Steubenville Council hears about looming housing crisis

STEUBENVILLE — The chair of the state 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, which means 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, grass-roots 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 an aging water infrastructure — pointing out numerous independent water companies lack the financial wherewithal to update outdated infrastructure; an affordable housing shortage; limited access to tax credits that could spur creation of affordable housing in the region and government funding shortfalls.

“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.”

All that means, she told council, is that we realize there is a housing crisis here, and we want to be able to try to help you all, as the local community, to be able to understand what might be working elsewhere that could help you here” while keeping in mind housing is a local issue.

“(The state has) lots of resources, there is funding for different housing initiatives, whether it be for homeless shelters, transitional housing, supportive housing, HUD, funding that can be passed through … But it takes the local community to have the will and the desire to be able to bring those things to bear, because at the end of the day, we’re all trying to overcome that ‘not in my backyard’ syndrome that is crippling communities all over the state of Ohio. Obviously, most people, if they’re honest, don’t want to live next to a mental health facility. They don’t want to live next to a re-entry (post-incarceration) program. They don’t want to live next to a homeless camp. No one really wants to do that. 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. If you don’t manage the problem, the problem manages you.”

City Manager Jim Mavromatis, meanwhile, said re-elected and new council members, as well as Mayor-elect Ralph Petrella, will be sworn in Dec. 13 at 6:30 p.m.

Mavromatis said the city’s books “should be done by next week.”

“It was balanced…we’re a little tight on some things. There’s been a lot of work by department heads, everyone was looking at (spending) and cuts.”

Council’s finance committee will meet at 6 p.m. Tuesday to finalize the budget, he said.

An ordinance also was introduced that would authorize the city manager to enter into a water supply revolving loan agreement for the Belleview tank rehab.