Community and Economic Development

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Excess supply and depressed housing values in rural counties may affect housing development

November 23, 2020

New housing development is occurring in Iowa, but its distribution is not even across the state. In 2018, just five of Iowa’s 99 counties accounted for more than 65% of the total new housing permits issued statewide.

For places experiencing little new development, an aging and deteriorating housing stock is an urgent concern for local policymakers. While new development is not a cure-all solution to rural housing problems, increasing housing options in rural areas can help attract new employers and stabilize local budgets.

Despite demand, few homes are built in rural Iowa due to dearth of developers and builders

November 23, 2020

Leaders in rural communities tell us that the demand exists for new homes, yet in many communities it is obvious that homes are not being built. Statewide data for the number of housing permits granted by county indicate why concern may exist.

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DSPG Young Scholars Use Data to Solve Local Community Problems

Iowa State University Data Science for the Public Good (DSPG) Young Scholars Program (https://dspg.iastate.edu) is in full swing as nine student interns and three graduate fellows learn to apply data science skills to solve local community problems through the identification and discovery of datasets that can be used to better analyze, visualize, and understand the problem and their potential solutions.

The DSPG began May 26 and will run through August 7. The program is led by a coalition of five land-grant universities in three states: Iowa State University, Oregon State University, Virginia Tech, University of Virginia, and Virginia State University.

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