A review of Huron County's Official Plan at a recent Sustainable Huron Committee meeting identified several challenges for the county.
County Planning Director Sandra Weber explains two of the biggest issues are the need to attract more people into Huron County to fill the jobs that are not being filled.
The second is finding housing for those people if they did want to re-locate to Huron County.
Weber says a report done by a consultant suggests there will be a modest, but steady, movement of people from larger, urban centres to smaller, rural areas like Huron County over the next twenty years.
“Projections for the county show a modest, but steady. Increase in the population over the next twenty years, so from that information it very clearly shows a need for additional housing, with a mix of form ranging from medium to higher density.”
Weber says any new housing, particularly higher density housing, would have to be done in a certain way.
“But doing that in a way that also fits in with the character of our area, so if there's guidelines for developers on ways to, sort of, appropriately and sensitively integrate higher density housing into our existing neighbourhoods.”
Other issues discusses at the meeting included agriculture and business, natural environment, climate change and active transportation.
