By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
Officials with the St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce are working on several housing initiatives.
Chamber President Natalie Hawn says its housing task force is constantly talking about ways to bridge the gap in housing.
"We have a gap kind of in the middle with housing and right now the interest rates really are not helping that cause at all," Hawn tells KFEQ Hotline host Barry Birr. "So, if you locked in your house at 3%, you're not going to be the one selling right now and taking that 7% or 8%, typically."
Hawn says the housing inventory is even lower now than it has been in the past.
Hawn says what's rather unique about the struggles here is it comes at nearly every household income level.
"We have a huge gap really $75,000 and above if it's your household income theres gaps and there's also a gap under $25,000, and that creates its own level of challenges," Hawn points out. "The one are that we have a large amount of housing is in that $25,000 to $50,000 household income."
Hawn says what that does is if someone has the income to buy a bigger house the availability is not there, which causes them to hold onto their current house and reduce availability.
Hawn says she got involved with the housing taskforce to help the St. Joseph business community find housing for incoming workers.
"So that we can have housing for these young professionals to live here, and that's your future executives,' Hawn explains. "People talk about not having higher level executives that live here, I would argue that you really want to focus too on those young professionals, because if you lose them to Kansas City because they can't find housing, you're never getting them back."
Hawn says once a person becomes established in another city they're not going to uproot and move here, which presents a whole other set of challenges.
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