Summit seeks answers to Valley’s housing shortage
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NILES -- The Mahoning Valley Housing Summit was hosted Wednesday at the Eastwood Event Centre by the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber to bring together professionals, developers and community leaders in the housing industry.
The main focus of the summit was to brainstorm possible solutions to the housing shortage in northeast Ohio. According to Brenda Linert, the Chamber's community impact director, extra housing is needed to support the Regional Chamber's overall goal of increasing the Mahoning Valley's population.
"The Regional Chamber has been working tirelessly in efforts to try to grow the population, and grow the workforce," Linert said. "Along with that, we know that there's a real big need for growing housing. When we have people that are moving into the area to take jobs, we need to have good quality housing that is at all levels of affordability for them."
As part of this initiative, the Chamber also created its own 24-member Housing Council last year to bring together local professionals, and to advocate for regional housing policies at the state and federal level.
"We created a housing council a little over a year ago, and started trying to work together with our builders and our developers, a lot of different folks that work in that space," Linert said.
"We knew that education was a big part of that, so we used the housing council and the chamber itself for advocacy in Columbus and in DC. Supporting legislation that we know would be helpful in the housing space."
At the local level, the Regional Chamber hopes to use the summit as a way to educate members of municipal and county governments on how they can assist with housing, and allow them to mingle with professionals in the housing industry.
"[We're] trying to make sure that we know that we're informing the public, and educating the public. Local government leaders often may not have an understanding of the need for housing, or the role that they can play. So we wanted to reach out to them, and make sure that they were involved today and inviting them to participate," Linert said.
A highlight at Wednesday's summit was a demonstration from Erik Liber, CEO of HSH Contractor, who showcased how 3D-printed concrete can be used to build houses.
Liber argued that 3D-printing concrete homes can make up for manpower shortages in construction, without replacing existing workers. He also argued that it can help avoid construction-related injuries by making the work easier for workers.
"Currently in our country, we're 476,000 masons short for the current workload we have for construction. We're not gonna just find 476,000 people. But if we give the current workforce equipment like this, they can fill that gap. We're not replacing them, we're just giving them a better tool," Liber said.
"It'll ... give them an easier working environment," Liber said. "Construction is a backbreaking process. I don't care what part of it you do, you're gonna break your back. This gives you the ability to use your brain more."
But there is currently one major drawback, according to Liber.
"The catch right now is the price of the material," he said. "So once we get that engineered to a more affordable price, the catch is really just adoption. People have to be willing to adopt this new technology in a very old trade, and a very old industry."
The Regional Chamber plans to host a Public Policy Conference on Oct. 19 at Stambaugh Auditorium in Youngstown. The conference plans to bring together local business and political leaders to discuss policy affecting the Mahoning Valley.