Whitefish distributes housing needs survey

By LYNNETTE HINTZE

The Daily Inter Lake

Whitefish needs a clearer picture of the community's housing needs and is mailing a survey to more than 2,500 households this week.

The city of Whitefish and the Whitefish Housing Authority have teamed up to update a 2003 housing needs assessment and determine what, if any, additional programs might be appropriate to meet housing needs.

In addition to the mailing, surveys will be taken to rental apartments and to large employers in the area to be distributed to their employees. Mailed surveys will have a post-paid envelope for returning the completed survey to the city. The survey is being given to North Valley Hospital and city of Whitefish employees in their pay packets. It also can be printed from the city's Web site, www.whitefish.govoffice.com, and sent in.

Drop boxes for survey collection will be available at local grocery stores, City Hall and the Planning & Building Department. The response rate from the 2003 needs assessment was more than 21 percent, but officials hope to get back at least 40 percent of the surveys this time.

Information requested in the survey includes household income, amount paid for a mortgage or rent and number of people living in the household. It requests information on the housing unit such as year of construction, type and general condition. It also asks what problems have been encountered by those trying to purchase or rent in Whitefish and provides additional space for comments, opinions, or observations.

No names are gathered with the survey information and individual responses are confidential.

"Updating the 2003 needs assessment is essential for refining our programs, for identifying the need for new ones, for grant writing, for just about everything we do," housing director SueAnn Grogan said in a prepared statement. "And the landscape has changed so much in just four years. In 2003, the median house price was about $190,000. Today it's around $319,000, or a 68 percent increase over those four years. And since wages and salaries haven't gone up nearly that much, we know we have some cost-burdened people out there."

Cost-burdened refers to individuals and families who pay more than 30 percent of their gross income for a mortgage or for rent. Many cost-burdened people also earn less that 120 percent of the area median income and therefore may be eligible for help from the housing authority.

The updated needs assessment will include a structural conditions and zoning analysis that will lead to estimating potential losses of existing housing stock from the affordable housing pool.

It will provide an assessment of the threat posed by second-home purchases, opinions and observations from key informants such as Realtors, contractors, and lenders, and a community pricing profile that breaks median price down into type of unit, location, size, number of bedrooms and bathrooms and other factors.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com