Summer release of Oneida County housing study results

A housing study conducted by the Oneida County Economic Development Corporation (OCEDC) in conjunction with the North Central Regional Planning Commission (NCRPC) wraps up today. 

The two entities began gathering input on March 14 and OCEDC executive director Tony Pharo told The Lakeland Times his goal is to have the results ready for release to the public in the June or July time frame.

“I’m tired of talking about the problem,” he said of the housing situation in the Lakeland area. “I want to get it out there and talk about ways to solve it so I’m pushing to get this done as soon as humanly possible.”

Pharo said a representative from the NCRPC told him when he’s done studies such as this one in the past, he’s received 200 or 300 responses. 

“As of March 31, we had 604 responses,” Pharo said. “That was a really good turnout.”

He said there’s been what he described as “a really good partnership” with the Oneida County health department, area colleges “and a lot of the other organizations around the area.”

“All three chambers have helped us,” Pharo said, a reference to the chambers of commerce in Three Lakes, Rhinelander and the Greater Minocqua Area Visitors Bureau. “A lot of the towns have put it on their websites so we had really good buy-in from the whole county.”

He said much of the housing information the OCEDC had prior to this latest survey and study was what he said was “close to COVID time.”

“Some of the developers are like ‘That’s great but it would be nice to have a fresh study,’” Pharo said. “The economy had been, before all the current federal stuff, kind of settled down and they’d like to be able to figure out which direction they want to go with the information we get.”

He said one item that’s really important is transparency and when the results are released later this summer Pharo said they will be on the OCEDC website.

“The results will be on our partners’ websites,” Pharo said. “We’re going to give it to the newspapers and TV ... we want this information to be out there. I don’t think keeping any information from the residents is a good situation and so we want to give it to everybody.”

Brian Jopek may be reached via email at [email protected].