The City of Oskaloosa recently unveiled the results of a housing needs study. The city hired Maxfield Research and Consulting, a firm based out of Minnesota, to evaluate the housing market and the needs of the community in Oskaloosa.

The group presented its findings and offered several key takeaways.

Those included: population and households growing at a modest pace, having fewer families with children, a senior housing market poised for strong growth, and a lack of supply in properties for sale.

Development Services Director Andrew Jensen says this information is important to begin outlining action items for the city to work on going forward.

"Well, the first thing that we need to do is to continue to just get the information out there. So the Oskaloosa Housing Trust Fund Committee, which commissioned the study, will be spending some time sorting through the data, discussing it, kind of understanding it, digesting it further. We also want to make sure this information just gets out into the hands of real estate professionals, builders, developers in the area. We've already received contact from developers from outside the area that have interest. And we've let them know that this study is coming and they're very interested in what it has to say,” Jensen says.

Jensen says the city will continue to clean up maintenance issues with properties and will look for ways to bring more housing opportunities downtown.

"That's a very tricky issue in that the cost to renovate some of these places is high. And once it hits a certain threshold as far as cost, the return just isn't there to make those investments. So we've already started some discussions of what different incentive programs might exist to be able to encourage people,” Jensen says.

Jensen added that the city wants to do a better job forming private and public partnerships. That just means having the private sector working with the public sector gets more projects and developments done.

You can read the findings from the study by clicking on this link.