Prices through roof make housing a focus

Coeur d’Alene is taking the lead on finding answers to a problem some people characterize as a crisis in Kootenai County – the ability of middle-class workers to buy a home.

Yet it’s not a problem that the city can solve on its own. Everyone from elected officials to developers and business owners agrees that building affordable houses, and even providing enough rentals, will take participation from the entire community. And the grim reality is there is no easy solution.

“We just have to jump into it,” Coeur d’Alene Finance Director Troy Tymesen said. “It’s complicated and it’s technical.”

Yet that likely won’t happen until April when the City Council has its strategic planning session to set city priorities for the year, an exercise directly tied to what projects get money.

Mayor Sandi Bloem said there’s no question affordable housing will top the list.

One of the city’s first moves likely will be to establish a housing committee consisting of all the people who can help ensure a more balanced housing market.

“It’s really going to take a strong partnership,” Bloem said. “I don’t know what all the answers are but I have an open mind.”

Coeur d’Alene also must decide if it wants to get federal Housing and Urban Development entitlement money instead of competing for annual block grants. The HUD funding, Tymesen said, would mean a steady flow of federal money to spend on specific housing needs and on executing many of the recommendations in a recent housing study.

But the federal program requires extensive paperwork and a complicated five-year plan. Tymesen said the city likely would have to create a new staff position to oversee the housing program.

Tony Berns, executive director of the city’s urban renewal agency, the Lake City Development Corp., is somewhat frustrated by the slow start. LCDC, the city and the Idaho Housing and Finance Association paid for the $45,000 study – the first local effort to compare housing prices with what local workers can afford to buy or rent.

“It would be nice to get a jump on it,” Berns said. But then he added, “We don’t just want to jump out and do something not well thought out. We don’t want to waste time and resources.”

The state housing association also is deferring to the city, as is the Kootenai County Commission, on how to proceed.

“How big is our role? I don’t know,” said Kootenai County Commissioner Todd Tondee. “That’s something we are wrestling with. We don’t know what our options are.”

The housing report, released in December by BBC Research and Consulting of Denver, confirmed what workers in Coeur d’Alene and Kootenai County already knew – there are not enough homes on the market for people earning less than $50,000. About half the city’s population has difficulty finding a home they can afford, meaning houses with a median value of about $130,000.

To most, the study was a much-needed first step. Now elected officials must decide what to do before housing needs are so critical that workers either have to commute long hours or move to more affordable areas. Business leaders say that could lead to worker shortages and economic troubles.

“We don’t have the luxury of waiting,” said Ron Nilson, president of Ground Force Manufacturing in Post Falls. The company produces mining and construction equipment and pays employees $13 to $18 an hour. “We are losing employees today.”

Nilson fears the middle class will be wiped out, leaving Kootenai County full of the wealthy and low-paid workers who provide services. To him, blue-collar workers are an integral part of North Idaho.

The issue is so important, Nilson said, that independent companies such as Ground Force Manufacturing want to help workers with down payments or other obstacles to buying a home. The problem is there are few local homes to buy. That leaves many of his workers renting.

Some fear that the initial momentum and buzz generated by the local housing study will fall victim to governmental lip service – all talk, no action.

“In government when you don’t have money, you have meetings,” said Rand Wichman, the former Kootenai County planning director who now does private land-use consulting.

Most of the study’s recommendations involve some sort of financial support by government, such as giving developers incentives – waiving impact fees, for instance – to include affordable housing in their projects. Another strategy is to relax density rules to allow more homes to be built per acre.

Wichman said local developers see a market for affordable housing, but like any business owner, they must make a profit. Figuring out the right way to make such projects work is part of the challenge.

He agrees with city and county leaders that there isn’t one answer: It’s going to take many different projects with a variety of funding and a lot of creativity.

Wichman represents Copper Basin Construction, which is proposing to build up to 700 homes in the price range of $130,000 to $200,000 on the Rathdrum Prairie. The proposal has ignited a fierce debate among locals about where affordable housing should go and how it should look.

The Kootenai County Commission is scheduled to decide Thursday whether to change zoning to allow five homes per acre on the property along state Highway 53. The request only addresses the reclassification of land, not subdivision plans.

To make affordable housing work, Wichman said the public needs to get over its fear of putting houses on smaller lots. Because the project is in the county where there are no sewer and water services, the company must build its own systems. That increases the cost. To keep the homes affordable, the county must allow a large number of homes on small lots, Wichman said.

Bloem said the housing study made it clear that the city should avoid “warehousing” or creating affordable housing in only one area of the city. The consultants said projects are more successful and generally more accepted by the public when they include a mix of housing prices.

In the city, that means building affordable homes, townhouses or rentals on empty lots where old houses and buildings have been torn down.

Yet Wichman said large projects are also needed to solve the looming shortage, not just a few homes sprinkled throughout the region.

Even though Tymesen must wait for the City Council to take action, he is full of ideas. One of his favorites includes local entities, such as the city and schools, dedicating land for affordable housing.

A land trust would oversee the property and partner with a developer to build the homes. The land is never sold and remains in trust, making the house affordable because the property cost is removed from the equation.

Escalating land prices in Coeur d”Alene and Kootenai County are a main reason so few homes are in the affordable range.

Tymesen said the city has many chunks of land where a land trust concept could work. Starting small and doing one project at a time is a way to ease the public into the concept of work force housing and prove it’s possible, he said.

“I would be tickled with just one home at this point,” he said. “We need a kick start. If you never start, you never hit the finish line.