KALAMAZOO, MI (WKZO AM/FM) – One key to building affordable homes is to cut construction costs.
Kalamazoo has a couple of new neighborhood-based ways to do that.
Volunteering is one way to save. Edison Initiatives is a group of 11 homeowners who do their own refurbishing. They have sold 2 homes and are working on their third. They pick candidates who are low income renters, who are willing to prepare to be good homeowners.
David Davis is one of their volunteers.
The non-profit is asking for the city to grant them $36,000 to help the operation, which uses income from one property, to fix the next.
City staff has also presented a corridor housing study that would encourage developers to build on underutilized land along major roads in the city, turning them into multi-story housing tracts.
City Community Development Manager Sherilyn Parsons says it’s cheaper than building single family homes in a cornfield, because the utilities are already there.
Their study identifies several possible locations in Kalamazoo.
It would still require a private developer to obtain the land, finance the development and set up the lasagna of local, state, national, non-profit housing and other tax breaks and funding supports to subsidize construction, but it’s another option.
Parsons says it’s another tool in their toolbox, one of many they have looked at to address the acute shortage of affordable housing.
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