By TJ
Jun 3, 2021 | 9:42 AM
The Winona area faces a serious affordable housing shortage and building sufficient numbers of homes to meet demand has been challenging without enough skilled workers to replace those who retire.
Winona County Profile data shows that the County needs hundreds more affordable owner-occupied housing units. The construction industry needs an influx of new professionals. Habitat for Humanity Winona-Fillmore Counties and Minnesota State College Southeast are teaming up to forge a solution.
The nonprofit and the college will collaborate on the construction of one new rural home per year for qualified Habitat for Humanity homebuyers, and the work will serve as the lab for MSC SoutheastConstruction Technology students. Using post-construction financing through the USDA 502 program, funds used to build the home will immediately be recycled into the program.
MORE Paul Bullock owns the Eagle Inn, where he and his staff cook breakfast for roughly 60 guests when fully booked. He doesn’t want Santa Barbara City Council to ban natural gas lines in new construction. Photo by Kathryn Barnes/KCRW.
Paul Bullock loves cooking with natural gas. He owns the Eagle Inn, a bed and breakfast in Santa Barbara just a few blocks away from the wharf.
“We make scrambled eggs, bacon. And then on the weekends, we ll do waffles, crepes, pancakes, all the sweet stuff that people really dig,” he says.
His gas stove has two burners, a griddle, and an oven. It switches on and off fast. The heat spreads out evenly. He can flip pancakes while cooking quiche on the bottom. So when Bullock heard about a change in the building code that Santa Barbara City Council was considering, he grew concerned.
JAMES BEATY | Staff photo
Work begins Monday on Phase 2 of the U.S. Highway 69 project, with signs posted along Highway 69 south to warn motorists of the new highway driving conditions while work is ongoing.
Work zones. Lane closures. Speed reductions.
Those were some of the new conditions along U.S. Highway 69 in McAlester as Phase 2 of the highway reconstruction project got underway Monday.
Phase 2 of the project along the highway, also known as the George Nigh Expressway where it wends through McAlester, will be on a larger scale than the projectâs $13 million Phase I. Phase 2 is budgeted at $32 million and projected to take 1.5 years to complete.