Maintaining a Healthy Housing Market in Our Growing Region with New Tools
As the fastest growing major metro in the Midwest, Greater Des Moines (DSM) continues to attract residents for its reputation as a great place to live, work and play. That growth also brings the challenge of maintaining relatively affordable housing as prices have risen and interest rates remain high. Despite our progress, too many working families, seniors and people living with disabilities struggle to afford rent along with their necessities every month.
About Polk County Housing Trust Fund’s Regional Affordable Housing Dashboard
The Polk County Housing Trust Fund is taking new steps to increase needed housing development and encourage metro communities to collaborate on solutions. We have released a new regional affordable housing dashboard which provides an interactive local resource with public and private data focused on housing market conditions in metro communities. The dashboard will also track existing and new construction of income-restricted homes to help communities understand their progress maintaining affordable housing market conditions.
Income restricted apartments provide homes with rents that match wages for jobs like service industry workers, health aides, caregivers, teachers and people living on a fixed income. These homes are a part of any community’s healthy housing mix.
The regional affordable housing dashboard provides an opportunity for ongoing dialogue with community stakeholders which will help guide its evolution over time as local programs help meet housing needs and as new initiatives arise.
Second, the Trust Fund recently published Housing Sites of Opportunity, which looks at ways to activate tax-exempt and underutilized land for housing, especially for “Missing Middle” infill developments that can be associated with more attainable housing cost. The project is already spurring conversations about how to remove barriers to housing production.
While smaller apartment buildings, duplexes, triplexes and similar housing options were once common in our communities, modern zoning, modern building codes and financing challenges make these properties harder to build. As household sizes have become smaller, more people are living alone and more people desire to age in place, the type of housing units communities need has also shifted from decades past. These “retro” housing types can help meet that demand.
These projects are part of our ongoing collaboration with Capital Crossroads, which helps bring together stakeholders to meet some of the region’s most pressing needs.
The Polk County Housing Trust Fund is seeking to address today’s housing challenges in even more ways. We have introduced a new Develop the Developer Launchpad to empower emerging multifamily real estate developers in Polk County in partnership with Freddie Mac and presented by Wells Fargo. The program is currently registering participants for its second multifamily development boot camp to be held in September.
Ensuring housing opportunity for everyone in our community is a multifaceted challenge and takes committed community partnerships and engagement to succeed. Learn more about the Polk County Housing Trust Fund including our programs and strategies on our website, PCHTF.org.
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