City Manager Cherise Tieben’s firm belief housing construction was a market-driven segment of the economy didn’t survive a 2007 meeting with exasperated Dodge City bankers, developers, realtors and employers.
She learned from the group the southwest Kansas community’s housing stock was profoundly inadequate and the private sector was incapable of keeping pace. Teachers were residing in colleagues’ basements. Employers placed hires in hotels for up to six months. Families paid a premium for deplorable rentals. Bank financing was scarce. Most homes on the market were overpriced.
A study showed the city would require 950 housing units by 2013, but banks were prohibited from offering rural development loans through the U.S. Department of Agriculture because Dodge City no longer met the definition of rural.
“We quickly realized this was an issue the city couldn’t take on all by itself,” Tieben said Thursday in testimony to the House Rural Revitalization Committee. “We literally used the scatter-gun approach.”
(Read more: News – The Hutchinson News)