A lack of affordable housing in Brown County has been blamed for contributing to declining school enrollment, a shrinking tax base, difficulties in hiring service-industry workers and other challenges for years.
Yet, no group has defined what “affordable” actually is, how much of a housing shortage we have, or what kind of housing residents would want or need or the area could support.
A regional, grant-funded study is under way to answer some of those questions.
The Brown County Community Foundation and Brown County Redevelopment Commission are involved in the Regional Opportunity Initiative (ROI)’s Indiana Uplands Housing Study.
On Thursday, Dec. 6, a hired consultant will be in the County Office Building in Nashville from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. to talk to locals from differing perspectives about the state of the housing market. Realtors, lenders, developers, builders, landlords, elected and appointed officials, young professionals, community organizations, city and county staff, school district employees and the general public — everyone’s opinion is wanted for this study.
After that drop-in meeting, a short survey also will be distributed.
What the consultant, RDG, will produce is a document that will “establish regional housing goals with action items deployable at the regional and local levels … with strategies that can be utilized to support housing needs for the next decade and beyond,” according to a handout given to Indiana Uplands Housing Study Technical Committee members.
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Brown County Redevelopment Commission President Jim Kemp is a member of that committee; Brown County Community Foundation CEO Maddison Miller also has been active in the ROI.
The Indiana Uplands is an 11-county group benefiting from ROI grant funding from the Lilly Endowment, including Brown, Crawford, Daviess, Dubois, Greene, Lawrence, Martin, Monroe, Orange, Owen and Washington counties.
Miller, who recently moved to Nashville from Indianapolis, said she experienced firsthand how difficult it can be to find a place to live in Brown County.
Fifty-three percent of land here is owned by the state and federal government and is not paying property taxes, and not all of the rest is buildable because of terrain challenges and lack of infrastructure. Home prices also are consistently higher here than in surrounding counties. Also, half of the homes in the county are at least 40 years old, according to the Brown County Redevelopment Commission, which has done some initial research.
Earlier this fall, the Brown County Area Plan Commission considered further restricting short-term-rental tourist homes out of concern that too many options were being taken off the market for full-time residents. But in the end, the commission made no changes; they didn’t have data to support the theory that restricting tourist homes would help fix the affordable housing problem.
RDG, the consultant, plans to “look at things like availability of housing, buildable land — which I think is a real problem here in Nashville — and questions like, ‘How do we make improvements to land to entice builders to come in?’” Miller said.
“To a large degree, that’s sewers.”
They’ll also be working with the GIS mapping system to identify possible properties where housing could go, she said.
“It’s really exciting because it’s something we’ve been needing,” Miller said. “We need something to take to builders, people that want to come here and want to make new housing options … and we can say, ‘If you want to build a housing development or something of that nature, these are the top five areas already identified and the qualities that make them buildable for you.
“Having a document like that would be incredibly important to the county. It’s just being a little more proactive instead of reactive.”
Other planning efforts
The ROI encompasses more than just housing; the regional group has been looking at ways to bolster workforce development and education, boost the availability of good-paying jobs, and generally improve the quality of life in central Indiana. Brown County Schools have already received hundreds of thousands of grant dollars through ROI for various projects.
Separately, the Brown County Redevelopment Commission has hired a consultant with state grant money to develop an economic development plan specifically for Brown County.
That consultant, Dustin Lester of Thomas P. Miller and Associates, will look at what it would take to diversify the county’s economic base, develop the local workforce, offer new housing in a diverse range of styles and prices, and install infrastructure to support housing and business growth — all “in a way that is complimentary to the natural and cultural assets of this great county,” said Lester, who presented an outline to the redevelopment commission on Nov. 8.
Lester and associates are starting the “engage” portion of that study now; they’re planning to do surveys and interviews throughout the community and conduct several public forums. They’ll also look at past studies and other planning efforts so efforts aren’t duplicated, he said.
The plan will come with an “implementation” aspect, including possible funding sources for any projects it identifies, so that the study doesn’t “just sit on a shelf and collect dust,” Lester said.
No dates have been set yet for public forums on the Brown County economic study.
The redevelopment commission did travel around to each township twice this fall, doing an initial presentation and gathering comments from residents about what they’d like to see in their communities.
Kemp expected that this study and the ROI housing study probably would be done at about the same time and that the redevelopment commission could do a public presentation on both.
“This is a public project, and everyone and anyone should be a part of it who wants to be,” Lester said. “We’re not afraid of that; we welcome it, the good and the bad. We want to take that, hear that and digest it, and use it to make our recommendation.
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Consultant RDG will be at the County Office Building, 201 Locust Lane, on Thursday, Dec. 6 to gather input into a local housing study.
Focus group sessions will last 60 to 90 minutes and take place in the second-floor Salmon Room on the following schedule:
9 a.m.: Realtors, lenders, developers, builders, landlords
10:30 a.m.: Elected and appointed officials
1 p.m.: General citizens, young professionals, community organizations
2:30 p.m.: City and county staff
4:30 p.m.: School district employees
If you’re unable to attend a session and wish to provide input, email committee member Jim Kemp at [email protected].
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