HUNTINGBURG — State research shows that Huntingburg needs a variety of housing, including studio, or loft-style apartments.
The Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs conducted the Huntingburg Housing Strategies Study to help identify a need to develop employee-assisted housing programs and to help address workforce housing challenges in rural communities throughout the state.
“Huntingburg was a test case for the study because of what is going on in our community,” Mayor Denny Spinner said.
That state-created study, along with a countywide housing study conducted by Dubois Strong, was used by Paragus Group as a basis for determining what kind of apartments should be in the housing complex planned for Washington Street in the city. The developer is currently pursuing federal housing tax credits for the $5.8 million, 56-unit housing complex. In discussing the project, Paragus cites the findings in the state study.
How the city and state partnership on the state study developed was pretty much a matter of Spinner being at the right place at the right time. He was at a Stellar Communities meeting last year with OCRA’s executive director at the time, Will Konyha. The two got into a conversation about housing.
“I told him that I was going to do this study to determine our specific needs, and he said the metrics (from a study) could be applied to rural areas,” Spinner recalled. “He said that not only could this apply to Huntingburg, but it could apply to other rural communities in Indiana.”
With that, Konyha offered to fund the study, which was published last fall.
The state brought in Purdue University’s Center for Regional Development to help with the study. Also working on the project: Ratio Architects, Anderson Partners LLC and several people from the city.
Various people representing different sectors of Huntingburg were interviewed for the study. Their information was used along with the city’s comprehensive and downtown revitalization plans, Dubois Strong’s housing study, and information collected by researchers to draw conclusions on what the city needed by way of housing.
One of the findings in the study was the need for different kinds of rental housing, like duplexes, townhomes, and loft-style dwellings for various companies’ employees. A loft-style apartment is a studio apartment, in which the space is one big room, with no separate bedroom sectioned off.
“One employer,” the study reads, “was trying to attract more talented entry level employees, such as engineers and scientists, and felt a more ‘urban’ style loft residence would work well for these young professionals if other amenities were available near these apartments.”
The study also determined that housing must be affordable to residents and to workers who work in the county, to entice them to move here, which an OCRA spokesperson said is a challenge other rural communities face.
“The study verified a lot of the information in the Dubois Strong study,” Spinner said. “It brought more of a focus on Huntingburg, which was helpful as it gave us additional data. That helps us in considering the planning of other potential projects for our city.”