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We need houses in Northeast Michigan.
Especially affordable houses.
Anecdotally, we know that area employers have struggled to bring new workers to our community -- which also means new taxpayers, new shoppers at local stores, new diners at local restaurants -- in part because they couldn't find places for those workers to live.
There's data to back that up going back several years.
In 2017, the Urban Institute said Alpena had only about 72 places to live for every low-income renter, even when government housing assistance is factored in.
Thankfully, Alpena County has a real possible solution.
The county recently formed a new land bank, a public entity that takes in foreclosed and blighted properties, rehabilitates them, and then sells them.
The effort has been seeded with state and federal grants, but the goal is that the program makes enough money off the sale of properties to become self-sustainable, Lenny Avery, economic development coordinator for the Alpena Area Chamber of Commerce, told Steve Schulwitz for a recent story in The News.
The old Fletcher Paper Mill along the Thunder Bay River has been targeted by the land bank for a potential project.
We're glad to see this effort get off the ground, and we wish Avery and the county success in their endeavor.
And you can help. Avery told Schulwitz the community has been helping him identify potential properties to take into the land bank, and we urge all Alpena County residents to keep an eye out for vacant, blighted properties the land bank might acquire to start turning the housing situation around.
Doing so not only helps those folks who end up buying the properties from the land bank, it helps Northeast Michigan as a whole thrive.
(THE ALPENA NEWS)