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Ask The Mayor: Kokomo's Goodnight On Homeless Housing And Veteran Clinic

Kokomo's downtown assisted living facility opens, problems at the veteran affairs clinic, not everyone is on board with a homeless housing proposal and national accolades of the city's economy.

On this week's installment of Ask The Mayor, Kokomo Mayor Greg Goodnight addresses these issues and more. Listen to the full conversation with Indiana Newsdesk anchor Joe Hren by clicking on the play button above, or read some of the questions and answers below. A portion of this segment airs 6:45 and 8:45 a.m. Wednesday on WFIU.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Hren: We're on location at Kokomo's Silver Birch - a new assisted living facility that celebrates a grand opening this week. As we've talked about before, another effort to diversify housing downtown.

Goodnight: The best part of this is that it's a beautiful facility to assist some of our aging population and it transformed an old lumber yard. The land they purchased, we gave them a piece of property to the south for parking, but we worked with them to navigate through the system.

As the population ages and people retire, we want to make sure they have access to quality housing opportunities. We want to make sure they are integrated to the community. We're going to do some trail improvements right outside this building this summer.

I think this may draw people from other cities too that want to have access to a coffee shop, small shops, a nice park across the street, things like that.

We've made it a priority to make sure we look at every demographic whether it be tax credit housing for young families, disabled adults, homeless veterans housing and even this summer private dorms for Indiana University Kokomo.

Hren: The Kokomo Tribune reported on the proposed housing facility for homeless families and how some residents are worried about it being in their neighborhood. What is it and do they have valid concerns?

Goodnight: I would say no. Those concerns are always raised any time there's a new project. We had people six years ago with our first student housing for IU Kokomo, people were against that. People were going to get hit by cars and there's going to be wild parties, their property values would go down, that has not happened.

We have a homeless men's shelter at the Kokomo Rescue Mission and we have the Open Arms Shelter for women and children. But if it's a homeless family, they become separated. So this will be the first family homeless shelter. We picked that area because it's close to things like the YMCA, our downtown library, near parks and the Carver Community Center and our free Trolley line.

In a perfect world you'd be able to look at different housing projects and not be able to really differentiate which ones which, and that's what we're trying to do here.

Hren: I saw a news report where Senator Joe Donnelly asked veteran affairs officials about the outpatient clinic here in Kokomo over complaints of care and scheduling appointments. How much do you know about the issue?

Goodnight: It's actually housed in a city owned property. We worked with the veterans administration to get this open, guided them to that facility. This is a trial, they're going to slowly grow this, so there are limited hours and that was in the original plan. I think the use is probably more than what they thought it would be.

I think the use is probably more than what they thought it would be.

Hren: Bloomberg named Kokomo the third fastest growing economy in the nation since the Great Recession. Of course, the city relies on the auto industry, do you feel the city has all its eggs in one basket?

Goodnight: It could happen and it has happened. Other cities - Columbus has Cummins as a big player, but I try to remind people, making our city a place where people want to live - we've been able to do that. That's what helps diversify our economy to help focus things that are more recession proof, like education, IU Kokomo, our two hospitals. Those help offset us when the next recession comes.

The economy is going well, I feel like as a community, we've taken advantage of every opportunity we've had over the last ten years and leverage that to its fullest extent. We've revitalized older areas and invested in the community itself.

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