By Kevin McCall
reporter@highlandsnews.com
The Highlands Chamber of Commerce gathered community stakeholders at the Highlands Community Building on Thursday to discuss the housing challenges that the community is facing. While plans have been laid out to combat this issue, there are still a few hurdles in the way.
“Highlands faces a growing housing challenge tied to limited availability and affordability. The recent Housing Needs Assessment highlighted gaps in both rental and ownership options. This shortage negatively affects local businesses, as employees struggle to find suitable housing,” said Kaye McHan, executive director of Highlands Chamber of Commerce.
At the meeting, Breck Kean of Highlands-Cashiers Healthcare Housing, Inc., who served as a guest speaker, showcased a development plan called the H.C.H Residential Village, which aims to provide housing for healthcare workers.
“It’s been a very well documented by numerous studies – There’s an acute housing shortage and an acute affordability,” Kean said. “Lack of affordability for workforce housing, important workforce within the Highlands or the Plateau communities in the hospitality industries.”
While there are a variety of reasons contributing to the cause of the housing shortage in the region, Kean said that construction costs, land price, land values and utility infrastructure are a few of the key leading factors that currently prevent the development from being built.
“I’m from Atlanta. But construction costs are probably 25% to 50% higher up here than what we would build and be able to build down the mountain. It’s not just the material cocts, but the materials also have to get up the mountain,”
he said, Kean showcased several possible solutions, which includes finding legacy investors that could accept a lower rate of return, with the goal of putting together a financial package to present to investors this spring.
“There are no easy solutions, unfortunately,” he said. “Those resources are simply inaccessible up here because the income levels of particularly the healthcare workforce exceed the thresholds of those programs.”
However, Kean noted that modular construction, which is a building process where parts of an infrastructure are
factory-built off-site, and then put together on location, could lower costs as well as provide a higher quality. “It also increases the quality control of the unit. I contend that a modular home, at least the ones that we have inspected
and seen, are of higher quality than the communities that we’re building from the ground up,” he said.
McHan stated she hopes that Chamber members at the event will leave with a better understanding of Highlands’ housing, alongside a better insight into potential solutions.
“We aim to inspire collaboration among local business, residents, and officials to address housing needs proactively, ensuring the community remains accessible and sustainable for all,” McHan said.