking to downsize to housing for higher earners.

The study shows a need of about 300 new units per year through 2035, spread across all price-points.

The project is being led by the city’s community development and planning departments, which hired RDG. The Columbus Redevelopment Commission voted in July 2023 to authorize up to $150,000 to fund the study.

RDG’s Charlie Cowell split his presentation into four parts, explaining the company’s process, market findings, a forecast of the city’s housing needs, along with some goals and strategies.

“The study is meant to serve many roles,” Cowell said. “One is obviously identify needs for the community, not just the unit needs but also price-point needs, the types of units and the policies and strategies to do that.”

City officials have stressed the study is just a step in the process of addressing the city’s housing concerns, creating a foundation for what types of housing the city may pursue in the future. The study could also serve as a road map to be given to potential developers and be used in grant applications.

“This study is meant to be a blueprint for public policy moving forward, continue to stimulate conversation around housing in the community, show that there is a high demand for housing in Columbus, and motivate other partners, not just the city, to get involved in the solutions and organize a path forward,” Cowell continued.

The study began with the firm looking at things such as census data, multiple listing service data and building statistics. RDG held a well-attended open house at city hall for the study near the end of March and commissioned three surveys to gather input — one community-wide, one for landlords and a workforce study.

Cowell said the three had 925, 82 and 156 responses respectively, with the 82 responses from landlords representing 1,350 units.

Affordability rose to the top of almost every question asked, according to Cowell. When respondents were asked what is most important to them when looking for housing, 73.9% said costs they can afford. Over half of respondents to the workforce study said their preferred housing type is not available in Columbus. In addition, the landlord study found that over half of landlords do not accept vouchers for Section 8 housing.

“What was a little interesting in Columbus versus another communities we work in is we asked a question about the types of housing people might want to see more of, or think would be successful in Columbus, and we got really high responses on the smaller and mid-sized single-family, independent senior living and townhome and duplex arrangements,” Cowell said, pointing out that accessory-dwelling-units garnered a 70% favorable response, “which is actually quite a bit more than we see in other communities.”

In terms of market findings, RDG identified nine that speak to housing in the city including:

• A strong and steady population growth (annual rate of 1.27% growth).
• A large number of people commute to Columbus for work (30,000 who may be looking for housing in the city but haven’t able to for varying reasons).
• There are a lot of jobs open or being added in Columbus, but not as much housing provided.
• Declining vacancy and low housing inventory.
• Limited construction variety and production (Single-family unit production has been static in last decade, new housing units are trending downward).
• Conditions and needs are area specific.

• Old housing stock (About a quarter of housing stock was built before 1960).
• Growing affordability challenges (Home values and rent is growing faster than income).
• High competition for moderately prices units (Not enough units for lowest income households, not enough units for highest income households and a lot of people vying for the units in between)

The 300 new units every year that would be needed lags behind the average for the past decade of about 260 new units annually. Overall, that equates to more than 600 acres of residential land needed through 2035. Of those 600 acres, RDG estimated that 40% of those should be low density, along with 30% medium and high density housing. RDG also laid out a need for more “attainable variety” beyond traditional single-family detached dwellings and observed that infill, redevelopment and reuse will be important in meeting housing needs.

“How do we do this? It’s not going to be easy,” Cowell said after running through the housing forecast. “Strategies and goals are multifaceted, just like all the data that we just showed you.”

The study has seven different goals, although Cowell noted they are in no way arranged by priority:

• Preserve the existing housing stock in strategic neighborhood areas.
• Support affordable housing models and approaches that connect to the community.
• Create ways to share risks to increase housing variety and price points.
• Expand the supply of development-ready land.
• Attract additional and diverse builders and developments to Columbus.
• Support relationships and quality of life outcomes for those most in need.
• Continue to offer a housing-friendly regulatory environment.

To preserve housing stock the city already has, Cowell suggested expanding outreach of available state and federal programs and pursuing additional funding sources for rehab programs, such as the city’s Office of Downtown Development’s downtown improvement grants. Another option could be exploring potential partners for a purchase-rehab-sale program, where a non-profit developer, for example, would purchase a unit or home, rehab it and sell it at an affordable price.

Cowell said that while affordability means something different to everyone, a way to make affordable units of all types could be through an city affordable housing fund.

“We’ve seen cities do bond issues for this, we’ve seen certain fees be added to the fund, we’ve seen philanthropy be big in creating these funds.”

The fund could be used to build housing at certain price points and could also be used to fund things like rent and utilities, Cowell said, later saying that tying affordability to units could be a worthwhile option.

RDG found that increasing the number of universally designed units and maintenance-free options is appealing to the community’s older adults. Another area to pursue is more workforce housing, for those who don’t qualify for low-income programs but still have trouble affording market rate price points. Housing Partnerships Inc., a non-profit that does business as Thrive Alliance is pursuing something like that with their Haw Creek Meadows project, where 64 workforce housing units are planned for the first phase of the project, reserved for those making 30%, 50% and 60% of area median income (AMI).

Although the community wants a variety of units, it can still be challenging if they’ve never been done in a community and developers assume risk in doing so. To combat this, RDG officials said it’s important to look for ways to fill financing gaps, particularly between low-income subsidies and market rate price points.

It will not be a surprise that Columbus has land constraints, with mapped floodway and floodplain in various areas of the city and a dwindling amount of shovel-ready land. Providing some financial assistance to help with site preparation could help spur the development in areas of the city that are buildable, albeit with some work, according to RDG.

Goals four and five are to operate in tandem, Cowell said, and maintaining positive relationships with the existing building community in Columbus “is crucial.”

“I know the city has done a lot of efforts on that front through zoning and regulations,” Cowell said.

The second-to-last goal, Cowell said, “deals with accessibility, access to universal design units among the lowest-income households, (those with) disabilities and making sure that when we think about housing variety, we’re not just thinking about the housing-type from a structural, number of rooms standpoint, but also the layout.”

He also mentioned that during the surveys RDG heard quite a bit about people not being able to afford rent and other challenges that may lead to eviction. One means of helping these people that is growing in popularity are risk-reduction and voucher incentive programs, Cowell said.

“We hear about it in a lot in places we go, concerns (about) using the voucher program because of fear of damages to the units, or tenants not paying rent— whether that’s true or not.”

These program would provide a guarantee for landlords who accept vouchers that any cost or damages would be covered by outside entity like the city or some other organization. Cowell mentioned Lawrence, Kansas as a place that has done a program like this.

RDG officials also determined that the city is “doing a good job” offering a housing-friendly regulatory environment.

“A lot of the communities we go to, we provide extensive memos of zoning and regulatory updates that they should consider. In Columbus, I think we had a page of suggestions, not a lot of major things that we saw,” Cowell told the audience.

One area RDG’s presentation didn’t touch on is the city’s homeless population.

“We are working kind of in tandem with the United Way, which is actually currently doing their (homelessness initiative). We’ve been communicating throughout the process, we’ve basically given them our data and information, and understanding that that whole effort is going to go into much more detail on the needs for the unhoused community.”

United Way of Bartholomew County’s Community Impact Director Cathy King attended the meeting, saying the findings of their initiative will be “coming out to the public early next week.”