DES MOINES, Iowa — The Des Moines City Council voted Monday on the first-ever citywide housing strategy aimed at addressing housing challenges and redeveloping city blocks.

The Des Moines City Council is calling this a long-term effort to help improve housing conditions, home affordability, and access throughout the city. It also looks to expand investment into existing programs like Invest DSM, Improving Our Neighborhoods (ION), and help with city initiatives like home repair assistance and down payment support.

City leaders say the strategy focuses on improving the aging housing stock, increasing density along corridors, investing into older homes rather than demolition, and providing different types of housing throughout the city. It also hopes to help the city compete with booming suburbs.

“When you start making improvements in two homes, then neighbors start making more improvements in theirs and even some of the things we found as people stay in their homes, and like if you put an addition on and stay invested, you stay invested in your neighborhood. So this is really building community, and I think it goes hand-in-hand. So when we talk about a whole block, redevelopment is really looking at how we get everybody to be part of it, and that people’s values stay because your value of your home is your could be your life investment,” said Des Moines Mayor Connie Boesen.

Mayor Boesen said the strategy also focuses on affordability while providing homes at different price points.

“Affordability shouldn’t come at the expense of having a safe, reliable home. We know that in some of the cases in our ION program, putting new roofs on, new windows, helps the homeowner cut costs from expenses. Probably been going out the window for their heating and air conditioning. So some of the mechanisms of keeping a safe home helps with affordability,” said Mayor Boesen.

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