Jennifer Wesselhoff, who’s the president and CEO of the Park Metropolis Chamber/Bureau, has crafted an impassioned argument in help of workforce or in any other case income-restricted housing. She submitted the assertion to the Park Metropolis Planning Fee amid the talks a few improvement within the space of Quinn’s Junction. | Park File file photograph by David Jackson
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The highest staffer on the Park Metropolis Chamber/Bureau, a determine with large affect on the tourism business that drives the native economic system, has crafted an impassioned argument in help of workforce or in any other case income-restricted housing, outlining her evaluation in a submittal to Metropolis Corridor concerning a improvement matter.

Jennifer Wesselhoff, the president and CEO of the group, despatched the two-page assertion to the Park Metropolis Planning Fee amid the talks a few improvement often called Studio Crossing within the space of Quinn’s Junction. The Park Metropolis Council in mid-December authorized Studio Crossing, which is designed to incorporate an outsized proportion of workforce housing.

The assertion submitted by Wesselhoff, although, is broad in nature slightly than solely addressing the specifics of the Studio Crossing mission itself. The assertion is very notable with Wesselhoff holding such a vital put up within the tourism business at a time of magnified considerations about housing for the workforce. Wesselhoff within the assertion describes inexpensive housing as a “dire neighborhood want.”



“The excessive worth of Park Metropolis housing is woven into each facet of our lives to dangerous impact, pricing out service employees and up-and-coming Parkites, and our seniors, whose choices have been drastically decreased,” Wesselhoff says within the submittal, which was written on Chamber/Bureau letterhead.

Wesselhoff says she hears from Chamber/Bureau members of “the pressing want, verging on desperation, many employers really feel in regards to the want for motion.”



“Companies’ capacity to rent and retain staff is more and more negatively impacted by the dearth of inexpensive housing,” she says, including that employees in Park Metropolis “typically haven’t any alternative however to commute lengthy distances to seek out housing.”

That, she says, “contributes to native visitors congestion whereas including commuting prices, wasted time and elevated stress to employees’ lives, typically affecting their job dedication. It is a significant factor in worker turnover and issue in hiring.”

The assertion comes amid what many see as a second of utmost issue within the housing marketplace for the workforce. A growth within the tourism business that began shortly after the pandemic-forced shutdowns within the spring of 2020 led to a rise within the want for rank-and-file employees even amid dwindling housing choices for wage-earners within the essential resort, lodging, restaurant and transportation sectors.

Park Metropolis’s resort-driven actual property market has lengthy been the state’s most costly. Within the third quarter of 2022, the median worth of a home in Park Metropolis was $3.9 million, in keeping with the Park Metropolis Board of Realtors.

Wesselhoff addresses the costs in her enter to the Planning Fee, citing a median worth topping $2.5 million. That determine, she says, “excludes nearly your complete US inhabitants from our housing market.”

“Park Metropolis’s dedication to fairness and inclusion means we should create a mixture of housing choices that permits individuals of various revenue ranges to reside right here, paying an affordable proportion of their revenue for housing prices. Failure to satisfy this problem will discourage all however the rich from residing in Park Metropolis. That’s not who we’re – or who we wish to change into,” she says.

Two different noteworthy factors within the Wesselhoff assertion:

• “With no housing scheme that allows center to upper-middle-class earners to reside right here – firefighters, accountants, nurses and small enterprise homeowners – we danger excluding from our civic and cultural life the very individuals with out whom Park Metropolis can not exist. Each wholesome, engaged civic surroundings wants the participation and the buy-in of people that reside – in addition to work and play – in that neighborhood.”

• “Economically, individuals who reside the place they work spend their wages in that neighborhood – boosting gross sales, rising municipal tax income, and making employment safer for everybody. But, at the moment, Park Metropolis ‘exports’ domestically generated {dollars} due to a housing market that forces employees to depart city on the finish of the day, purchasing and recreating the place they reside, not the place they earn. Consequently, along with dropping their civic dedication and participation, we pay a monetary worth.”

Metropolis Corridor has for years prioritized workforce or in any other case restricted inexpensive housing and considers itself as at present pursuing an aggressive program. The supporters of this system argue the housing reduces commuter visitors, helps the surroundings and provides to the socioeconomic cloth of Park Metropolis.