Community asked to ‘re-engage’ in housing study

A local housing development group announced plans this week to re-engage with the community in its efforts to identify specific housing needs in Aurora.
The Aurora Housing Development Corporation launched this effort in January, conducting focus group and stakeholder interviews as part of a study being conducted to both assess Aurora’s housing needs and to “check the box” for a state housing grant requirement.
More than 30 people attended a meeting organized in February by the AHDC, where realtors, property owners and others with a vested interest in the community’s housing development learned about the pending study. The entire project was put on hold shortly thereafter, however, when the coronavirus pandemic began to spread.
“We pumped the brakes on it in light of the COVID pandemic because we did not want to bother people with this when they were trying to get their lives together,” noted Jannelle Seim, president of the non-profit AHDC. “That was a conscious effort to push pause, knowing we would pick it back up when we found our new normal. We are hoping now that we can figure out our next steps with housing.”
Bobbi Pettit, owner of the Kearney-based Five Rule Rural Planning firm which is working on the city’s comprehensive plan, said she believes the information provided in a detailed study could help the community more specifically identify and understand its housing needs
“When conducting a housing study we often see two extremes -- very expensive and very neglected,” she said. “A housing study is done to try to understand the gray area in between, figuring out a price point needed and what will sell.”
Pettit said a few people did fill out the survey in the spring, though  the numbers were lower than expected due in part, she said, to the distractions caused by the pandemic.
“We are now wanting to re-engage with the community,” Pettit said in a Friday phone interview. “We wanted to wait for school to get started and let families stabilize, so now we are going to leave the survey open for one more month until Sept. 30.”
For more information, or to fill out the survey, log on to auroranehousing.com.

Data-driven decisions
Both Seim and Pettit said it is a widely held belief that Aurora has  a housing shortage, though specific information based on local data will be significant in their efforts to provide needed resources.
Adding more perspective to the issue, Pettit shared data reflecting that average home values in Nebraska rose from $106,100 in 2010 to $159,363 in 2019, and $202,431 (projected) in 2024. By comparison, she noted, average household incomes were listed at $52,188 in 2010, $57,983 in 2019 and $63,417 in 2024.
“That doesn’t mean incomes are depressed,” she said, “it’s just that housing values are growing faster than incomes are growing. Housing is not growing as fast as your community wants to grow so you are running into a supply and demand issue.”
Pettit said housing shortages are a common problem for Nebraska communities, which means there are limited resources available.
“We all sort of know that Aurora doesn’t have enough housing,” she said, “but what we’re trying to get a better grasp on is what kind of housing are we missing? Are we trying to create more town homes, single-family dwellings and what’s the price point of those homes?
“The information won’t be perfect, but to develop land for housing is a pretty significant investment so the point is to gather knowledge,” she continued. “Before we set out to start building houses we’re trying to increase our knowledge base of exactly what is missing on a factual basis. The more input we can solicit from the community, the more informed decision the AHDC group can make.”
Pettit said the second objective of the study is to determine if Aurora is a good candidate for state housing grant funds.
“In the past when you heard that the government was going to fund a housing program it wasn’t always exciting because of all the regulations and red tape that went with that,” she said. “The state has been very creative with its new programs, but if Aurora wants to compete they need to show that they’ve done their due diligence in what kind of housing they need to fund.”
The end result of the study could be AHDC’s application for a Nebraska Affordable Housing Trust Fund grant of as much as $500,000.
“We’ll look at the data and see what it tells us,” Seim concluded. “We hope it helps us figure out if grant assistance is available from the state and also what to do with private investors. Hopefully we can confirm what we already know and that this will lead us to the next step.”