Place to live source of concern

For most Whitefish residents, it shouldn’t be surprising to hear that a lack of affordable housing is one of the city’s top issues.

According to the Pilot’s Top Issues survey conducted last month, the lack of affordable housing options in Whitefish is the second most pressing concern for residents, sitting just behind and likely connected with issues related to growth of the city.

“Please address the fact that there is zero affordable housing for those of us that work in the tourism industry as well as those on disability struggling to work part time to make ends meet,” one respondent wrote. “Our locals are being forced out.”

“Whitefish will cease to exist when those who live and work here can no longer afford it,” another person commented. “I have a specialized degree with great pay and I struggle to afford rent, groceries and student loan payments.”

Worries about a lack of affordable housing in Whitefish are nothing new, and certainly not unique to the Flathead Valley.

A 2016 housing needs study for Whitefish estimated a need for nearly 1,000 housing units are needed by 2020 to make up for a shortage of available workforce housing and plan for future needs.

The Whitefish Strategic Housing Plan, completed in 2017, laid out a guide for creating 605 affordable residential units and anticipated another 375 to be created by the free market.

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.

Ben Davis, chair of the Whitefish Housing Authority board and the city’s Strategic Housing Plan Steering Committee, has been at the forefront of the effort to make Whitefish a more affordable place to live. For Davis, terms like affordable or workforce housing include everyone, the “bread-and-butter” of Whitefish, as he calls it.

“Affordable housing covers a lot of area in the sense that it’s housing for folks that live and work here in town. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s housing for folks of very limited financial means, it does include that, but it also includes regular folks working regular jobs in our town,” Davis said. “It’s about creating a sustainable community for everybody, that we can all live in.”

Right now Whitefish’s home prices sit above other Montana cities.

According to a 2018 report in the Montana Business Quarterly, many Montana housing market prices are high and also high relative to typical Montanans’ incomes.

In looking at median home values, six major Montana cities were considered — Billings, Bozeman, Great Falls, Helena, Kalispell and Missoula. Five of the cities in 2016 all had median home values above the United States median home value of $205,000. Only Great Falls fell below the U.S. value. The median home values in Montana, however, did appear to be less than those in the West. Only Bozeman had a slightly higher median home value than the West home value of $337,200.

For comparison, Whitefish’s median home value for a newer single family house was about $450,000 in the 2016 housing assessment. About 56 percent of workers commute into Whitefish, the study also showed, and only 70 percent of Whitefish homes are occupied by local residents, leaving 30 percent as second or vacant homes.

In the years following that study, several projects with affordable housing as a direct or indirect focus have emerged, and more are likely to come in the future.

Davis boiled current actions by the city down to what he calls the “big four,” which include developments on Edgewood Place and in the city’s “snow lot,” along with systemic changes like inclusionary zoning and zoning for affordability.

“Those are the first four that we really focused on,” Davis said. “They are large and they are all impactful in their own way.”

The most recent project to take on affordable housing is the planned Alpenglow Apartments, a 38-unit complex to be constructed on Edgewood place. The nonprofit Homeword Inc., along with the Whitefish Housing Authority, is developing the project, which received city approval last month.

Homeword in November was awarded a low income housing tax credit from the state Board of Housing for $6.7 million to develop a rental housing project for residents with an area median income of 60 percent or less, and a Montana Department of Commerce grant announced last month completed the funding for the project. The housing authority is developing the $8.2 million project with Homeword, which has developed a number of affordable housing project around the state.

The property on Edgewood Place just off Wisconsin Avenue was once a mobile home park, but is now largely vacant except for a few accessory buildings.

The second of the “Big Four,” the snow lot off Railway and Columbia Avenue, could create roughly 35 housing units on the site residents of Whitefish can afford with an area median income averaging around $40,000 to $53,400 per year. The city is still working on the details of how the lot might be turned into housing.

Whitefish is also working on ways to boost the number of affordable homes in Whitefish within zoning laws.

One proposal is to create mandatory inclusionary zoning for the city, which would require that 20 percent of all new development be set aside for affordable housing.

The zoning program would apply to residential conditional use permits, planned unit developments and subdivisions. Residential units allowed by right would be exempt. The goal is to target creating housing for those with incomes between 60 and 120 percent of area median income.

In exchange for providing deed-restricted units, developers would be able to take advantage of a list of incentives designed to offset providing the housing. Those incentives could include reduction in parking or lot sizes, increase in building height, density or lot coverage, and a streamline development approval process for smaller projects in the WB-3 zone.

The city is holding a joint work session on Thursday to discuss the proposal, which is expected to go before the Planning Board on March 21.

In addition, a number of private developments have contributed to hitting the city’s affordable housing goals.

A new development at the site of the old North Valley Hospital on Highway 93 South will also chip in to fix the issue. The Riverbank Residences is planned to include seven buildings to house apartments on the former North Valley Hospital site. Of the total number of apartments included is 47 deed-restricted affordable housing units that will eventually be managed by the Whitefish Housing Authority. Developers have said some of the apartments are also designed to provide additional workforce housing. The deed-restricted affordable apartments will be designated for those with incomes of 60 to 100 percent of the adjusted area median income.

The Alta Views subdivision off JP Road is constructing 137 new townhouses expected to be priced between $289,000 and $349,000.

So with all these current projects in motion, how is the city faring in terms of meeting its goals?

According to a City Council report from Jan. 22, Whitefish is sitting at about 65 percent of its goal for 580 affordable rentals, as defined by the 2016 housing assessment.

Through a variety of private and public development, Whitefish can look forward to 379 new affordable rentals by 2020, 311 of which would serve residents or families making 80 percent or less of the area median income.

The report does not include attached single-family projects or multi-family projects where the units will be sold as condominiums.

Making Whitefish more affordable for those who want to live here is no easy task, Davis notes, and it’s also going to be an ongoing process.

“Solving affordable housing is not a one-time thing,” he said. “We don’t do it now and then it’s done and we never deal with it again. Housing issues take year to solve, and furthermore you can’t solve the entire problem at the peak of the housing market, if you will. When we’re working on this, we’re looking at the long term, what our community is going to be like and how these programs fit into it.”

Likewise, if the city hits its goal of meeting the needs laid out in the 2016 report, that doesn’t mean the process is over, he said.

Programs like inclusionary zoning will hopefully continue to exist for a long time, as the issue of affordable housing will likely stick around too.

Davis said he hopes success for the city’s efforts translates more into real-life situations.

“If you’re of average income in our community and you’re having a difficult time finding or renting a home — in a couple years, if that looks a little bit easier, that means all this work was worth it,” Davis said.