Housing top priority for local businesses looking to hire

A workforce housing assessment by the city of Sandpoint, which garnered 127 responses from local employers, shows 56.8% of those responding saying the availability of workforce housing had a significant effect on their ability to hire new recruits, with another 25% saying it had “some effect.”

That survey represents roughly 10% of Sandpoint’s employers, Mayor Shelby Rognstad wrote in a recent guest column, and 3,600 employees or roughly 11% of the local workforce.

Employers who responded had an average of 38.7 employees, with 22.36 living within the Sandpoint metro area.

Of respondents, 74.4% said they had increased wages in the past year, and 65.9% said they had considered increasing wages in response to housing costs. 64.4% said current housing conditions detract from the success of their business.

Respondents also said housing availability was a problem of “very high severity” to 44.4% of respondents in regards to housing for purchase, and 64.4% in regards to rental housing.

Affordability is a problem of “very high severity” for purchased homes, according to 66.7% of respondents, with that number rising to 71.1% for rentals.

The businesses surveyed averaged 5.09 unfilled positions, with 39.5% remaining unfilled for one to three months, and 26.3% remaining unfilled for greater than one year. 88.3% said positions were “more difficult to fill” or “far more difficult to fill” than previous years.

Of respondents who had looked into ways to help improve housing availability for employees, one school said they published a list of available housing through their newsletter, and one employer said they had offered room in their home as part of the compensation for trying to find a new manager.

A construction company responded they had built homes for several of their employees, and were in the process of building more. Some respondents said they had looked into buying or renting housing for their employees but had limited success. One employer said they worked through friends and family instead of through a real estate agent to look for housing.

The city also asked respondents if their organization would consider partnering with stakeholders to pool resources for housing, which is part of the Bonner Community Housing Agency’s plan to provide employee housing. 38.6% said they would consider that option, and 54.5% said they were unsure.

Roughly a third of employers expressed openness to investing in workforce housing, with 32.6% saying they would be interested in investing in workforce housing, and 53.5% saying they were unsure.

The responses to those last two questions, specifically, are of major importance to the city, as it’s begun work with the Bonner Community Housing Agency. BCHA recently proposed a plan to build housing specifically for employees, which might include several entities partnering to purchase shared employee housing and whose rates would be determined based on employees’ income level.

The city is also initiating a Sandpoint Workforce Housing Task Force, which will act as an advisory board to the mayor to make policy recommendations.

As it stands, even employers who are not in immediate need of new hires could be in a difficult situation if the county’s housing problem doesn’t improve quickly.

“We've had trouble getting a couple of new hires situated with housing in the past couple of years,” one employer wrote. “Our current staff is sufficiently well situated, but as we're looking to add 1-2 positions in the next year, housing could be a critical issue. Not just finding housing for our employees, but our pay structure in this local market makes us uncompetitive when vying for skilled employees who factor in the high housing costs. We may end up contracting with remote workers.”

Another employer stated they had already increased wages, but could not do so more without becoming uncompetitive.

“Our line of work requires up to six months of on the job training for the employee to be useful, which means we need employees who are [here] long-term,” they wrote. “The housing situation prevents us from hiring technicians with any expectation that they'll be able to buy a house and start a family working for our business. We simply cannot offer a wage for skilled labor positions that provide a path to home ownership in the area.”

The full survey can be found at https://www.opentownhall.com/portals/287/Issue_10864/survey_responses