Home sweet hotel: Authority considers affordable rentals

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

By Grace Hammond

Jackson Hole, Wyo.- With $500,000 in seed money to spend, the Teton County Housing Authority is looking to create affordable rentals without laying a single brick.

The Authority plans to use the funds, which were approved Monday as part of the organization’s budget, to pay for two pilot programs that will convert some of Jackson Hole’s existing stock of long-term rentals - including hotels - into affordable workforce units.

“What we’ve heard from the community is that we need solutions to workforce housing that aren’t growth inducers,” said Christine Walker, the Authority’s executive director.

The Authority is investigating several buildings as conversion possibilities. Some structures may require renovation or change in use from lodging to multifamily. The properties have as few as 12 units and as many as 150, but the organization would prefer to launch the program with between 24 and 48 units in order to determine market viability before going forward, Walker said.

The programs could assist new and established employers in search of workforce housing.

The Key Program, the first of the two projects, would allow new and expanding small businesses to meet the county’s employee housing requirement for commercial development.

The Authority would purchase each building and rent its units directly to employers at fair-market rental value. Current fair-market rental values for the community, as determined by HUD, include a studio at $764, a one-bedroom unit at $852, a 2-bedroom unit at $1,072 and a 3-bedroom unit at $1,413.

The Housing Authority could then put the rental revenue toward purchasing additional units and expanding the program.

“The programs are unique as they would provide us with a revenue stream,” Walker said.  “We expect in the long term that they will pay the entire $500,000 subsidy back.”

The second program, Market-Based Employee Housing, would make units available for purchase to existing businesses, who could then rent the units out to their own employees at the same fair-market rental rates.

Under this program, the units might be “condo-ized” for purchase, rather than created as dormitory- or apartment-type rentals with shared living spaces like they may be under the Key Program.

If a business no longer needed the unit, they could sell to another qualified business, Walker said, noting that the program is still in its beginning phases and those requirements haven’t yet been determined. One of the bigger questions is if there should be a preference system for the units or if the free market should determine who participates.

“What we have found is that many businesspeople are good at their business, but they don’t want to be property managers,” Walker said. “We’d have a property management company. The idea is that everything is ready, they just walk in and turn the key.”



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