In Northwest Ohio’s Williams County, it isn’t hard to find a job: Local leaders say the county’s economic growth is expected to outpace Toledo’s, in Lucas County.
But it is hard to find a place to live in Williams County, which a recent housing study found is about 400 units short of the projected need.
The county’s only homeless shelter, the Sanctuary, is constantly filled to capacity. It estimates it turns away more than 500 people each year.
“We can't get people out faster because there's nowhere for them to go,” said Pastor Mike Kelly, the shelter’s executive director. “They have the money to move, but they have nowhere to move to.”
Feeling left behind by big government, county and local business leaders decided to take matters into their own hands.
“We realized that nobody is coming to save us,” said Edgerton Village Administrator Dawn Fitzcharles. “We have to save ourselves.”
Now, they’re building solutions to the housing shortage one brick at a time.
Personal impact of the housing shortage
Tucked into Ohio’s top corner between Indiana and Michigan, Williams County is easy to overlook.
“A lot of Ohioans don't know that we exist because we're on the other side of Toledo,” Fitzcharles said.
But in late 2023, the county garnered national attention after its largest city, Bryan, filed criminal charges against the pastor of Dad’s Place, who sheltered homeless people in his church.
“We realized that nobody is coming to save us. We have to save ourselves.”Dawn Fitzcharles, Williams County Port Authority
The case highlighted the severity of the housing shortage in the rural community. Two years later, it’s still an issue.
As a pair of cases related to the incident work their way through the courts, Dad’s Place continues to stay open 24/7, offering refuge to locals like Kelly Barron.
Her former partner kicked her out of their longtime home, Barron said, so she packed up her belongings and headed to Dad’s Place. The church doesn’t have beds, so people sleep with their heads bowed on tables, but it at least provides a place to stay cool during the hot summer.
“I have a roof over my head,” Barron said. “I’m living directly out of my car, but I'm not sleeping in my car.”
The temporary arrangement is working for now. But Barron is intimidated by the prospect of finding a permanent place to live.
“Everything's so spare,” she said. “It's like, where do I go?”
Economic Impact
A 2023 housing study shows Williams County needs around 400 additional units to meet demand. It’s not just impacting individuals like Barron, it’s taking a toll on local businesses.
Williams county is rural, but its manufacturing base is 4.5 times the national average, Fitzcharles said, made up of big names like Dum-Dum maker Spangler Candy and the Ohio Art Company – known for once producing the Etch A Sketch.
“Once COVID became a thing of the past, business for all of us just really picked up,” said Spangler Candy President Bill Martin. “Our town only [has] 8,000 people, so when we all have to hire at the same time, it gets pretty nerve wracking trying to find people.”
At one point, Spangler Candy offered jobs to a Michigan couple with factory experience.
“They could afford to buy a house because they had saved their money, but there wasn't really anything available in their price range,” Martin said. “And so they couldn't come to work for us.”
Martin knew the quickest way to remedy the situation would be to build multi-family housing, and there are existing programs to offset the cost: The federal government offers tax credits to developers looking to build affordable units.
“But all that money was going to the big cities in Ohio, because they were having the same kind of growth struggle that we were, just on a bigger scale,” he said.
Problem solving at a local level
Without more housing, the population of Williams County is expected to continue declining. So, Martin and local business and government leaders like Fitzcharles decided to do something to turn the trend around.
Both are now on the board of the Williams County Port Authority, which, in a public-private partnership, has raised more than a million dollars from the county and area businesses to invest exclusively in housing.
So far, the Port has constructed and sold 16 single-family homes, and a team is hammering away on its first duplex.
“[The Port Authority] is the biggest builder in Williams County,” Martin said. “Nobody's building more homes than we are.”
The Port aims to sell its homes for between $175,000 and $185,000. That means they may sometimes take a loss. If they do earn a profit, it goes toward future projects, Fitzcharles said.
Next up, the Port is planning a 50-unit senior living community.
After five failed attempts, the Port Authority got its application approved through the federal tax credit program to make the development possible.
“That's our first development of that magnitude in 25 years,” Fitzcharles said.
She recognizes it will only make a small dent in the hundreds of units Williams County needs.
“We're taking bites out of the elephant,” she said.
But she’s hopeful the work will pay off, attracting new people to a county with old business.
