Who We Are

Our Story

In the Spring of 2024, a group of residents, business owners, and community leaders came together to discuss their concerns about the shortage and rising cost of housing in Otsego County. There were far too many stories to tell that day about our hospital, schools, and businesses being unable to hire due to a lack of housing. Even more about local Otsego County families struggling to pay rent or achieve their dream of homeownership. It was clear we were facing a crisis.

Leading to our first meeting, several members of what would become the Task Force joined convenings across the State and region. These convenings were part of the Michigan State Housing Development Authority’s efforts to organize Regional Housing Partnerships and drive collaboration. Otsego County is in Region E, along with 11 counties in Northeast Michigan. Collaboration across the whole region is still a work in progress with such a large region, but our group agreed whole heartedly with the recommendation we form a county level task force to centralize efforts to make the impact we wanted to see.

Thanks to the Otsego Community Foundation, our group continued meeting regularly and soon the Otsego Housing Task Force was formed. After providing the Task Force its first round of funding, the Community Foundation identified us as one of their three High Impact Partners. The Community Foundation has continued to demonstrate unparalleled commitment to this work providing multi-year funding and acting as the Task Force’ nonprofit fiscal sponsor.

As the Task Force formed it was clear that the problem needed to be defined. The first major action of the Task Force was to survey the community to understand if folks across the county were seeing and feeling a housing shortage. This survey received over 1,000 replies from across the County. The response was overwhelming. We were indeed facing a crisis.

The Task Force’s findings were confirmed soon after by a housing needs assessment survey conducted by the Otsego County Economic Alliance, which found Otsego County needed a minimum of 600 additional housing units to meet the demand in 2024. Then in 2025, the North East Michigan Housing Alliance conducted a regional housing needs assessment covering the entire North East region. It found that by 2029 Otsego County will need an additional 1,600 housing units!

Since our founding, the Task Force has been hard at work bringing our mission of “Moving Housing Forward” to life by:

• Educating the Otsego County community, hosting open houses, attending public meetings, and working directly with community leaders to collaborate on what, why, and how we overcome this crisis.

• Advocating for change that will help remove barriers to building more housing, such as zoning changes and studying the feasibility of building homes that hard working Otsego residents can purchase or rent!

• Supporting with resources for existing residents in finding the housing resources they need, while ensuring developers and builders see Otsego County as a great place to build housing.