Local officials involved in housing opportunities recognize that there are challenges in that space in the community.

And they want to do something about it.

The idea is the result of the work of the LHOT — Local Housing Opportunity Team.

Warren County Commissioner Jeff Eggleston said that group, made up in part of the Economic Opportunities Council, Human Services and Housing Authority, meets on a regular basis to discuss “how to address housing in the county, as a whole.”

He said housing has “been an ongoing issue,” from challenges with rental properties to housing opportunity and housing stock.

“We want to do bigger things,” he said. “The only way to do that is to have a strategic plan” that will “attack all elements of housing in the community.”

Eggleston said other counties have seen “a lot of benefit from doing the plan,” including the ability to draw down state and federal dollars specifically for housing.

“This is a partnership,” he said, noting that Warren and Forest counties have both offered letters of support and that McKean, Elk and Venango counties would be approached “as partners to do a regional project.”

Eggleston said the proposal could be funded by grant dollars or through federal Community Development Block Grant funds.

“The project is going to move forward one way or the other, I feel,” he said. “This isn’t just about homeless and indigent populations.”

He said the plane would address renting, housing stock and redevelopment.

The City of Warren also approved a letter of support for the project.

“Finding affordable housing for the workforce and general residents,” Warren City Councilman John Wortman said, is “one of our most important (jobs) as elected leaders.”