As you may have seen in our previous newsletters and Facebook posts, Redwood County recently completed a county-wide housing study. The purpose of this study was to identify specific housing needs across the county and determine strategies to best address those needs. The decision to undertake this study was made in effort to actively support Redwood County’s ability to meet its housing needs and reduce housing barriers across the county, as set forth in the 2023-2025 strategic plan. A request for proposals for this study was published in August of 2023, and the proposed bid from Bolton and Menk was approved by the Redwood County Board of Commissioners on February 6th of this year. Within the first several weeks, our partners at Bolton and Menk established a website for the project that included our online survey and timelines of the project. Bolton and Menk worked diligently collecting feedback from the survey, holding interviews and meetings with local stakeholders and collecting a variety of housing data for analysis from march through June of this year. After the data was collected and analysis was complete, the preliminary findings of the study were presented to the Redwood County EDA board at their meeting on September 11th. The preliminary findings of the study indicate that throughout all of Redwood County there is an immense need for a variety of suitable housing options, for residents at all levels of income and family size. Currently, the majority of Redwood County’s housing stock was built before 1939 or 1970, which is considered aged and many of these units are in desperate need of repairs or improvements. Additionally, there is an overall shortage of rental housing across the county, making it increasingly difficult for prospective workforce residents to find immediate housing. The important question of course is, how does the county plan to address these findings? Thankfully, our project managers at Bolton and Menk have given us several strategies and resources that the county can implement to start addressing these immediate and long term housing needs. The EDA board is thoroughly reviewing the recommendations from Bolton and Menk, to determine what programs or incentives to implement, that will provide the most opportunity, for the most residents across the county. One of these strategies will be to develop a Redwood County Housing Trust fund, through which the County plans to offer programs to support the County’s housing needs. We are confident that we will be able to implement these strategies within a timely manner, and you should expect to hear about funding programs to help improve housing opportunities across the county in the very near future. Thank you to Bolton and Menk for their outstanding work on this project and to all who participated in our housing study! Your participation and feedback in this study will have a great impact on how the County will determine future housing projects!