HURRICANE, W.Va. – In one of the state’s fastest-growing areas, Putnam County is facing a significant shortage in housing, but a big step is being taken to resolve that with the announcement of a new development with more than 400 for-sale units moving forward in Hurricane.
The development comes as part of a partnership announced earlier this year between the Putnam County Development Authority and Stonewall Capital to build 600 new homes in the county. It’s a project that came forward thanks to a study on housing needs in the region that revealed alarming statistics.
“They identified out of that that in this region, from Huntington to Charleston, we need about 10,000 rental units and 20,000 for-sale units to be built by 2028 to meet our housing market demand,” Putnam County Development Authority executive director Morganne Tenney said.
Construction will take place on the site of the Woodworth Farm in Hurricane and Ward Communities has been selected as the builder. With demand growing, the people behind the project want to get things moving quickly.
“We’re excited that we have a builder. We have some floor plans and some unit types that we can share with the community, and we can really get this project off the ground now,” Tenney said.
Business development in the Advantage Valley between Charleston and Huntington brings more and more people into the region each year, and those people need somewhere to live. Difficulty finding housing for employees led companies to contact the development authority.
“We had several employers tell us that they were trying to recruit people, and those folks couldn’t find housing, and then it really became an issue when NuCor in Mason County announced, and a lot of their people weren’t able to find homes or were competing for the same home,” Tenney said.
According to Tenney, Putnam County’s school system and other key services make it a desirable place for workers to live, even if they don’t work in the county. Her numbers show significant growth of new residents commuting elsewhere, in addition to those moving in to work closer to home.
“In Putnam County, we have 71% of our residents commuting out of the county for work, 71%, so most of our people that are living in Putnam County they’re not working here; however, we still have an influx of over 13,000 people that are coming into Putnam County for work,” she said.
All of that adds up to a significant need for new housing and a plan to try to build it.
“We were only meeting a little bit of what we needed. We were maybe at about 10% of what was currently being built against those numbers for 2028, so this is going to move us in the right direction. We’re still at less than 20% of meeting that 2028 demand, even with this development,” Tenney said.
While Ward Communities is not a local builder, they still want to utilize local subcontractors and suppliers in bringing the development, now named Woodworth Farms, to fruition. An event scheduled for October 10, titled the Residential Contractor Connect Event, intends to help them do that.
“This event is going to be a speed-networking event, one-on-one with Ward Communities. We already have a list of every kind of subcontractor and supplier that they’re going to be looking for locally,” Tenney said.
Registration for the contractor event is open at pcda.org, along with more information about the homes being built.