Many Paths: Galesburg needs more housing options sooner than later

Last July, the Galesburg City Council approved the commission of a study to assess the housing needs in our community. It was originally projected to take nine months so hopefully we should be getting the results in the near future.

Before we even get the report I am sure of one thing for certain: we need more housing.

How could I be so sure about this without having seen the report? In 1960 we had a population of 37,243, and even in 2000 we had a population of 33,706, which are both higher than the 2020 population of 30,052.

Surely, we should have plenty of housing available given our population decreases right?

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Due to a great many factors, those houses and apartments are no longer there. We have lost many units of housing over those last 80 years since our peak population.

Little by little buildings get abandoned, fall into disrepair, get torn down or end up burned down. While there are still houses and apartments available, it seems like the market is moderately on the rise meaning there’s fewer units than there is demand for. It is simply not the case that we have a large stock of housing that’s ready to be occupied.

What we do have is lots of former housing that is uninhabitable in its current state, or vacant lots of where housing used to be. Neither of those are usable for housing without actual investment and actual initiative.

We live in a really low cost of living area. The median home price in Galesburg is now trending around $100,000, while the national median home price is $412,000. Even with our really low cost of living we still have plenty who struggle to get by because we’re also a low wage area.

My fear is of what could happen if we actually get some decent economic development that comes to town. Say something changes and all of a sudden one year our local population increases by even just a few hundred people and starts rising year over year. I don’t think our housing market would be able to stay as cheap as it is with our current supply.

If we don’t provide adequate supply then our cost of living will rise just like the rest of the country, leading to many in our community to not be able to afford the life they have now. We want increased economic opportunity, but it won’t be for much if we all have to start spending significantly more on housing.

There’s no reason our cost of living would stay low if we experience increased economic development. Our zoning and building codes are basically the same as everywhere else in the country, so if the demand for housing increases there’s a chance we’ll end up like most other cities and just become unaffordable.

If we recognize the problem, we can be proactive about it. What the exact course of action needs to be and what is feasible from a political or policy perspective is to be determined.

However, we use the levers of power we need to make building housing as low-cost and easy to do as possible without sacrificing on safety. How we do that specifically is up for much debate.

This problem won’t be solved by any one person, group, or government. We will need the County, City, local developers, potential smaller developers, non-profits, agencies, and the general public to get together to work towards solving this issue.

Regardless of what the housing report eventually says, we’re going to need more housing, really the only question is “how much?”

We’re already taking great steps. Just this month we received a grant to help with repairs on some of our current housing stock.

A few months ago, the City Council approved a grant program to give financial assistance to downtown building owners who convert their empty upstairs areas into apartments.

We’ve started to take the steps needed, but there will be many more that’ll still need to be taken. This isn’t something that just the government or just individuals can solve, it takes a community to build the better community we want.

Joe Hicks is a Galesburg native and a contributor to the Many Paths column.

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Many Paths: Galesburg needs more housing options