Summit looks at work-force housing crisis
Finding work-force housing in the Flathead Valley, particularly in the Whitefish area, remains a challenge, business leaders acknowledged during a housing summit Thursday in Whitefish.
Community leaders and organizers gathered at Grouse Mountain Lodge to discuss why affordable housing has become such a desperate situation for Whitefish’s service industry workers.
The bottom line was the cost of land in the northern Flathead Valley.
“We are approaching a crisis rate,” said Kevin Gartland, executive director of the Whitefish Chamber of Commerce. “We’ve got two hotels going up, two more in the works and we can’t even keep hotel employees around right now.”
Whitefish Mayor John Muhlfeld opened the presentation, describing a few large-scale housing developments that had been planned in 2005 never materialized after the economy tanked in 2008. Ever since, Muhlfeld said, getting affordable housing off the ground has been difficult.
Bob Horne of Applied Communications presented data on the Whitefish housing market. His information showed the average price of a home in Whitefish to cost about $411,000, while the average home price for Flathead County is $235,500.
The monthly average is just a little better for renters, Horne said. Monthly housing costs for homeowners is about $1,235, while renters end up paying a little more than $800 a month.
“There’s a lot more affordability in the rental market, although it is very tight,” he said.
While housing costs in Whitefish top the county, median household income is about $45,000, a little behind the county and the state average of about $46,000. About 53 percent of Whitefish residents are paying more than 30 percent of their household income for housing, Horne said, the point where housing costs are considered a burden to the homeowner.
“I see that as a challenge here,” said Lori Collins, director of the Whitefish Housing Authority. “Some service workers can’t even afford a house for $440 a month, and it’s been a long time since I’ve seen anything like that available.”
Collins said the Whitefish Housing Authority is working to move forward with new available tax credit programs to build more rental homes in the area.
Cynthia Masten, a housing specialist with Northwest Montana Community Land Trust, presented information on how community land trusts, nonprofit organizations that acquire land and remove it from the for-profit real estate market, can help keep the cost of land low.
The community land trust holds the ownership of the land to protect the affordability for future home buyers.
Erin Falcon, executive director for Habitat for Humanity of Flathead Valley, suggested reducing or eliminating city fees for building homes and writing new mandatory inclusionary housing ordinances, to require a given amount of affordable housing within city limits.
Gartland said that while voluntary inclusionary housing ordinances have already been in place in Whitefish for a few years, little has been produced as a result.
“A lot of people were talking about that [as a solution],” Gartland said. “So the mandatory inclusionary housing is something we’re going to have to look at.”
After several issues were identified, including the high cost of land, impact fees mandated by the city and pressure from residents to discourage dense housing units, summit participants were given a half-hour for roundtable discussions to develop solutions.
Several ideas brought forward were similar: Write city ordinances to provide more inclusionary housing and elect someone to work on the problem full time, rather than coordinate several people to work on it part time. Community land trusts were also in the thread of common solutions.
Horne suggested getting more business owners and leaders involved in the process. Restaurant and hotel owners may have insight into the work-force housing problem that several large business operations might not even see. The community could form a coalition of large and small business operations to get involved and go after the land, Horne said.
In the end, summit participants agreed to form a task force through the Whitefish Chamber of Commerce to continue searching for a solutions. Gartland said seven or eight people volunteered for the committee, including representatives from the Whitefish City Council, Whitefish Housing Authority, Community Action Partnership, Habitat for Humanity and others.
“I think it’s appropriate for the Chamber to lead on this because it’s a work-force problem and a business problem. It makes sense for us to bring something to council for them to act on it,” Garland said.
“I just don’t want to keep kicking the can down the road,” he said. “This isn’t really for affordable housing, it’s for the people that are critical in keeping out economy going.”
Reporter Seaborn Larson can be reached at 758-4441 or by email at slarson@dailyinterlake.com.