A town hall-style meeting scheduled for Monday, Dec. 4, will address the results of a recent countywide housing study.
The meeting, which is being presented by the Gilmer Initiative for Community Housing (GICH), will be held at the Ellijay Elementary School Auditorium. Doors are at 6 p.m., and the meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. It is free to attend and open to the public.
“We’ve been accepted in a three-year plan, and we’re working with the University of Georgia,” said Tiffany Watson, Gilmer Family Connection director and a GICH panel member. “This small group is being trained by UGA to see what housing solutions are working in other Georgia counties. Of course, we have to work in the parameters of our zoning and different things like that.”
The housing study was done to help the GICH panel develop a plan to address the lack of local affordable workforce housing, and the town hall will address the results of the study, which included a public survey.
“We’re all volunteers for GICH, and we’re trying to see what the community wants to do moving forward. As part of going forward and seeing what we can do to solve some of these issues, we did a housing study and sent surveys out. All of that info is back,” said Watson.
Representatives from the Georgia Conservancy, the Atlanta-based conservation organization that facilitated the housing study, will attend the meeting to present findings and answer questions.
Watson said the group will possibly be taking some of the questions using an interactive process.
“We’re looking at using a system where there will be some questions that we feel people want answers to. People can use their cellphones to answer, and their answers will immediately pop up in graphs and things like that. We will also be taking questions straight from the crowd,” she added.