Northeast Indiana looks to enhance housing efforts with $10M strategy
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The Northeast Indiana Strategic Development Commission is investing $10 million to launch a comprehensive Regional Housing Strategy designed to address housing needs and promote population growth throughout the 11-county region.
The funding comes from a $30 million allocation approved by the Indiana General Assembly in 2023 as part of the state’s biennial budget.
The five-year plan aims to not just increase the number of new single-family and multifamily housing units, but also enhance development capacity throughout the region, especially in smaller communities.
New Haven Mayor Steve McMichael, a former real estate broker who chairs the SDC’s Housing Committee, told Inside INdiana Business there are a number of issues that are a hindrance to development.
“A lot of those are actually in localities with planning commissions, with board of zoning appeals, with planners and other elected officials as well that don’t understand or haven’t been exposed to best practices on getting development in their community,” McMichael said. “The SDC is not in any way saying that you have to adopt these best practices or these rules or do anything different than they want locally. But we want to make sure that we’re equipping them to be able to have the capacity…to understand the issues that they’re dealing with.”
In addition to providing funding for specific housing projects, McMichael said $2 million will be used for down payment assistance, and additional funding will support a so-called “planner on demand” who can provide technical expertise and advice for communities that don’t have a city planner on staff.
McMichael noted that the commission plans to conduct a community-by-community analysis to better understand what each locale needs and what their deficiencies are.
“Putting all those tools together, in addition to being able to help with planning and some other technical expertise, should really help smaller and rural communities have the ability to build capacity to build [new housing] and be able to attract developers.”
By helping address their infrastructure needs to support future housing development, McMichael said the goal is to get communities to the point where they don’t need government funding support.
“What we’ve done in the past is we’ve funded a particular project, as opposed to fixing what the potential issues are; that doesn’t make the project economically viable.,” he said. “We believe that by having those tools available for planning commissions and BZAs and planners and elected officials, we believe those best practices will lessen, if not eliminate, the funding gaps for it to make sense to build projects in northeast Indiana.”
Funding recommendations will be made on a rolling basis, and interested parties are being encouraged to submit project ideas through the SDC’s website.
“The real work starts now, as we begin to implement this comprehensive plan and see the tangible benefits of our efforts in the coming years,” added McMichael.
McMichael noted that SDC officials believe the Regional Housing Strategy is one that could be replicated and scaled in other regions throughout Indiana.