The Johnson County Board of Supervisors heard a recommendation from urban planning company Community Scale to build roughly 950 new housing units over the next decade in the non-metro area of Johnson County.

The recommendation stemmed from a final report for a housing assessment conducted by Community Scale.

The assessment committee from the company met with communities and provided recommendations to the supervisors on how best to proceed with housing.

The assessment was done by Community Scale, an urban planning and specialized data analysis company. The findings were presented by Jeff Sauser, a co-founding principal of the company. 

Sauser said generating analysis and resources for small cities and partnering with organizations to best understand housing issues was one of Community Scales’s main intentions when working on the report. 

“One intention here is to give [the board] some guidance on how to approach housing issues in Johnson County, and some recommendations that we can move forward with from a policy perspective,” Sauser said. 

Sauser also said within those additional 950 units, there would need to be more diverse options for housing, including housing for couples, family homes, and single-person housing.

“There just isn’t enough variety to meet the needs and opportunities in the market,” he said. “That’s part of the reason why we might not have been seeing the growth in the non-metro area that we’ve seen in the metro area.” 

Sauser said there were many barriers that could affect building this new housing, including land constraints due to agriculture use or zoning issues, lack of sewer and water services, and limited transportation options. According to Sauser, Community Scale worked to find the next best steps for all of these issues. 

RELATED: Johnson County Board of Supervisors evaluate housing in the area

The assessment made multiple recommendations, such as downtown revitalization, where cities reinvest into their downtown communities by developing retail and finding mixed use development opportunities. Sauser also referenced attracting grocery stores to the area and improving public transportation. 

Sauser and Supervisor Rod Sullivan expressed how building housing on agricultural land is an issue. Sullivan said both the environmental community and agricultural community agreed housing development on the land should not happen. 

“I just want to go on record as saying I continue to be very, very concerned about this one,” Sullivan said. “It took us about 40 years to get to the detente that we currently have, and I’m just really worried about upsetting that apple cart.”  

Sauser acknowledged Sullivan’s concerns and said the county partnering with smaller cities would be the foundation for many of the offered recommendations. 

“We want to make sure that we’re giving people options that are going to serve them just as much as they’re going to serve the rest of the community,” he said. 

V Fixmer-Oraiz thanked Community Scale, and said these assessments are some of the most powerful regulatory tools the community has.

Jon Green, chair of the board, thanked Sauser and echoed a similar sentiment to Fixmer-Oraiz.

“We’re already beginning to take action on some of these recommendations and I think this provides us with a pretty good road map to continue,” he said.