YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Joe Koch Jr. points to the pushpins on a map in the conference room of the Austintown, Ohio, business where he serves as vice president of operations.
They represent the hundreds of houses built by Joe Koch Construction, the company started by Koch’s father in 1984. Koch Jr. joined the company several years ago.
“The more and more that you get into housing, you realize that you’re making not only an impact for the three, four or five months that you’re building somebody’s home, but you’re building basically where they’re going to be probably 50-60% of the time that they’re awake,” he says.
It’s something the Austintown native says the company takes seriously. He recalls years ago when many new homes were under construction across the region.
“And I’d love to be able to see those again – the good old days, meaning you’ve got five or six different subdivisions that you’re building,” Koch says, “and you’re building nice, middle-class communities. Those are the kind of things that help your school systems. They help your fire departments, your police departments. It’s just amazing when you have a healthy, vibrant housing economy, how much it trickles down to every other different facet within your community.”
Chamber Housing Council
Koch chairs the housing council established early last year by the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber to help improve the quality, accessibility and affordability of housing in the Mahoning Valley. The roughly 20-member council includes Regional Chamber members from businesses, nonprofits and government agencies that work in housing.
“We have a vested interest to make sure that housing, not only currently, but in the future, for years to come, is able to sustain a lot of the jobs that are coming into this area,” Koch, who also serves on the Regional Chamber board of directors, says.
While the last several years have proven successful for Koch Construction, the health of the regional and national housing markets aren’t where they need to be, he says.
“There is a major, major shortage on the supply side of quality housing,” Koch explains. “And we’re definitely feeling it as a community.”
It’s something that must be addressed as large companies move into the area, he says. Employees of those companies need places to live.
The number of companies building houses in the Valley plummeted during and after the 2008-09 housing crisis.
“At our high-water mark, we were building 80 homes a year,” Koch says. “Right now, we’re building about 50 to 60 so we’re getting close to capacity, as far as our company is concerned. But then when you look to your left, look to your right, there’s probably only a half dozen other contractors that we see on an everyday basis, where, in our heyday of the ’90s and early 2000s, there were probably five, six times that.”
The housing council’s work started by convening with local officials and has moved to leaders on the state and federal level. Koch says they have been receptive and willing to help.
Housing Study
The housing supply and demand issue is what prompted the Regional Chamber and Eastgate Regional Council of Governments to seek a housing study by the Greater Ohio Policy Center the results of which were unveiled in January 2025. It listed several recommendations including formation of a housing consortium.
Justin Mondok, Eastgate director of planning and development, sees progress.
“I think what’s been really encouraging to us in this first year is the conversations that we’ve had with all of our local community partners,” he says.
The process is following Eastgate’s mission of providing communities with information, data and support to make decisions for the growth and development those communities want, Mondok adds. One area that’s gotten traction is infill housing on available land such as in a land bank or on former school properties, Mondok explains.
“We’ve seen a lot of energy and excitement around the potential for those to be potential sources or supplies of future housing,” he says.
The new Ohio Residential Economic Development District program through the Ohio Department of Development is another way to address the housing shortage. It awards grants to communities near significant economic development projects to support workforce housing creation.
“We’ve had a number of communities apply for that funding,” Mondok says. “So, we’re kind of encouraged by the excitement that the communities have had in wanting to chase these additional opportunities to bring funding for infrastructure to support housing development…”
The Regional Chamber’s housing council is leading the housing effort on the private side of development, Mondok says, pointing to housing finance and work with builders and funders. The housing consortium, led by Eastgate, one of the recommendations in the housing study, and will start early this year.
The decision to slow roll that initiative relates to Eastgate’s goal to meet the priorities of communities, rather than Eastgate telling communities in which direction they should proceed, he says.
“We wanted to be intentional and make sure that the information we’re putting out there and collecting and analyzing is helpful to them first, before we bring a group of people together to meet without a clear direction.”
A fix for the Valley’s housing struggles though, won’t happen overnight, Mondok acknowledges.
“When we deal with these high level, foundational topics of how we prepare communities to more responsibly handle development, that’s a long-term picture,” he says.
Goals
Brenda Linert, the Regional Chamber’s director of community impact, says one of the goals of the housing council is construction of 1,000 housing units within the next five years.
“It’s not in any one specific neighborhood or community, but it’s region wide,” she says, adding the need for housing stretches from multiple to single family and across price points. “We just need everything across the board.”
The council also is creating a housing toolbox, a directory of available resources to help developers, builders and home buyers, Linert says.
And she says programs like Welcome Home Ohio, which provides grants for the purchase or construction of homes, the REDD, mentioned by Mondok and assistance from area banks also provide routes to more homes and home ownership.
Employees of companies locating in the Valley are often commuting from areas including Aurora, Ohio, and Cranberry, Pa., rather than moving here because of the lack of desirable housing.
“It’s great that we’re getting the employees to come here, that they’re filling the employment needs,” Linert says. “But we want them also to be contributing to our local economy. We want them to live here and be engaged in the community. And their employers want them to be engaged in the local community.”
Marlin Palich, a real estate agent with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Stouffer Realty, is encouraged by the movement he’s seen to address affordable housing availability. He points to the work by Eastgate as well as Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership and Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation. The latter two have been building housing on infill lots and former school properties.
“I think we’re seeing more of that, and I think that’s important,” Palich says. “Those houses have to be affordable.”
That work requires government cooperation to ensure regulations don’t impede development, he adds.
“In other words, it has to be everybody working together to create this,” Palich says.
Housing prices in the Valley are increasing but it’s not the dramatic increase from several years ago when sellers entertained offers from 20-plus prospective buyers. And he’s seeing more people searching for homes either because they want more square footage or they want to downsize. That’s a change from the last few years when people held onto their homes longer. Palich points out that condominium sales, a type of housing popular among empty nesters and older people, are booming in Columbiana County.
While interest rates haven’t dropped to the lows prevalent during the pandemic, they hover around 6%, helping to spur that movement, he says.
Still, some find homeownership out of reach. Laynie Kratko of Sharpsville, Pa., who spoke last year to The Business Journal about her search for a home, has put that goal on hold because of costs.
“I feel like I have a little bit more realistic standards,” she says.
Kratko believes she’ll have to either save more money to pay for the needed repairs on a fixer upper or buy a house with someone else so she can afford one that doesn’t require extensive work.
Construction Momentum
For Koch Construction though, construction is steady. The company built 15 homes in the first phase of the Landings at Boulder Creek development, off New Road in Austintown. Phase 2 is underway with a third phase in the works. The company also plans a roughly 100-house subdivision along state Route 46 near Chipper’s Practice Range and expects to build four homes at the former Lloyd Elementary School property at Norquest and Fitch boulevards, both in the township.
And Koch is encouraged by progress to address the housing shortage.
“I would say the brightest spot is politicians want to help,” he says. “They want to be able to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.”
The majority understand the problem, he says. Low supply means more people are competing for a small number of homes which drives up the price.
“Whereas if you’re able to create a nice ecosystem of housing, that’ll lower the cost of just about everything in the housing market,” he says.
