Steubenville Officials Urged To Get Ahead of Housing Crisis
Linda Harris Trending
The chair of the Ohio Senate's housing committee was in Steubenville Monday to urge council to get ahead of its housing crisis.
Sen. Michelle Reynolds, R-Canal Winchester, said Urban Mission closing its emergency shelters was a blow to the community.
"(It closed) because they tried, they've done everything they can to try to house the homeless population here. However, due to financial constraints and all kind of other barriers, they're just not able to do so," she said. "But at the end of the day, that still means you have a problem, you have an issue here."
But Reynolds, a Smithfield native, also pointed out the entire state is in a housing crisis--in some areas it's because an expanding job market has attracted so many workers the housing supply can't keep up; other communities are losing population, "which means we're also losing economic development opportunities."
"It's not unique to Steubenville. We're experiencing it all over the state of Ohio," she said.
Reynolds said housing is a continuum, and communities looking for solutions can't focus strictly on any one aspect.
"It's not just homelessness that you need to be looking at, it's not just transitional housing where people are transient," she said. "It's also affordable housing, it's housing (for) people who are actually working class and it's workforce housing. Everybody needs housing at the level that they're in."
Reynolds said the housing committee took a regional, grassroots approach to Ohio's housing crisis, looking at the problems in each through the eyes of stakeholders. Southeastern Ohio, which includes Jefferson County, grapples with and older housing stock as well as infrastructure deficiencies, including broadband accessibility and aging water systems.
"The residents that we talked to underscore the profound impact of economic downturn on rural communities, particularly within the Appalachian region of the state which exacerbated housing insecurity amid dwindling resources and infrastructure limitations. The witnesses that we talked to shed light on the significant challenges in accessing bond financing for affordable housing projects also hampering developers and nonprofit organizations efforts to construct and renovate affordable housing units, and also the scarcity of funding was impeding the rural communities and smaller municipalities' ability to meet their housing needs and to provide affordable housing options."
Reynolds said the state has plenty of resources for different housing initiatives, but "we're all trying to overcome that 'not in my backyard' syndrome that is crippling communities all over the state of Ohio."
She said despite the resources available, it will take the will of the community to make things happen.
"But at the end of the day, when you think about it, if you do not take care of these problems, and you ignore them or you turn a blind eye, what happens is you make your community vulnerable," Reynolds said. "If you don't manage the problem, the problem manages you."