OTTUMWA — Ottumwa is no stranger to statewide housing issues that have affected everyone, from families to renters to first-time homebuyers.

RDG Planning and Design has partnered with Iowa Finance Authority to conduct 40 meetings in 16 communities across Iowa to get a feel for housing issues facing those communities. The qualitative results of this study will update a 2009 study that focused on data and analysis.

Marty Shukert, principal planner for RDG, led the discussion in Ottumwa Monday night.

The Ottumwa Housing Authority has 359 apartments between all of its programs and is the second-largest public housing authority in the state. OHA is also in the process of building a four-plex on Tindell Street, said executive director Dan Stroda.

Three-bedroom units are the hardest to fill, to Shukert’s surprise, with two-bedroom units being the highest in demand, Stroda said.

One challenge OHA has been facing is bedbugs, and due to OHA’s size, a lot of the work falls on the employees’ shoulders.

“We haul our own garbage, we treat for bedbugs ourselves,” Stroda said. “You can go six to nine months without having a bedbug and then at one time you’re treating 11 apartments at once. It’s calmed down, but it’s still out there.”

The biggest challenge Stroda sees is “we don’t have enough normal processes of people moving on to the next level of housing.”

With seniors staying at home longer, the average age of a senior coming to OHA is 70, compared to 65 years old 20 years ago.

“That makes a lot of difference with turnover and how long we keep people,” Stroda said.

Brad Little, president and CEO of the Ottumwa Regional Legacy Foundation, said ORLF works with the hospital and Job Corps to bring people into town.

“With Job Corps, there are 120 FTE positions, and I can count on one hand how many of those have found housing here,” Little said. “We have multiple opportunities on the horizon for good-paying jobs, and they will want nice housing, but we won’t have it.”

One thing Shukert has noticed is a shortage of market-rate rental housing across Iowa.

“One reason is the whole industry died off prior to 2008, and now all of a sudden it’s needed again,” Shukert said. “People are viewing a home as more of an anchor ... as something that keeps them from being mobile. There’s renewed demand in rental housing and not much of an industry to build it.”

Dave Shafer, director of planning and development, said the city offers several housing programs, including the Housing Enterprise Zone Incentives and the Tax Abatement Program, but he’s still looking for ways to improve public-private partnerships.

“We lost the development of new subdivisions in Ottumwa,” Shafer said. “We need single-family homes, multiple-family homes, condos, townhouses, help with transitional housing. We have housing shortages in all aspects.”

Shukert said a statewide problem is that there are many programs to help those looking for housing, but those people don’t have access to that information.

United Way of Wapello County community impact associate Marie Zoromski said one of the recurring things she’s heard is that Ottumwans don’t watch the local news, read the newspaper or listen to the radio.

“But they do use Facebook, they touch it multiple times a day, in their spare time,” Zoromski said. “And they’re asking for people to come to their neighborhoods. They’re saying door-to-door would be a really nice way to get information out.”

Joan Sutterlin said as new faculty members have come to Indian Hills, they have struggled to find places to live.

“One physicist three years ago spent three weeks in a dorm before he found a place,” Sutterlin said.

She has also noticed that while seniors are selling their homes, and those homes are sitting empty, others are having trouble finding housing. She said one problem could be that seniors “don’t realize there is a global financial meltdown” and “they’re not all realists when it comes to originally pricing their homes.”

She wondered if there was a way to pre-screen renters, list them in a statewide registry, “so you’re not afraid they’re going to trash the place.”

Zoromski said the United Way is in the process of conducting “community conversations” to hear citizens’ concerns.

The UWWC participates in the 2-1-1 Program, where people can call for help anonymously in 16 categories, one of which is housing and shelter, which she said is 35 percent of the calls.

In Oskaloosa, two elementary schools have been converted to 30 apartments for low-income seniors. As well, each year the high school builds a home, which is also a benefit since it trains students in construction.

Rob Taylor, chairman of Oskaloosa’s Housing Trust Fund Committee and the AHEAD Regional Housing Trust Fund, said the challenge of a regional housing trust fund is asking someone in Oskaloosa to contribute to a fund that could ultimately go to Bloomfield.

Shukert said these community studies will be discussed at the Iowa Housing Conference on Sept. 5 and the project will be completed by December.