By Mike Nikula (Finn)
With the ever-growing need for housing, Crystal Bay Township and Friends of Finland have gathered a diverse group of folks in the Finland area as a team that has dubbed itself “Finland Home Solutions.”
After gathering input and participation through multiple public meetings and a community-wide survey, our goal is to take a realistic approach to tackling the housing issues we are facing while keeping Finland “Finland”. Rather than waiting for outside influences to dictate what happens in our community, we want to emphasize that this is a community process and we are happy to have more input and participation from residents.
For now, we are focusing on learning and projects like helping older people stay in their homes as long as possible, helping veterans find a place to live, potentially rehabilitating existing run down houses, and finding properties and tax forfeited land that may be turned into liveable spaces.
We feel that bigger developments like larger apartments would be better suited for bigger towns and cities as we would like to keep a smaller footprint.
We will be working with Lake County Housing and Redevelopment Authority (HRA), Lake County Planning and Zoning, North Shore Area Partners, IRRRB, One Roof Community Housing, our County Commissioners, and any other resource we can find. We are also working hard to explore ways to keep property taxes from going insane for residents.
We want to keep our community strong and safe, and we hope that down the road we will be able to welcome more working families to our area.
If you have any questions, ideas, or a rich uncle, feel free to contact Outreach Coordinator Mike (Finn) Nikula at mnikula52@gmail.com or crystalbayhousingproject@gmail.com.
