WILLISTON, N.D. (AP) - Affordable housing in Williston is a misnomer of sorts.
Inflation of rent, caused by the sudden rise in oil activity in the late 2000s, made affordable something more in the eye of the beholder than in the eye of governmental standards.
The term itself, affordable housing, what’s it mean? In the Bakken the standards are blurred beyond recognition. Low-income housing is even more of tall tale anymore when going by standards set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), according to the Williston Herald (https://bit.ly/1kY7Ze1).
According to HUD, affordable housing should be no more than 30 percent of one’s gross income being spent on gross housing costs. When that gross income is low enough, we get into the low-income housing range, which was increased slightly into the $14,000-a-year range.
But according to numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, Williams County had an average median household income in 2012 of $79,265 with other estimates putting the median at $72,100.
According HUD’s Fiscal Year 2014 Fair Market Rent Documentation System, Williams County faces a harsh reality based on the department’s formula, which is based on census data, American surveys and random digit dialing.
FMRs determined by HUD are simply gross rent estimates that include shelter rent, plus the cost of paid utilities except phones, television services and Internet services.
FMR values determined by HUD in 2014 are as follows: efficiency ($792), one bedroom ($864), two bedroom ($1,053), three bedroom ($1,311) and four bedroom ($1,407).
According to HUD, a one-person low-income status ranged from $13,550 to $36,150 and a two-person status ranging from $15,500 to $41,300 in 2013.
FMR levels were revisited in May 2103 by the department and at the urging of North Dakota’s Congressional delegation and were altered to better reflect the changing times, which some on the ground in the Bakken still find as coming up short.
“Federal programs are not accessible because of economic dynamics,” said Jeff Zarling, president of DAWA Solutions, who publishes Bakken Construction News and is one of the leading local researchers on housing in the Bakken, at an Affordable Housing Committee meeting on Jan. 15.
So what is affordable housing in Williston?
That’s exactly what Barb Vondell is hoping to find out.
The coordinator of the People of Williston have had Enough movement is quickly becoming an agent of change in the booming community.
In November, Vondell organized a peaceful protest in Harmon Park against high rent costs and took her case to the Williston City Commission later that month, leading to Mayor Ward Koeser establishing the Affordable Housing Committee with Vondell as a citizen representative.
Her petition from the protest and online garnered more than 800 signatures and her People of Williston have had Enough Facebook page is pushing 1,000 followers.
What started as a movement to help a group of elderly people in Schatz Mobile Home Park, now Elm Estates, from lot rents that more than doubled in one month had turned into so much more.
“We started to focus on Schatz but the more we got into it, we saw everyone was getting stuck with high rent cost,” Vondell said in an interview Friday. “It’s been a whirlwind three months.”
Now Vondell is on the search for what Williston thinks is affordable housing and is doing so through a survey being circulated around local businesses and online.
The 10-question survey seeks some basic demographic and living situation information with the final question asking for their own definition of what they would consider “affordable” as a rent or mortgage payment.
“We want to find out because affordable is different to everyone,” she added. “…there’s no exact number because everyone’s wages are different.”
When pegged for her own definition, Vondell opted to follow the line of HUD, seeing 30 percent of one’s income as a reasonable point to go from in the affordable housing conundrum.
“It would have to be 30 percent, that way people making money can afford it,” she said, referencing people making good money but still overpaying to what FMR standards set.
In 2011, the state established the Housing Incentive Fund and renewed the program through the current biennium. Gov. Jack Dalrymple proposed $50 million for the fund, but the Legislature slashed it to $20 million in dollar-for-dollar tax incentives with an additional $15 million in immediate relief.
The fund was fully-capitalized on in early January_a year ahead of the deadline_and helped 35 conditionally funded projects move forward on 934 units, with more than 200 set aside for essential law enforcement, education and medical employees and another one-third for special needs households as permitted by the Legislature.
Projects in Williston supported by HIF were the Legacy at Central Place senior housing at the Old Junior High, two phases of Williston State College’s Foundation housing, Williston Heights and the Renaissance on Main project located downtown, providing a total of 313 units (66 for essential workers), according to the North Dakota Housing Finance Agency.
In 1993, the state legislature voted on and passed Senate Bill 2281, prohibiting political subdivisions from enacting rent control on leased private residential or commercial properties.
The bill wasn’t a constitutional amendment, meaning voters and citizens were left to trust their lawmakers and the business-friendly atmosphere of the state.
If only the forefathers of North Dakota knew the headache they would later cause state and local government officials. With rent control illegal and unavoidable inflation driving it up, officials are constantly batting down the notion the state should allow caps.
So now it’s a waiting game as apartment and single-family units go up on Williston’s real-life Monopoly board.
In 2013, according to city building department, 1,501 apartment units were approved under building permits, compared to fewer than 200 in 2008. Williams County approved 53 building permits in November another 21 in December, which included a 300-unit complex and a project for 703 single-family unit residential on 150 acres, which would include townhouses, duplexes and single-family homes.
“It’s not a situation where something is wrong with the economy so people can’t build,” Dalrymple said prior to the 2013 session. “The trick is to get people to build housing faster, and it is happening, but there’s an opportunity to build housing and they want to do that, and we’re trying to increase the supply and the ease in which they get that done.”
Even as spikes in permits are seen and the Bakken supply catches up, prices are still slow to decline.
A possible reason behind high prices is complexes are often tied to a parent company hoping to capitalize on the Bakken’s riches by inflating prices. Vacant units won’t be lowered to simply fill them. Instead, the company takes the risk of it remaining empty in hopes it will be filled at the current price as to meet the promised bottom line figures to business owners.
“They’re just venture capitalists,” said Kent Jarcik, director of Williston Planning and Zoning at the AHC meeting on Jan. 15.
Building costs are also high and slowing the market due to a lack of lending and highs costs of capital, materials, labor and infrastructure, along with North Dakota having a very short construction season.
All that puts people like Jo Lynn Rambo in living situations that are less than ideal when it comes to needing roommates to afford rent.
Rambo currently lives in Elm Estates where her rent jumped from $350 a month to $750 a month in November. The market outside her trailer isn’t what she can afford and she now lives with her ex-boyfriend, adding it’s the only place she can stay right now.
From Wisconsin, Rambo looked into low-income projects such as Nakota Ridge and other places but said the waiting lists were very long to get an apartment.
Still, despite the conditions and the possibility of her rent going up again in 2014, she’s mindful of what the renter’s market is for other Williston residents.
“We own our crappy little place,” Rambo said, pointing to the trailer where a few of her cats wander the grounds. “But a lot of people don’t even have that.”
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Information from: Williston Herald, https://www.willistonherald.com
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