Empty lots in your town’s core are the biggest first opportunity for improving the rural housing supply. Photo by Becky McCray.
The only housing “best practice” that really works for every town:
Keep renewing your town’s core
No one likes a mushy core, in an apple or a small town. Build more in the center, less on the outside.
Grab a paper map of your town and a highlighter. Circle the oldest neighborhoods, the ones closest to your downtown or town center. Those are the areas to focus on.
There are two important reasons:
1. Make the most of your existing infrastructure.
You already have water and sewer and streets in the core. You’ll make more of your existing infrastructure investment when you replace and renew the existing housing close to it.
2. Draw your community closer together.
People who live close to the core can walk and bike more to run errands. They can go downtown for shopping and events more easily. Parking at downtown events is less of a problem when more people can walk from their homes in the core area close by.
How to renew your town’s core housing
Find the empty lots within your existing core residential areas. Highlight them on the map. Use different colors for privately owned lots, ones held by banks or other organizations, and ones currently owned by governments at any level. You’ll probably find several that ended up in municipal government ownership after an owner failed to pay taxes or failed to maintain an old house.
Pick another color for empty lots in the core housing area that are only used as parking or storage. (Look next to churches and businesses.) You might have to get extra creative to find ways to put them back into housing.
Then get together and brainstorm ways you can promote homebuilding in the core. Here are some starter ideas that might spur your thinking:
- Make people aware which lots in the core are available for building right now.
- Offer incentives, like waiving utility connection fees for close-in lots.
- Sell empty lots in the core at low prices.
- Remove zoning barriers to adding new structures or accessory dwelling units in your housing core.
Add your ideas in the comments or send us an email.
Send us pictures if you put up signs: “Fabulous homebuilding location! Close to downtown!”
- 3 Major factors in rural remote work: incentives, flexible workspaces, and a sense of community - June 6, 2022
- How to recruit new residents, remote workers, or remote entrepreneurs - June 2, 2022
- How cooperatives improve small town economies - May 8, 2022
- Metaverse business idea: virtual world tour guide - April 15, 2022
- Make extra money from extra workspace: co-working and 3rd workplaces in small towns - March 28, 2022
- Trade show booth design trend: hand drawn visuals - March 21, 2022
- New business sign design? Don’t use cursive script - February 14, 2022
- Way more people prefer rural than urban, new Pew Research study finds - February 1, 2022
- Top 5 Rural and small town trends 2022 - January 3, 2022
- How to start a real small small business - December 17, 2021
