A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
This small home located at 217 Third St. in Cloquet is being restored by Lagom Restoration, of Duluth. "This property is being fixed up to become a more attainable workforce house," said Josh MacInnes, one of the Lagom owners who was working onsite late last year. Filling gaps in the housing market has been identified as a primary goal for both the city of Cloquet and Carlton County.
Carlton County is short by up to 50 units of entry-level housing for new homebuyers, 350 units of affordable apartments, 60 units of workforce rentals and scores of units for seniors who desire to own, scale down or transition into settings such as assisted living.
That was the stark tale told by a Comprehensive Housing Needs Analysis presented to the Carlton County board earlier this month.
Presented by LOCi Consulting of St. Paul, the analysis left commissioners thankful for the information.
"What we've heard over and over is that as soon as a unit gets available, it gets turned over," said Grant Martin, the LOCi consultant who conducted a short presentation for the board on Feb. 13.
"The inventory is really low and it is very challenging for first-time home buyers to get into the market," Martin added.
The housing analysis was ordered by the board following its adoption of a housing trust fund earlier this year. The trust fund, with a starting balance of around $350,000 in state support garnered both last year and this year from the legislature, is a landing spot as county leaders aim to target billions of state and federal housing dollars being made available in the coming years.
To learn more about the county's reaction, the Pine Knot spoke again with Mary Finnegan, the executive director of Carlton County Economic Development who has been a frequent source in the newspaper as she marshals the county's attention to landing housing funding.
"It wasn't as shocking as it could have been," Finnegan said of the housing analysis. "We knew there was a big need in Carlton County."
About the only category of housing that was secure was assisted living for households with $50,000 in assets. But memory care units were 10-20 short, and independent living units for seniors 30-40 units short. For-sale housing for seniors with healthy assets was 50-60 units short, and market rate apartments for folks with healthy incomes total up to 40 units shy.
The adoption of a housing trust fund felt more meaningful, Finnegan said, following the revealed data.
"We're feeling like now we're going to have some kind of impact on it," she said.
As far as next steps, the county is putting together an advisory committee to oversee the housing trust fund and will start pursuing grants and other funding sources.
The county will also begin working with contractors to identify potential parcels of land available for development throughout the county. Meanwhile, Cloquet handles its own development and hired a consultant to perform its own housing survey, last updated in 2014.
The county is also on the lookout for rehabilitation projects. According to the LOCi analysis, the county is projected to grow by 100 households by 2028, and they'll be confronted with an aging housing stock. All told, 35 percent of the county's 13,800 housing units are over 60 years old.
So, does rehabilitation and development mean piecemeal, house by house, unit by unit, or looking for larger projects?
"We'd like big, huge projects to attack the big numbers," Finnegan said. "But piecemeal works, too. Everything adds up if you keep knocking things off."
