PIKE COUNTY, Mo. — The North East Community Action Corporation (NECAC) was among stakeholders providing advice at a Workforce Housing Town Hall for Northeast Missouri.

The Dec. 9 event at Northeast Power in Palmyra was organized by State Rep. Louis Riggs, who announced at the Tri-State Housing Summit in September that he planned to form a statewide task force to look at housing issues.

The town hall brought together local and state lawmakers with representative from the public and private sectors in Northeast Missouri.

“Workforce housing is the future of our region,” Riggs said. “As we struggle to find new and improved ways of getting people here, we have to find a place to put them.”

Riggs said housing is a key to economic development efforts.

“The traditional path to wealth (and the) middle class in this country in the last hundred years has been through homeownership,” he said. “So, we need to basically look at all the available avenues and see what we need to do from a policy perspective, from an appropriations perspective to get in front of this problem that we really want to have, which is more people in our area.”

NECAC Deputy Director Carla Potts, who outlined housing programs offered by the agency, said the town hall was beneficial.

“The opportunity to network with others around the housing issue is important,” Potts said. “I look forward to new partnerships and new opportunities as we move forward together. Many thanks to Representative Riggs and Northeast Power for bringing us all together.”

One of the people attending was Alison Ross, who lives in a NECAC apartment complex. She will soon earn a teaching degree, and lauds NECAC for the support it offered in helping her to improve her life.

“I hope to open eyes about what we need and what is usually not brought up on the table,” Ross said of her participation.

Another successful resident of income-based housing couldn’t make the Dec. 9 meeting, but Potts read her story to the audience. Brittany Rice, a mother of two, will graduate next May with a bachelor’s degree in education.

“Thanks to NECAC, I will be able to create a better life for my family, and I was able to do so while still being able to stay home with my favorite little humans,” she wrote.

The next step is to put suggestions together and come up with a plan for financing through public and private partnerships. Riggs said he hopes to use ideas as a basis for legislation.

In the featured image: State Rep. Louis Rigs leads a Workforce Hosing Town Hall Dec. 9 in Palmyra. NECAC was one of the regional participants.