By Brendan Ulmer
Ulmer Uncensored
Last week I had the privilege of writing a feature story about the Unruh family.
The Unruhs are a deeply involved local family who needed a house that better accommodated the needs of their wheelchair dependent daughter. With help from Interfaith Housing & Community Services and the Hutchinson Land Bank, the Unruhs were able to get a plot of land donated to them for the construction of a better, more accessible home.
While I believe it is important for me to keep a neutral stance on the people and subjects I’m covering, I think it is equally important for you to know that Jim and Heidi Unruh are wonderful people.
The thing that most stood out to me during my interview with Jim and Heidi was their seemingly innate reluctance to talk about themselves and their tendency to steer the conversation towards the topic of housing in Hutchinson in general.
Going back over the recording of my interview with them, around half of it ended up being about local housing. I felt bad because I didn’t feel there was a natural place in the story to include their commentary on this topic.
With that being said, housing is a subject Jim and Heidi are very qualified to speak about. Jim is a member of Hutchinson Community Foundation’s Transformational Leadership Cohort whose focus is housing for vulnerable populations. Additionally, both Jim and Heidi have experience working with Interfaith in both board and community volunteer capacities.
In my opinion, it would be a waste not to share some of their thoughts with you, mixed in with some of my own.
Jim believes creating specialized, accessible housing, and meeting the specific needs of homeless individuals are essential fixing the crisis long-term.
“We can do some sort of cookie-cutter models to help alleviate homelessness here in Hutchinson, but some of the families, some of the cases, we need to do really tailored type housing,” Jim said. “Heidi and I believe strongly that we want everybody in a safe space.”
He believes that investing in shelter is essential for the long-term well-being of the city of Hutchinson and its residents.
“Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, shelter is the bottom thing, the foundation. Without safe shelter, it cascades to a lot of things, and it’s our deep belief that investing in shelter will save our community a lot of money,” Jim said. “It’ll be a lot of money up front, but the secondary issues that happen because people don’t have good shelter, we spend a lot of money as a community for that.”
One of the things the Unruh’s discussed that did make it into the article was how accessible housing gives its residents a greater opportunity to make a civic impact on the community.
Elise Unruh, for example, is someone who won awards for her involvement in the community before she became wheelchair dependent. Navigating her split level house and the uneven sidewalks around it has used a significant amount of her energy, energy that could have continued to be directed towards the community.
“There are all kinds of people with different abilities, different capacities to engage our communities,” Heidi said. “Elise has so much to offer our community.”
Heidi expanded this idea out to underprivileged, couch surfing, and homeless young people.
“There are so many that are struggling in situations where all their time and energy has to go into just figuring out how to get through the day,” Heidi said. “Housing is an issue for everybody, and housing is a platform that enables people to use their gifts.”
The Unruhs feel the city is doing good work in the field of housing, specifically touting the land bank and their stewardship of property as an example.
“I really appreciate the concept of a land bank,” Heidi said. “The fact that the city sees land as an asset, that when you put a family on a plot of land, there’s a ripple effect of benefit to the community and to the city. I really appreciate that.”
They added that the development of housing doesn’t just benefit the city through the well-being of its citizens, and their impact on the community, but also directly through property taxes.
In the example of their new property, it was previously owned by a nonprofit organization that did not have to pay property taxes, so the city can now begin to tax revenue from that plot.
“I don’t think I’ll ever feel as good writing property tax checks,” Heidi said.
Brendan Ulmer is a reporter for The Hutchinson Tribune. He can be reached at: brendan@hutchtribune.com.