Business owners share ideas for housing shortage

Buffalo Cafe co-owner Alex Maetzold says about 80 percent of his employees live at least 20 miles from Whitefish due to a scarcity of affordable housing options in town.

“Good, local people are getting pushed out farther from Whitefish,” Maetzold said. “We try to compensate employees enough so they’re willing to come. We offer free meals and try to offer a positive environment, but we can only offer so much.”

The Buffalo has been fortunate so far to not lose any employees due to a lack of housing, but Maetzold expects it won’t be long before that changes. Some of his employees rely on public transportation to get to work and the limited bus service can also be a hindrance to both him and his employees, he noted.

Maetzold was one of a few people representing local businesses to join a brainstorming session hosted by the Whitefish Chamber of Commerce last week to discuss solutions for Whitefish’s affordable and workforce housing shortage.

By the end of the year, the chamber expects a housing needs assessment to be completed, but in the meantime it continues to search for solutions, according to Chamber Executive Director Kevin Gartland.

“We don’t want the focus to go away,” Gartland said. “We want to do anything we can to knock away at the problem in the meantime.”

The chamber, along with the city of Whitefish, is looking to hire a consultant that will conduct a housing needs assessment and then create a strategic plan with suggestions on how to address the problem.

“This is the formal process,” Gartland said. “We all know [a lack of affordable housing] effects our ability to hire and keep workers. We want to keep this town vibrant.”

Business owners have said their employees struggle to find housing. Community leaders also have pointed to the ongoing problem of seasonal workers who are unable to find housing and young professionals who can’t afford to purchase a home in Whitefish. The results being a deficit of workers for the thousands of service jobs in the community.

Two new hotels currently under construction in Whitefish and plans for a third have only increased worries from some business owners that the problem could only get worse.

Maetzold offered one potential solution of creating a voluntary tax that could be used for affordable housing projects. He pointed to the Whitefish Convention and Visitor Bureau’s voluntary 1 percent tax collected at businesses that provides revenue for promoting Whitefish.

“We need to work on the foundation of housing,” he said.

Gartland said he is never one to ask for more taxes on businesses, but the idea isn’t without merit.

“We have been successful at promoting ourselves as a resort and retirement community,” he said. “But now our employees are being run out of town.”

Whitefish Mountain Resort spokesperson Riley Polumbus said the resort has faced challenges in hiring employees because of the lack of affordable and available housing.

“We’re a large employer in the winter and summer,” Polumbus said. “We’ve faced challenges, more so in summer, because a lot of people rent out their properties as vacation rentals and that cuts into the number of places that are available.”

Polumbus said the resort tries to hire employees for the long-term, but they often can’t find housing.

“The community has a variety of job levels,” she said. “We need the community to have a variety of housing options to meet various levels of income.”

This summer WMR is planning to convert some of its office space into housing, It expects to have three units ready for the winter season. While it’s a small project, Polumbus said it will help the mountain in its hiring.

North Valley Hospital has said that of the hospital’s approximately 400 employees only 36 percent live in Whitefish, and 54 percent live in Kalispell or Columbia Falls.

“We support the study,” said Allison Linville, community relations coordinator at NVH. “We want to see long-term solutions developed.”

A lack of inventory of housing also seems to be a component of the problem.

Chris Hyatt, who is in charge of special projects for the chamber and also does property management, said there is virtually no openings in the rental market.

“We have such a quick turnover rate,” he said. “As soon as someone leaves, their friends are asking to get an application in before we can advertise it.”

He said rentals in the $400 to $900 per month range go the fastest, and those with higher rent don’t stay available long either.

“We are running into a scenario where we can’t keep up with the needs,” he said. “Vacation rentals by owner have also meant a loss to the long-term rental pool.”

Hyatt said adding to the amount of housing moving forward needs to be a part of the solution.

“We need to work with the city to look at ways to reduce impact fees or some sort of deferred taxing,” he said. “We need to help make this happen by giving assistance to developers for creating affordable housing.”

Following a workforce housing summit in September last year, a task force was created to begin addressing affordable housing, and to bring recommendations to the city on how the community could tackle the problem. The study is the first recommendation from the task force.

Gartland said the last housing study completed for Whitefish was in 2007 and conditions have changed so much since then it’s important to have a new study and plan that will provide hard facts and goals for those looking to fund solutions to the problem.