Northeast Michiganders, it’s time to invest in your home and save the small towns that need help.

Montmorency County and the towns within it are fighting to stay afloat, with a declining and aging population, low housing stock, high unemployment, growing poverty, and local leaders doing their best to recruit new investments, News Publisher/Editor Justin Hinkley reported today.

The county’s economy has been struggling for some time now, and we’d like to see progress made in ending that struggle.

Montmorency County has long been an outlier in data from across the state, with high unemployment and poverty rates compared to statewide numbers and its surrounding counties in Northeast Michigan.

Firstly, as seen in the latest Kids Count Data Book, too many children are seeing poverty, with numbers hiking 6.5 percentage points in Montmorency County from 2017 to 2022. Funding education, stocking shelters with food, donating to charities, providing affordable resources, or creating new resources are a few ways to help those kids see brighter days ahead.

Unemployment rates have also seen higher numbers, with last month’s rate of 8% in Montmorency County compared to 6% statewide and 7% in Northeast Michigan.

Investing in small towns creates opportunities for current businesses to thrive and new businesses to open, leading to the offering of more job positions.

Also, investing in the area can draw people in, not only making the population grow but also helping with real estate, further creating jobs as homes need to be built. The more people we can bring in and the more houses that are built could help slow the increasing costs of homes, further adding to the attraction of towns in the county.

Northeast Michigan’s labor force — a measure of people either working or looking for work — grew by 9% between July 2020 and last month, while Montmorency County’s labor force grew 16% in that time, adding 460 people able to work.

Knowing there are a growing number of people who can work means that more jobs need to be made available to help balance out the numbers of unemployment rates and the labor force.

It’s not a one-person job, investing in these towns and helping them grow. It takes a community.

So, invest in your community. Invest in Northeast Michigan towns, whether it’s starting a business there, finding jobs in the area, looking into other opportunities, buying property, or simply visiting local shops to help them stay afloat.

Don’t let a single Northeast Michigan town become “a forgotten, drive-through town,” as Clinton Kennedy, president of the Atlanta Area Chamber of Commerce and secretary of the Briley Township Planning Commission, said.