MANSFIELD — Talk about improving the housing situation in Richland County is the opposite of the 1999 film “Fight Club.”
The more people who talk about it — the better.
That was the message to county commissioners on Tuesday from Richland County Regional Planning Commission Executive Director Jotika Shetty and Jessica Gribben, economic development manager to the City of Shelby and northern Richland County for Richland Area Chamber & Economic Development.
The first countywide housing study was worked on during most of 2022 and rolled out to the public in January 2023. That’s when officials said the real work on improvements began.
Public and private investment paid for the $100,000 study, coordinated by the Richland County Regional Planning Commission.
Richland County Housing Assessment
Planning for it began in fall of 2021, an effort that included funding from Richland County commissioners, the City of Mansfield, Ontario, Shelby, Lexington and Bellville.
Much of that work in the last four months has been ongoing discussions with members of the steering committee that guided the study — and also beginning to include other stakeholders with an interest in local housing development.
“I think we are right where we thought we would be (at this point in the process),” said Gribben, a steering committee leader.
“I’m very encouraged by the interest in the study. Again, we’ve kind of been talking about it a whole lot.
“I thought after we finished the study, I might not talk about housing for a little while. But it’s just continued on … having the steering committee continue to meet and update on progress and things that are happening in each node (from the study),” Gribben said.
“I think we’ve made great progress and just having all of the pieces to the puzzle around the same table talking about housing in a positive way … I’m very pleased with where we’re at today,” she said.
Gribben said the housing study efforts will require a long-term approach.
“We’re not going to fix everything overnight. But the steering committee that came to (commissioners) and asked for (housing study funding) has agreed to stick with the process and take the study and the strategies that we’ve got and move them forward,” she said.
“We’ve continued to meet monthly and then also in small groups around some of these things.
“Jotika and I, for example, have met with a couple of developers who are interested in doing affordable housing in the county. They have a track record doing it elsewhere and they’re ready to do some more here.
“So being able to make those connections was a big goal of the study,” Gribben said.
One of the early goals for the group is to find a way to deal with the fact there are 12 different zoning codes across the county, each with a different rules and terminologies, from cities to villages to townships.
Michael Webb, who helped lead the housing study for the consulting company, Community Science, told local leaders cleaning up and unifying zoning is key to attracting housing developers.
Gribben and Jotika agreed it was an important early goal.
“As we went through the study and talked strategy, it was clear that we had some work to do around zoning and permitting and perceptions sometimes, or reality sometimes, and simplifying that process,” Gribben said.
“That (Build Richland) group has started meeting again with some pretty clear goals of looking at those processes as they exist throughout the county and in each municipality,” she said.
“How do we make those simple so that a developer can walk in and develop something in Ontario and then have a really similar experience in Lexington and both of experiences be positive,” she said.
One piece of low-hanging fruit among the study’s goals is to simply make various zoning codes use the same terms.
“When we talk about zoning, it’s a big project to change the zoning code across the county. But it’s a smaller project to say, ‘Are we using common language? Is an I-1 an I-1 across the board … does it mean the same thing in Lexington and in Ontario in Shelby?” Gribben said.
Shetty said, “I think all of us kind of realize it’s the long game, but even the townships have kind of come on board to examine the zoning.
“So I’m meeting with them to look at their zoning resolutions and how they can kind of map and be similar to the the cities and the villages. I think it’s been very positive,” she said.
“I think what this housing study has done has brought awareness to the issues,” Shetty said.
In his overview of the broader study, consultant Michael Webb offered five interesting numbers from the housing inventory:
— 67 percent of Richland County residents own their own homes. Highest ownership rates are in Ontario and rural townships (79 percent). Lowest rates are found in Mansfield (51 percent) and Shelby (58 percent).
— 21 percent of renters in Richland County are severely cost-burdened, meaning more than 3,000 local renter households pay more than 50 percent of their income toward rent and utilities. In addition, 44 percent of readers are cost-burdened, paying more than 30 percent of income toward rent and utilities.
— 2,000 mobile homes are in use in Richland County, primarily in urban and rural townships. There are also a substantial number of mobile homes in Mansfield and Shelby.
— 45 percent of housing units in the county were built before 1960. Rural townships, Mansfield and Shelby have the largest stock of very old housing units (pre-1939). Bellville, Lexington and Ontario have some of the newest housing stocks (more than a third built after 1980).
— 2,438 residential units are vacant in the county, about 4.1 percent of all residential units. This number has declined from the 5.4 percent seen in 2012. Mansfield and Shelby have the largest proportion of vacant units.
Shetty admitted it’s not always easy to convince residents in an area that affordable housing would be good in their neighborhood.
For example, in the summer of 2022, residents in the area of the former Dawson Ridge Par & Pub Golf Course vehemently opposed a manufactured home development planned by a builder.
That developer ultimately rescinded his rezoning request.
“It’s always a delicate dance,” Shetty said. “I think we have to be mindful that we do need affordable housing and we do need housing for everyone.
“We also want to make sure that we are building quality housing. We are in this for the long game, so it is important to vet every project through that lens. ‘Is this project going to really serve our community in all means?’
“And then I think it’s very important to educate people. I think a lot of it comes from not understanding the kind of neighborhoods that we want to build.
“There’s really merit to building mixed neighborhoods and mixed income neighborhoods that are healthy and vibrant. So I think a lot of education (is needed).
“I think it falls on our shoulders and I think the shoulders of this community, to bring awareness that (affordable) housing serves (residents) and provides the kind of services that we all use and we all need,” Shetty said.
