After a year-long effort, a Patton Township task force will present its report and recommendations on affordable housing at Wednesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting.
The meeting begins at 5 p.m. in the Patton Township Municipal Building, 100 Patton Plaza. It also will be live streamed on C-NET’s YouTube Channel.
The 18-member task force has spent the past year researching and developing recommendations for providing more affordable, attainable housing in the township and the Centre Region, “so that those who work here can afford to live here,” according to its website. The task force is comprised of township and regional planners, housing service providers, elected officials, realtors and real estate specialists, developers and residents.
Affordable and attainable housing isn’t just for the lowest income levels, but also for those in the middle who cannot find an affordable place to live in the State College area.
“If you talk to folks coming here, you hear housing costs are high, rental costs are high, land costs are high,” Anita Thies, Patton Township supervisor and task force co-chair, told Town&Gown earlier this year, adding that “it is a quality-of-life issue, one that I would like to explore how we, as a greater community, can enable the opportunities for the quality of life that everybody wants.”
The lack of affordable housing can have a bigger impact on the community than people may realize, Thies said.
“When the employees of businesses have long commutes, or they are in situations where their personal life is not as satisfying, I think that can lead to turnover in the business community. So they have turnover and they have to retrain,” she says.
To begin a community-wide discussion, the task force worked with C-NET to develop three, two-minute videos:
How has Patton Township been researching housing? How can you get involved
What do we mean by attainable housing? What is the challenge?
Why is the housing conversation important?
“With the housing videos and our report, we hope to start renewed conversations among residents and elected officials about the local housing crisis and the need for more affordable, ‘attainable’ housing,” Thies wrote in an email. “We envision these conversations extending into 2022.”
The full report is available online for review.
Overall recommendations in the report include:
• Designate attainable housing as a township work priority and community focus for 2022.
• Support future regional housing studies and Deepen collaboration with regional housing service providers.
• Proving a total of $150,000 in funding for three programs to specifically benefit Patton Township residents, with $50,000 each for the First-Time Homebuyers Fund, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Centre County and the Centre County Housing and Land Trust. The task force recommends money be designated from the township’s American Rescue Plan funds or as a top funding priority for the township’s capital improvement plan.
• Adopt township planning and zoning approaches that support attainable housing. These include:
– adding definitions to existing zoning code for and adopting regulations permitting accessory dwelling units (ADU), elder cottage housing opportunities (ECHO), and Duplexes;
– revising minimum parking requirements per use in various zoning districts;
– adopting incentivized and inclusionary zoning regulations; and
– amending the MXD2 zoning district by removing the 20-acre size limitation to allow smaller C2 properties the option of using it for redevelopment.
For more information on the task force and its report, visit twp.patton.pa.us/government/housing-task-force/.
Town&Gown’s Vincent Corso contributed to this report.
