MOULTRIE – The Archway Partnership tackled the issue of housing in Colquitt County with its first Housing Work Group meeting.

About 33 individuals attended the meeting, representing different aspects of the community including government, education, medical, business, and non-profit organizations.

Colquitt County Archway Professional Sara Hand addressed the group first. “We wanted to pull together resources and individuals from the community to talk about this and see what are the strengths of the community, what are areas we can improve and how we can just better serve our fellow Moultrie-Colquitt County citizens.”

Archway Partnership Operations Coordinator Sharon Liggett was introduced and she asked how many of the group knew what Archway was and added, “You are the longest partnership community in the state.”

She gave a quick review of how the Archway Partnership worked and said, “You all are what I would call the issue work group members. You are representatives of the community who’ve come together to take on this challenge, of course, with the resources of the University of Georgia.”

She said that, over the course of the process, she hoped that Archway could give them the tools and resources that they needed to address the challenges that they identify in the community.

“I have been working on housing issues since 2013 when I joined a statewide team called the Georgia Initiative for Community Housing,” Liggett said.

She also said that the City of Moultrie had participated in the initiative in 2006 and from that came a number of activities. She said they might go back and look at the plan and see what kind of progress had been made.

“Of all the issues we work on, education, healthcare, downtown redevelopment, regular economic development, I think housing is the most complex and time-consuming content area that we work in,” she said.

She said a solution could take five to ten years for a community to achieve their housing goals.

“So, I say that right up front to help you all manage your expectations. That housing is so complicated, it’s a multi-year process … and it takes a long time,” Liggett said and added that economy plays a part in it and there are many other factors that are out of their control.

However, she said, there are many tools and resources that can be used.

“Housing issues are so complex and they’re so different — and we’ll talk about that going forward — that there is room for everybody, plus, at the housing table,” Liggett said.

Liggett asked the group to do an exercise that illustrated how individuals think different things about the same concept and related it to how the “housing” concept was thought of in different ways.

She said some people thought about housing for seniors, some about apartments, some about housing tax credit projects and some about the housing authority.

Burke County Archway Professional Aaron Redman spoke to the group next and told them that, in Burke County, they’ve been working on housing for 2 1/2 years. He said getting the momentum going takes time and a creative team.

He asked the participants to write down the strengths in housing that they thought Colquitt County had. Some of the answers included interested stakeholders in the topic, collaboration between community organizations and nonprofits, the Housing Authority, good water and sewer infrastructure and county location.

Participants were then asked to write down weaknesses that they saw in housing in the community. They included lack of affordability, zoning issues, lack of transitional housing, existing housing that is either of poor quality or too expensive, and the economy cycle.

Participants were then asked to write down what opportunities they saw in the community to help the housing issue. The answers included additional attainable housing investment, surplus property and land, levels of affordability and creation of greenways-walkways.

When asked what the group wanted to focus its attention on in housing, some of the answers included collect and analyze data and address pressing needs first, more affordable and attainable housing, tax discounts, and equal opportunity to access quality housing no matter the location in the community.

Liggett then presented housing data specific to Colquitt County based on three sources including the Census, The University of Georgia and the Atlanta Regional Commission, which did an entire data profile on Colquitt County in 2022.

“A lot of this data, such as, population, demographics, your age. All of that impacts housing,” she said.

She said one of the things that she thought was the most interesting and was a little surprising was that it showed 13% vacant housing.

“Think about, where are those vacant housing units. … And what kind they are,” she said.

She also said that multi-family units make up 14% of Colquitt County’s housing stock and asked the participants if that seemed right?

“Five percent of your housing has been built since 2010. That’s not a whole lot of housing that’s built since 2010,” she said.

She also said that 68% of the housing has been built since 1970 so that gave them an age-range of housing. Last, she said that almost 30% of the housing had been built in 1939 or earlier.

“You guys have great historic homes,” she added.

She then said that about 65% of the housing, in the community, was owner occupied and 35% were rentals.

“And this data is up to 2022. So, I was really surprised that it was that current. Usually housing data is four or five or six years back,” Liggett said.

She said the US Department of Housing and Urban Development said 30% of gross income is the most a household should pay for housing.

“Whether that’s rent, whether that’s mortgage. And that also includes utilities,” Liggett said.

She asked if anyone knew what the average rent was for a two-bedroom in Colquitt County and the group tentatively guessed about $1,000 to $1,350.

According to the data, she said, 60% are $1,000 or less and many of the participants seemed to disagree with that number. It was stated that prices had gone up since 2022.

She said if they go back and look at the income data and multiply the income by 30%, what could people really afford in rent or in a mortgage. She went on to say that Colquitt County’s median income was approximately $37,000.

“If you do the math, somebody that’s making $15 an hour, that’s $30,000 a year and 30% of that is housing, I promise you, nobody’s building a house for $60,000. Right, bankers?,” she said.

She asked if there were any home developers in the group and no one responded so she said that they really needed to be invited to the next meeting because their input was really needed.

On the income data that they were shown, she pointed out that 47% of families in Colquitt County pay more than 30% of their income for housing.

“So, almost half of your community is paying more in housing than they can truly afford,” Liggett said.

She said that UGA’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government was going to look at the data to see where the opportunities and challenges were in the community, as presented by the data. Then, they would come back to the group with the analysis.

Pulaski County Archway Professional Sherrie Raleigh stepped up and said, now, they would have an open conversation about what the group thought after seeing the data and writing down some of their ideas. The group discussed the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and focus efforts mentioned above.

“I want you to write down … so now we’re gonna talk about themes. What have you heard today, the theme that sticks out to you?” Liggett said.

When each of the group had given their themes for the day, “affordability and attainability” seemed to be the overarching themes that stuck out to them.

A meeting was planned for next month.