The City of Harlan will be conducting a housing study in conjunction with SWIPCO (the Southwest Iowa Planning Council. In a regular City Council meeting Tuesday, SWIPCO representative Courtney Harder gave a presentation on the options for the housing study. In her presentation, Harder said “The proposal is pretty much specific to outlining how your community would be able to support the new development of rental units and at what rate. We would also do some census based information for you and look at the assessor side as to what kind of housing needs you have in your community. We would also potentially outline any other needs that we may see as well. Are you meeting the needs for your low to moderate income? Do you have something in between for families? Do you have a lot of high end homes? What kind of ranges you have available.”

Along with the targeted study, SWIPCO gave the council another more in depth option for the housing study. Harder said “We are going to instead of looking at just the assessor side and census develop your housing needs; we are also going to go into the community and do a drive by and survey every home in town. We have a couple people who drive through town and give an excellent, good, fair or poor rating on every house in town that way you have an idea where your areas of towns that need the most assistance are. We’re also going to have four community input meetings so that you have a little bit more input not just from your housing board but community members. We will have a conditions map and all that stuff to keep in your plan.”

The final option would include everything in the targeted study and broad assessment along with a comprehensive housing plan. Harder says “Option B is the comprehensive study, the same study we did for Atlantic. This is going to be all in compassing everything above. It’s going to have a formal public hearing process and adoption process through the planning and zoning committees. It will cover all the wide range of housing issues including code enforcement, permitting, housing density, design standards and anything else we can come up with.”

After much discussion, the Harlan City Council approved a motion to accept the proposal for the SWIPCO housing study in phases. The first phase is to do the base targeted study at the cost of $4,500 and afterwards SWIPCO will do both in depth studies, the broad assessment and the comprehensive housing plan. Each option will cost the city an additional $1,500. Harder explained to the council as a member of SWIPCO, the city of Harlan will have opportunities for grant funding.

She said “As a member of SWIPCO you have access to our grant writing at no charge. So if you come to us two years down the road and we have completed and you say we would really like to apply for that community development housing grant, we will assist with that. Or if you have anything else that comes up that’s part of being a member of SWIPCO that we provide to you.”

The targeted housing study will take two to three months to complete and the whole housing study will take approximately six to seven months to complete.

(Joel McCall/KNOD)