Northwest Indiana has plenty of housing, provided what you want is a single-family home
Not everyone does, and the lack of a healthy mix of housing is hurting our economy.
In 2022, 24.7% of the population in Northwest Indiana1 lived in housing that they rented. This is down from a high of 27.3% in 2016 and the lowest rate in twelve years. While the difference between these rates may not seem large, if housing rental rates in 2022 had been what they were in 2016 there would have been 22,547 more people living in rented housing units.
Not only have housing rental rates been rapidly declining in Northwest Indiana since 2016, but the Region already has an unusually low rental rate. Despite the rural nature of much of Indiana, the rental rate statewide is 26.5%. In the Chicago Metropolitan Area the rental rate is 30.5% and nationally it’s 32.6%.
If this low and falling rental rate in the Region were the result of people continuing to have access to a wide variety of housing options, and becoming better able to afford owning their housing, that would be an excellent sign. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Instead, housing in Northwest Indiana is becoming increasingly concentrated in single-family homes with fewer other options. People aren’t renting as often because fewer rental options exist.
Between 2013 and 2022, 89% of all newly constructed housing units in Northwest Indiana were single-family homes, up from 81% the previous ten-year period.2 The trend is even worse Lake County, where multi-family structures made up just 8% of all new residential housing units constructed in the last decade (2013-2022), compared with 24% the decade before (2003-2012). Put another way, Lake County effectively stopped building anything other than single-family homes a decade ago.
Northwest Indiana has plenty of housing available, provided what you’re looking for is a single-family home. Over the career and lifetime of a worker, housing needs change and we lack a healthy mix of quality housing options, particularly the type of housing attractive and affordable for younger skilled and educated workers, who are in the earlier stages of their careers.
As Northwest Indiana grows its workforce, we need to develop a healthier mix of quality housing options if we hope to attract and maintain a healthy workforce.
7-county region of Lake, Porter, LaPorte, Newton, Jasper, Starke and Pulaski counties.
Source: Building Permits Survey, U.S. Census Bureau.
We moved to St. John in 1989 and for years, the zoning ordinance required half-acre minimum lots for residences unless they were part of a planned unit development. When those were proposed, they generally garnered some opposition but eventually were approved. Similarly, residents spoke out against townhouses as they would "cheapen" the town, so to speak. That was when the forward path to adequate funding to operate and expand LC schools was unclear, and my argument was that condo and townhome residents were less likely to have kids in school, and thus paid taxes but didn't result in higher costs for LCSC. There are a handful of rental single family homes in our neighborhood at most, and I am unsure how many of the townhomes here allow owners to rent them.