(This piece is the fourth in a series to address the issue of housing availability and affordability in the greater Sandpoint region.)

I just came out of the second meeting of the Workforce Housing Task Force. The first meeting was mostly about introductions, identifying the problem using data from the city’s recent Workforce Housing Assessment Survey and determining how broad the focus of the task force should be. Consensus among the group was to address access to housing across the income spectrum. There should be housing options for everyone who participates in the local workforce.

Based on the current median annual income in Bonner County, home ownership is accessible to less than 15% of the workforce (if one can find a home for sale). Rental housing is accessible to another 25%. By accessible, I mean that the cost of housing, including utilities, taxes and any other costs of residency, is no more than 30% of one’s income. Sandpoint has a serious lack of housing availability. That is, there is very little housing on the market (low supply), which drives prices higher as we continue to see consistent increase in demand. These issues are separate but related. Sandpoint has well below a 1% availability for rentals. A healthy home rental market is 5-6%, where there is enough competition amongst rentals that the prices remain competitive. This very low inventory rate for rentals results in higher rents. Same premise is true with home ownership.

Today, I introduced the task force to the Housing Needs Assessment that the city of Sandpoint developed in 2019. The Needs Assessment is filled with demographic analysis that gives us great insight into Sandpoint’s housing. It also concludes with pages of suggested solutions for improving housing access which has had positive results in other communities. Given the housing crisis that our workforce is currently experiencing, I asked the Task Force to focus first on solutions that could be implemented immediately with little cost.

Fundamentally, we have a supply and demand issue. We need more supply to help bring costs down. The longer a project is under construction and the further financing is extended, the greater the project cost and the less housing that is built over a period of time. With less housing (supply), we still have high demand which leads to continued pressure toward higher prices. Much of the Task Force discussions have focused on how we can implement policy and direct action that increases supply, more quickly, at a lower cost.

There are many tools that can be applied to help address our housing crisis immediately. Several ideas floated by the Task Force included code amendments and policy changes that could enable more infill density, expedite the development process, reduce risk and capital outlay and ultimately reduce cost and time to product completion. This means more housing (more supply) and a lower cost.

Another powerful tool that could be implemented is a deed restriction. It can be placed, by the owner, on the deed of a property. It works by requiring buyers be qualified by meeting income standards not to exceed a proportion of the area median income as well as local employment status with exemptions for seniors and disabled. For example, if a property owner/seller wants to restrict a property to anyone making 80-120% average median income (AMI), only persons earning $36-$54,000 would be eligible to buy or rent. Qualification standards for a deed restriction can vary widely and are determined ultimately by the seller. Even if property owners were to place the restriction at 200% AMI, or $90,000 annual salary, it would still go a long way toward keeping local housing available to locals and sellers would get the same profit off a median priced sale in Sandpoint. Colorado has been using this tool with great success for 20 years, keeping young families and essential workers at home in towns like Breckenridge and Vail.

The Task Force, using suggestions outlined in the 2019 Housing Study, will focus on implementing immediate actions wherever possible. Next month, we will begin to vet and take action on longer term solutions as well.

Please join me for the Mayor’s Roundtable this Friday at 4 p.m., at council chambers, 1123 Lake St., to discuss these issues and other topics important to the city of Sandpoint. You can also participate on Zoom here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84311377327?pwd=U3kwNUdMRzlXbWZuV2o4M3J6S2Fydz09