Study results announced at event next week

Results of a housing needs assessment for Whitefish will be revealed at a Monday, Dec. 5 event.

Local business owners, managers, workers and the public are invited to attend the noon meeting at the O’Shaughnessy Center. The assessment begins the process of crafting a plan to address the issue of affordable workforce housing in the city.

The Whitefish Chamber of Commerce and the city of Whitefish, along with support from businesses and nonprofit organizations, have been spearheading efforts to assess the existing workforce housing shortage and to develop a plan for addressing needs in the future.

The study is the first step in a process that will continue in early 2017 with the development of a workforce housing master plan for the city of Whitefish, according to the chamber.

The chamber contracted with Rees Consulting, a Crested Butte, Colorado-based firm, to conduct the study.

After six months of research, surveys, interviews, crunching the numbers and analyzing the data, the 2016 Whitefish Workforce Housing Needs Assessment is complete, Whitefish Chamber of Commerce Director Kevin Gartland said.

“The needs assessment was designed to identify the scope of the problem and give us the hard data that we need to take action to deal with the housing shortage,” Gartland said.

The Dec. 5 meeting will present an in-depth look at the housing situation and the effect it’s having on Whitefish. A light lunch will be provided.

City and chamber officials have been focused on finding remedies to Whitefish’s housing shortage that by most accounts is approaching a “crisis.” An insufficient stock of rentals is coupled with a housing market that generally exceeds the average household income. The result is a deficit of workers for the thousands of service jobs that motor Whitefish’s tourist-based economy, while professionals are forced to commute from outside of the community where they work.