A stake in the valley
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
By Ben Cannon
Jackson Hole, Wyo.-It comes as no surprise to anyone aware of Jackson Hole’s place on the map that this valley, under housing market conditions extending back a decade, is astronomically expensive to buy into.
It follows that there is a diverse strata of local working folk with little chance to own a free-market residence. With attainable housing out of reach for the majority of first-time homebuyers, this issue precludes staking out a life in Jackson Hole for those who consider homeownership an integral part of ‘settling down.’
While much of the physical and aesthetic character of Jackson Hole – a place where locals like to point out that 97 percent of the valley is open public land – is being rigorously preserved, the same cannot yet be said for the conditions of the working and middle class. The valley continues to witness the steady departure of that social-economic element to neighboring communities.
In the wake of gentrification’s march, the steady influx of greater and greater wealth to America’s name-brand resort communities, expensive vacation homes gradually push out teachers, baristas and PTA members of many ilk (to say nothing of the upscale forces facing commercial zones, driving out established, ‘real’ businesses – the quirky coffee shop, the Thai joint favored by locals – that fade into memories until even those are gone).
Since the early 1990s there have been considerable efforts to alleviate the situation in a housing market so inflated that at least one local official, county commissioner Ben Ellis, has called it a “failed market.”
In the mid ’90s, on the heels of a broad undertaking that resulted in the 1994 Comprehensive Plan, Teton County established its Housing Authority, a government arm that now registers 819 deed-restricted affordable ownership and rental units in the valley, creating a measurable mark of progress for a housing supply that has seen some success.
In 1990, before the Housing Authority was created, the Jackson Hole Community Housing Trust, a private 501(c)(3) was established by a small group of individuals who took it upon themselves to try to offer some relief in a housing market that, by the end of the 1980s, was already on a meteoric incline. The housing trust has since created 85 homes, with 15 more underway in Melody Ranch, planned for completion by the end of the summer.
With the joint Jackson-Teton County Comp Plan currently under major renovations – a process that will occupy much of this year and could well spill into the next – this is indeed a formative time that will determine how Jackson Hole, as a community-at-large, sees fit to deal with the changing social characteristics, as workers housed locally move to bedroom communities in Teton County, Idaho and Star Valley. Or, perhaps, they increasingly do not come at all.
According to a figure from the ’94 comp plan, in 1986 the median price of a single-family home was 350 percent of median income (250 percent was at that time considered affordable). By ’93, that median price had shot up to 635 percent. The average price of a single-family home in 2005 was more than $1.2 million. The average worker wage, meanwhile, was $33,000 annually. In the case of a combined two-income household, the average home price was 19 times the necessary income - more than six times the average national housing price to household income ratio.
Bill Collins, owner of Collins Planning, was county planner beginning in ’93 and oversaw the department for a decade. He wrote the book on affordable housing, which came in the form of a chapter in the ’94 comp plan.
“If I were asked the question ‘has the affordable housing program met its goals,’” Collins said during a recent phone interview, “I would say ‘yes.’ Unfortunately, the goals haven’t been updated and revised since ’94. And this is a very dynamic community and nothing stays the same.”
Population growth is only one dimension of change in the valley, Collins said. There is also, of course, growing affluence to consider.
“If the only people coming in were living on wages [made] in this community it would be another story,” he said.
And it’s important to consider for Jackson Hole, Collins noted, that the moderate or über-wealthy people and the working folks in this valley are more likely to talk fly-fishing or ski conditions than portfolio size.
“One of the great characteristics of this community is that people of different incomes and social strata have always mixed here,” he said.
Recently, Teton County raised the affordable housing exaction rate for both new residential and commercial from15 to 25 percent. Even with some concerns voiced by a number of builders over the increase, a required allotment of 25 percent affordable housing is modest, even quaint, compared to Colorado resort communities like Aspen and Telluride, where exaction rates are double or even triple that, and where there are proposals for even higher exactions on the table.
County Commissioner Leland Christensen, while saying he did not rule out the possibility of hikes in the affordable housing requirement at some point in the future, said it is best to first wait and see how the new rate plays out in the market.
“The future is yet to be seen on how the change from 15 to 25 percent exaction will affect the available stock,” he said. “In the past 10 years, 15 percent – in partnership with private efforts – has produced some incredible results.”
A year ago, Teton County put out the most recent Housing Heeds Assessment, a report commissioned about every five years, outlining the progress of housing in the valley.
Housing requirements through the exaction concept, or “inclusionary zoning,” at 15 percent created 257 ownership units and 167 rental units. Based on related figures in the Housing Needs Assessment, the Housing Trust and Housing Authority had collectively built 103 ownership and 25 rental units. That figure can be a bit misleading, however, because many of the units built by the agencies were on land conveyed by developers and so those numbers would have been tallied toward the developer instead of the agency.
The Housing Needs Assessment also recommended bumping up the building exaction rates upwards of 40 percent.
Commissioner Ellis has taken a decidedly more liberal stance on inclusionary zoning than Commissioner Christensen.
“I don’t think we have done enough,” Ellis said recently, adding, “We need to address these primary issues in our comprehensive plan process.”
While Ellis did not indicate he would immediately push for aggressive exaction increases, he reckons a more aggressive approach is in order.
“We need at least to have a discussion about that,” he said. “What would the impact be … and set the goal much higher than it is now and figure out a way to help phase it in over a predictable course.”
Ellis said, at this point, he would strongly consider a jump to between 40 and 60 percent – in line with recommendations made by Economic & Planning Systems, the firm that did the Housing Needs Assessment.
In a rather short amount of time, the ’94 Comprehensive Plan became outmoded, under-predicting the need for units, Ellis said, and set too low an exaction rate, leading to a housing deficit today.
But, he noted, “It’s absurd to look back that far. The plan was very progressive at the time.”
Ellis, like other officials, has said that the valley should and will look to Jackson as well has existing density nodes – areas with infrastructure and access to services already in place – for new affordable housing developments.
The Housing Trust, which has been in the business of building affordable housing for 17 years, is expected to mark a milestone later this year with the christening of affordable unit number 100.
Executive director Anne Hayden Creswell said that the trust is aiming to build 60 new homes by 2012.
“Our war chest is the focus of 2008,” Creswell said, alluding to an ambitious effort to raise funds from largely private donors. The lands for the 60 homes have been amassed over the last two years.
What the Housing Trust has going for it in particular is a general absence of the red tape the Housing Authority must navigate through, allowing the trust to move more quickly. But the Housing Authority has bonding power and receives state and federal monies. Amongst the two bodies and the work of the local Habitat for Humanity, which has built 12 homes since 2000, as well as other private programs, there exists a multi-pronged effort to expand the supply of affordable housing.
But there has also been some criticism of the Housing Authority. Last year, the agency came under some fire over a land acquisition, with some critics saying the Housing Authority appeared to be dealing in land speculation.
To that, Housing Authority Executive Director Christine Walker said “our goal with purchasing land is to use it for future affordable housing development and it’s a common program. Land is probably the most difficult piece of providing affordable housing.”
Whether developments will be built on all of those properties “remains to be seen,” Walker said. “That’s where the elected officials and community as a whole decide.”
Creswell commented, “I think that hearing those kinds of remarks is not a big surprise. The tradition and nature of Wyoming is [that] less government is better.”
She continued, “It’s a really important misconception. I am a strong believer that we need these two organizations together; we both bring different strengths to the table.”
Recently, Creswell announced a partnership with Teton Meadows Ranch, whereby the Housing Trust would oversee a number of sub-market “GAP” units, ranging in price from $440,000 to $740,000, allotted on the 500-home proposal for part of the Seherr-Thoss property bordering Melody Ranch and Rafter J subdivisions.
Teton Meadows Ranch is set to begin what will be a hotly-watched (and commented upon) process of public county hearings county on Feb. 11, when it will first go before the planning commission.
For St. John’s Medical Center, a sizable chunk of affordable housing has been erected under the banner of a pressing need that, along with some voter-approved Special Excise Tax Dollars, prompted desirable results.
Beginning in the late ’90s, the hospital took matters into its own hands when it bought a three-bedroom townhouse. Today, St. John’s has at its disposal use of 127 bedrooms, divided among employees and with some patient use.
“At this time of year it’s 95 percent occupied,” said Virgil Boss, an administrator at St. John’s. Boss explained that the hospital offers sundry housing types – from 90-day and annual lease units for traveling nurses, to purchasable homes that fall in the gap between the most expensive, deed-controlled units and the least expensive free-market homes of a type. Boss said he identified that gap to be from $400,000 and $900,000.
Like the Housing Trust, the hospital has aimed for 2012 to reach a lofty housing goal: acquire or build 40 gap homes.
St. John’s currently houses about 17 percent of its staff. About another quarter live outside Teton County.
Boss said hospital officials sat down with Teton Meadows Ranch development team to help develop deed restrictions for the proposed development’s gap housing.
“We believe that they are making a good case for how that project would go together,” he said. “We hope they’re successful because they’re really focused on those people that want to work and live in the valley. And, you can’t take [medical] calls if you don’t live here.”
Measuring Jackson Hole's affordable housing illustration by Nate Bennett. PERMALINK:
A stake in the valley | Planet JH News Article: Cover Stories
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