Committee continues focus on Charles City housing, but no easy answers

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

As a city committee continues to work on a shortage of housing options in the community, one thing has become clear – there are few simple solutions.

“The short answer is there is no short answer to solve this. We’re working at a lot of different angles,” said Emily Garden, a member of the Charles City Housing Committee, giving a report to the Charles City Area Development Corp. at the corporation’s monthly meeting last week. Garden is also a member of the CCADC.

“You would think it’s just like out there would be a solution or a resource or a program or a support somewhere, and there really hasn’t been one that’s come to life,” Garden said. “I just assumed that maybe we hadn’t found it yet, or maybe we just hadn’t talked to the right person, but – and this is not giving up at all – truly this is going to be a really wide, multifaceted approach, and it’s going to take a lot of time to get there, because there isn’t just a support out there for this crisis.”

One bright spot is that Paul Rottinghaus, owner of Zip’s AW Direct truck and equipment manufacturer, and also a member of the CCADC, said he is proceeding with a residential development he is building to add to the housing availability.

Through Carlinda Limited Partnership, a company named after his children, Rottinghaus purchased the former Sherman Nursery property north of Wildwood Golf Course and created warehouse space there for his truck business and for other companies.

He is also using nearby property east of Illinois Street to to build nine townhouses designed to accommodate young professionals with growing families such as those who are moving to town for jobs at places like Cambrex and Zoetis.

“We started the land preparation for those townhouses,” he said, and will probably do some sort of groundbreaking ceremony this week or next week.

“That project is moving forward,” Rottinghaus said.

Dean Andrews, a member of the City Housing Committee and the CCADC, and Charles City’s mayor, said the committee had visited with home construction company Soyland Homes of Ames, which is building several homes in Forest City and elsewhere in Iowa.

He said the homes that company is building are 1,100 to 1,200 square feet and cost more than $200,000.

They also talked with Homes for Iowa, which uses Iowa Prison Industries inmates to build three-bedroom, two-bath modular homes that can be delivered and set on foundations anywhere in the state.

He said the price of those homes is $90,000, “but by the time you put in a foundation, a driveway, the garage., etc., etc., etc., it comes up to about a $200,000 home, not a $90,000 home,” Andrews said.

“I think the housing committee has kind of taken the stance that, let’s look at fixing up what we have. Let’s provide our homes that we have in town, make them appealing to people, because it’s a much more economical way to get good housing than to start building new homes that are $220,000,” he said. “People that want a 1,100-square-foot home don’t want to pay $220,000.”

Andrews said they had met with people from Council Bluffs and Marion where they were purchasing homes for about $50,000, fixing them up and selling them for $150,000.

“They worked with the high school,” he said. “They used a high school class that actually did the work. They’d have about 20 kids spend about 90 minutes a day there working on these houses.”

Andrews said those communities do about two houses a year, so it’s not going to rapidly increase the available housing, but it will provide some.

“They showed before and after and it was amazing,” he said. “They worked with a teacher, obviously, and they worked with a contractor who gives them some ideas on what they need to do and how they need to do it.”

With the new NIACC Career Center being built now in Charles City and planned to open for the school year in the fall of 2024 – and including construction as one of its four career focuses for high school students – “it makes even more sense,” Andrews said.

“I would say the housing committee is really working, but like Emily said, it’s a long term plan and we want it to happen tomorrow. It might be the day after tomorrow,” he said.

Rottinghaus said the community has the potential to be growing in population with additions at Cambrex, Zoetis and Pure Prairie Poultry bringing in new families.

“There’s simply not enough housing to go around,” he said.