Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN — From dam removal to economic development, Eastgate Regional Council of Governments celebrated a number of accomplishments during its annual meeting last week at Stambaugh Auditorium.

Jim Kinnick, Eastgate executive director, discussed the agency’s work — demolishing Mahoning River dams, broadband expansion and housing efforts.

“Be a fan of the region,” Kinnick said. “Tell our story, be a participant, learn from one another.”

Eastgate also presented two awards. The Community Leadership Award went to Struthers Mayor Catherine Cercone Miller and Pat Kerrigan, executive director of Oak Hill Collaborative. The two recipients were selected because of their “exemplary dedication to the betterment of the community.”

Featured speaker Chris Allen, director of Events and Partnerships at Strong Towns, discussed the nation’s housing situation. Strong Towns is a nonprofit media advocacy group looking “to replace America’s post-war pattern of development.”

“Talk of a ‘housing crisis’ pervades American cities — whether off-the-charts rents in coastal cities or hyper-vacancy in the Rust Belt,” he said. “These problems are symptoms of a deeper dysfunction. Over nearly a century, through often well-intended top-down policy interventions, we’ve turned a complex system that should be adaptive and self-correcting into one prone to a never-ending cycle of boom and bust, crises and overcorrections.”

Allen said Strong Towns calls for a shift in the nation’s approach to housing.

“We must move away from a model in which large developers and centralized financial institutions have unprecedented sway over what is built and where, to a more antifragile housing ecosystem in which the bar to entry is low, and every neighborhood can undergo incremental change over time,” he said.