A healthy community needs people
Jackson housing chief stresses importance of keeping local residents around
By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer
Resort areas throughout the West are facing similar obstacles when it comes to finding affordable places to live for the people who drive the communities. Teton County Housing Authority Director Forrest Neuerburg, left, met with Blaine-Ketchum Housing Authority Director Michael David on Tuesday for a tour of The Fields at Warm Springs, Blaine County?s first project including deed-restricted housing. Photo by Willy Cook
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Western Wyoming?s Jackson Hole resort community is like the Wood River Valley in at least one respect: Working class people are having a difficult time scrubbing up the cash to live there.
And the people are the underpin-nings of the community, agreed the housing directors for both resort ar-eas.
Teton County Housing Authority Executive Director Forrest Neuerburg came to the Wood River Valley on Tuesday, Aug. 10, for a reconnais-sance trip that included visits to The Fields at Warm Springs and River Glenn, two of Blaine County?s first deed-restricted housing units.
Tuesday evening, he gave a brief presentation to about a dozen curious local residents at the Old Blaine County Courthouse in Hailey.
?The health of our community is based on community members,? Neu-erburg said.
He pointed out that, like the greater Sun Valley area, second homeowners are changing the real estate market in Jackson and sur-rounding areas.
In Teton County, the average per-son makes $24,000 a year, and the average family makes $58,775 per year. The average home price is $570,000, which means a family should make about $185,000 a year to be able to buy an average home.
In the Wood River Valley, the median family income is $70,900 per year, which would enable the average family to buy a home in the $200,000 range.
?There?s not a single house for sale in that range,? said Blaine-Ketchum Housing Authority Execu-tive Director Michael David. ?There are several condos, including some studios, between $150,000 and $200,000.?
Neuerburg stressed the importance of accommodating the people who work in the community. He pointed out that some doctors in Teton County are not able to live in Jackson, where the St. John?s Hospital is lo-cated.
Increasingly, the workers in Jack-son are living across Teton Pass in Idaho. Each year, Teton County, Wyo., exports $10 million in wages to Teton County, Idaho, Neuerburg said.
That said, the Teton County Housing Authority is a few steps ahead of the Blaine-Ketchum Hous-ing Authority. It administers 240 deed-restricted units to 18 units lo-cally, though up to 21 new units are either approved or under construction in Blaine County. The Teton housing authority boasts a $500,000 operating budget to a $190,000 operating budget locally. It has a $14.2 million pool of money, funded by a 1 percent local option tax, to buy or build af-fordable housing units. That tax gar-ners the Teton County Housing Authority $9.3 million annually.
?I kind of view us as a couple three years behind where Jackson is,? David said.
But there are things Neuerburg said he learned from the local housing program. The model used most prevalently in Blaine County is one where, through a private-public part-nership, developers are encouraged to provide housing in exchange for the opportunity to build more market-rate units on a property.
That?s something he said he would like to work on in Teton County.
He also advised not to underesti-mate developers? compassionate sides.
?A lot of builders actually have pretty good hearts. You might not think so, but if you ask them, they might give you a unit or two,? he said.
Summarizing, he said there is not right or wrong method of achieving more community housing.
?We all have room to work and improve,? he said.
