Eau Claire Organizations Discuss Affordable Housing Projects

Local residents, nonprofit leaders, and City officials gathered at the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library in Eau Claire last week for a discussion on affordable housing.

The event sought to highlight some of the ways those local organizations have worked to increase affordable housing options in the region. City of Eau Claire Community Development Director Aaron White was featured as a panelist during the discussion, and shared examples of some recent projects that saw sites like former healthcare facilities converted into affordable housing units.

"The Mount Washington development, so that was a former senior living center," he said. "Prior to that it was actually, historically, it was a sanitarium for tuberculosis patients. Years ago that was being renovated into housing, the Eau Claire Academy is currently being renovated into housing. Past project, the Howard Johnson, the hotel that was down by Shopko has been turned into efficiency apartments. Those are a lot of your really key facilities that try to go. You're looking at former nursing home or senior care facilities, former hospitals, former schools, elementary schools, high schools."

White also highlighted why facilities like former nursing homes or schools are easier to target for those kinds of conversion projects than unused commercial sites.

"The reason those types of facilities are looked at a lot is because they're typically found in an area that allows for housing from a zoning standpoint," he said. "And their design has a little bit better extension of water and sewers and drains and things through the facility. You can convert straight commercial into residential, but you're going to face a lot more challenges, a lot more costs."

One of the most significant obstacles to improving the affordable housing market in Eau Claire is its low vacancy rate, leaving those conversion projects or the construction of entirely new housing units as some of the only available options to do so. The City of Eau Claire has also been seeking affordable housing development proposals from a wide range of organizations over recent weeks, with a total of $785,000 of assistance available through the Affordable Housing Fund.