NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Amy Haase with RDG presented to the Board of County Commissioners on Wednesday and she believes that Hutchinson has more people than the Census said it does.
"One of the things though that I do want to point out that we really kind of saw as we were looking at the data and that was specifically with the city of Hutchinson was a potential undercount that we think probably happened," Haase said. "That's based on a couple of things. One, as a whole, Reno County has a pretty young population, so naturally your population should just grow. The building activity also indicated to us that you probably weren't seeing a significant out migration. The other piece of it is the fact that you didn't really have this high vacancy rate. The census said that Hutchinson lost something like 2000 in population. And we looked at this and said, but we don't have thousands or hundreds of units sitting vacant from this population decline."
The survey said a little over 9000 people are commuting in to Reno County to work, and about the same number are commuting out to work elsewhere.
"We also know that you have a fairly older building stock. So about 47%, almost 50% of your stock was built before 1960. This is both a good and a bad thing. It's good because it often means we have an affordable housing stock, right? We can't build a house today at what it cost us to build it in 1960. But it also means that we gotta be thinking about repair and maintenance and upkeep of those properties to being really important."
One of the big ways Reno County can improve its housing situation is to build more for the 55 plus population, as a lot of them are living in the houses where they raised their families and if they moved on to places built for their stage of life, it would allow this older more affordable housing stock to turn over to a new generation.
"What if we captured even one to 5% of that population potentially moving?" Haase said. "That would generate a demand for about 100 to 500 units in the next 10 years that we could capture that one might be interested in that type of unit that's maybe lower maintenance and so forth or smaller in size potentially."
Also, more high end housing would allow those that can afford it to move up in house from where they are now, which would free up more of that affordable stock, as well.
"Our objectives here are to improve the quality of the rental stock, maintain the stock of naturally occurring affordable housing, and then reduce the number of homes that must be demolished every year," Haase said.
The study was accepted by the governing body unanimously on Wednesday.