Ottawa County needs more homes at prices local families can afford. Meegan Zickus has a plan to work on that problem. Joe Moss has named housing as a priority, but has not published a plan to address it.
A teacher wants to live near the school where she works. A young couple is ready to buy their first home. A longtime homeowner wants to downsize without leaving family and friends behind. Each faces the same question: where is the home they can afford?
Housing Next’s 2025 assessment projects that Ottawa County will need 12,526 additional homes for sale and 3,938 additional rental homes by 2030. Those are projected needs through 2030, not a count of homes missing today. Its assessment also found that 88% of new for-sale homes permitted since 2021 were priced above $400,000.
Joe Moss says housing matters. Where is his plan?
Moss’s campaign says local communities should decide zoning and housing questions. It lists housing and homeownership as priorities. But his published platform does not set out steps to create more attainable homes, identify which barriers he would address, or say how he would measure progress.
Local control does not answer a young family looking for a starter home. It does not tell a teacher how more homes will be built near her school. Moss has stated a position on who should decide. He has not published a plan for what he would do.
Meegan Zickus’s plan: make room, remove barriers, measure results
Meegan believes housing decisions should begin with the people affected by them. Her approach is to work with local communities, residents, builders and employers on four concrete steps:
- Make room for more kinds of homes. Identify appropriate places for smaller houses, townhomes, apartments and homes that let older residents downsize while staying in their communities.
- Remove unnecessary delays. Give proposals a clear, timely review while preserving local input and standards.
- Make difficult sites workable. Coordinate roads and utilities with housing plans, and evaluate financing tools when site preparation costs prevent a useful project from moving forward.
- Publish the results. Track how many homes are built, what they cost and whether working households can afford them.
Other states offer ideas worth examining. Massachusetts allows qualifying accessory dwelling units, giving homeowners a way to add a smaller home on their property. Oregon expanded the types of homes permitted on residential lots. Washington uses a housing trust fund to help finance affordable homes. None is a complete answer for Ottawa County, but each addresses a specific obstacle rather than stopping at a slogan.
We can see the value of that approach close to home. Ottawa County approved a financing plan for a proposed 84-unit townhome development on a long-vacant Hudsonville site, including 12 units reserved for income-qualified households. County officials identified infrastructure costs, site preparation and earlier zoning restrictions as barriers. They worked on those barriers to move a specific proposal forward.
Joe Moss says housing is a priority. Meegan Zickus is putting forward steps to address it—and a way for residents to judge whether they work. Ottawa County families deserve more than an acknowledgment that buying a home is hard. They deserve a plan that gives them a better chance to live here.
More housing can also require roads, water, sewer capacity, and changes near existing homes. Review should account for those costs and effects alongside the needs of people looking for somewhere to live.