Plan sets guidelines for creating affordable housing

Whitefish now has a guide in its quest to provide affordable housing for its workforce.

The Whitefish Strategic Housing Plan has been described as a roadmap for creating affordable housing for the city’s service employees, teachers, firefighters and young professionals who are struggling to find places to rent and own here. Whitefish City Council last week unanimously approved the plan.

Affordable housing is not synonymous with “low-income housing” in the mountain west, notes Melanie Rees, the housing consultant hired to complete the strategic housing plan.

“In high cost mountain communities, like Whitefish, affordable housing is for moderate to middle income families who can not afford housing,” she said. “We’re really talking about the broad community.”

Finding affordable housing options has become a challenge in Whitefish, according to a housing needs assessment released last year. About 56 percent of Whitefish’s workforce commutes into town for work, and 34 percent of those workers say they would prefer to live in Whitefish.

Rees said it’s going to take a combination of many strategies to sufficiently address the need for affordable housing.

“Please try to maintain momentum,” Rees said. “People are charged now and a lot of good effort has been put in and I can sense people biting at the bit to go forward.”

The plan outlines short and long-term priorities to create housing. It includes several initiatives — to be driven by the city, Whitefish Chamber of Commerce and Whitefish Housing Authority — development of the city’s snow lot, inclusionary zoning, annexation policy, zoning for affordability, homebuyer assistance, voluntary assessment, resort tax changes and low income housing tax credit apartment development.

The plan sets a goal of implementing the top strategies by 2020. Work on the priority items is expected to begin before the end of this year, followed by initial implementation in the next three years.

Council last week directed city staff to create a schedule for beginning the process to adopt some of the changes.

Councilor Richard Hildner said the city is on the right track with the plan to accommodate those who need affordable housing options.

“It is an actionable plan, but with this plan we must move to action, and if we don’t we’ve missed a wonderful opportunity,” he said.

Councilor Jen Frandsen said the plan is an excellent attempt to get the city where it needs to be in terms of providing affordable housing.

“This plan is directed right at those folks in the middle,” Frandsen said. “For those folks stuck in the middle, like myself, it’s tough to find a place to live.”

The strategic housing plan is the result of more than two years of work by the city, chamber and community members who served on an affordable housing task force. Work began with the housing study and then resulted in the strategic housing plan.

To fill the affordable housing gap 605 residential units are needed, Rees noted, and another 375 are anticipated to be created by the free market to accommodate employee households through 2020. To keep them affordable rent would need to be $1,000 or less per month or homes to be purchased for less than $310,000.

“This plan seeks to fill that gap by increasing the opportunities for the free market to respond, and by both public and nonprofit direct provision of housing,” she said.

The goal is to address the workforce housing need and to maintain a ratio about 65 percent ownership and 35 percent rental, while also maintaining a 70 percent occupancy level by locals.

Kevin Gartland, executive director for the Whitefish Chamber of Commerce, said the shortage of affordable workforce housing is a problem that has been “many years, if not decades in the making.”

“Our community’s growing popularity with retirees, second homeowners and visitors has put tremendous pressure on land values making it tougher and tougher for local residents to compete for the limited supply of rentals and homes that are available for our workforce,” he said.

“The chamber is really about two different things — economic vitality and quality of life,” he added. “The housing situation has come to the point where we need to address it and guarantee that we have a strong economy and a high quality of life.”

Katie Berry implored city leaders to provide housing for those in the service industry like her and her partner who she said have a combined 20 years working in Whitefish.

“We’re the lifeblood of the community,” she said. “We contribute to the social and cultural capital of this community. We are raising children who deserve to go to some of the best schools. I ask that you continue to support affordable housing in Whitefish.”

Lauren Oscilowski, owner of Spotted Bear Spirits, is among the city’s young professionals who say they’ve struggled to find housing in Whitefish.

“I own a business here and I’ve been looking at purchasing a home in Kalispell,” she said. “I would really love to plant deeper roots in this community.”

Employers too show support of the plan.

Dan Graves, CEO of Whitefish Mountain Resort, said the resort employs about 505 workers in winter and 150 in the summer months who often can’t afford to live in Whitefish. Graves said he’s seen the same trend in other mountain resort communities.

“They all got behind on affordable housing and they never caught up,” he said. “We need to do everything we can to at least stay even of where we’re at, if not catch up for all the workforce members that need housing.”

Alan Satterlee, with North Valley Hospital, said there are about 450 employees connected to the hospital including at its clinics and the majority of those are at the main Whitefish campus.

“The shortage of housing has created challenges in our workforce development,” he said. “It’s about providing housing for our doctors, but also our mid-level providers and our support services, who have a lot of issue finding housing.”