Nick Smith | Williston Herald The new Candlelight Suites, located next to Sloulin Field International Airport, is one of the major projects nearing completion in Williston meant to address a looming housing crisis.
These were the issues Mayor Ward Koeser said the City of Williston, as well as a large portion of western North Dakota, confront as they work to straighten the issue out. Koeser said it's a problem that is continuing to become absolutely critical to act upon to fix.
"I am increasingly concerned with what I see as an extremely serious housing shortage in Williston," said Koeser.
Koeser said it has been well documented that with Williston being a central location in the Bakken oil play, a large amount of the workers that are drawn to the area either stay in town or move in. He said this has lead to increasing shortages of apartments, homes, affordable housing and even available motel rooms recently. Koeser said if talk from a large number of oil companies active in the region is accurate, things could potentially get much more difficult in the coming year.
"Currently there are about 60 rigs operating. Numerous oil companies are talking about increasing activity in the coming months and having large increases in hires coming to this area," said Koeser. How many workers could be coming to the region? Koeser said city officials have recently spoken with Harold Hamm of Continental Resources and their current total of five rigs may be increasing to as many as 18 next year. All told, he said this could lead to roughly 1,000 new workers descending on the area the company's hires and various oil-field related jobs.
Koeser said based on the talk coming from all the oil companies in the region, there is a real possibility of a jump from 60 rigs to 100 in the next year. He said there is the potential for at least 3,000 jobs coming to the area in need of motel rooms and housing. Out of this, he estimated between 1,000 and 1,500 of those would likely be directly impacting Williston by relocation or by staying in motels.
"Whether we see this become an issue at the first of the year or in June, I don't know, said Koeser.
Koeser said the struggle to deal with the issue has been compounded with the extremely tight credit market. He said even with the high demand for housing banks have become very reluctant to provide credit to developers, souring numerous potential local developments that may have had an impact.
Koeser explained that the larger banks have been far less willing to take risks. Nor have the smaller, more local banks who he said wound up getting burned in the aftermath of the bust that occurred in the 1980s.
He said it's ironic that while North Dakota has weathered the national economic meltdown virtually unscathed and have a large number of good jobs to fill, they can't attain the proper housing that is critical to maintain that situation.
"If the credit market loosened up a bit, it'd really help," said Koeser.
The city has been working tirelessly to try to provide and enact solutions to the problem, he said. There are some strides being made, such as 50 low and middle-income units at the new Water's Edge complex, set to open in three or four months. Additional relief in the coming months includes a new extended-stay motel under construction as well as the first 36-plex building set to begin work after a loan was approved by the City Commission at a recent special meeting.
Koeser said these projects are currently in progress and will certainly help the growing crisis, but they won't come close to fully meeting demand.
Another plan that has been underway recently is to open up a small portion of the Cimarron Heights trailer court. At the Oct. 27 City Commission meeting, the topic of getting at least the first 20 lots in the trailer court set up with new water, sewer and utilities was proposed. The city would get someone to run the units temporarily over the winter. Since then, 20 water and sewer lines were installed and if the weather holds out longer, another 20 may be done. Mon-Dak Utilities is set to install utility lines beginning Monday, and if the weather holds, they might do a few more units at a time, possibly up to 40 total.
"The city doesn't want to be in the business of selling housing, nor should it. But with what's been going on and with the problem we face, we realized that if we want anything to be done this winter we were going to have to do it ourselves," said Koeser.
Koeser said although they've made some incremental progress in addressing it, housing is an issue that still requires a lot more work and he thinks about how they're dealing with it a lot.
"Housing is one of those things that can wake me up at night and not be able to get back to sleep. I start wondering if what we're doing is working, what more could we be doing and how can we do it?," said Koeser.
He said operating the lots is only a temporary thing for the winter. He said by this spring, the housing issue is set to become a very serious and thorough topic of discussion at commission meetings.
Which brings up the issue of the housing itself being affordable. Koeser said he is keenly aware of that part of the equation as well.
"It's one thing to have all this $1,000 a month housing for the oil workers, but what about the service workers at retail shops and restaurants that service all this new industry coming to town?," said Koeser.
He said people won't be able to afford rent and the city would likely see workers quit and get oil jobs, leaving stores shorthanded and closed one or more days a week as has happened in the past.
Koeser said the issue boils down to supply and demand. He said they need to build more housing in the most responsible way they can to meet the demand so prices for older housing go back down to more affordable levels again.
"There's some who may feel we should hunker down and wait it out, but then you'll never meet that demand to solve the problem," said Koeser.
Despite the housing and all the problems that come from it, Koeser sees this as a major opportunity for the City of Williston. He said population growth and an expanding city could result in more retail, restaurants, facilities and an overall better quality of life for Williston residents.
"We have a real opportunity to be able to accomplish things that we haven't been able to do in the past," said Koeser.
Until then, Koeser said to expect a lot of work to be done to try to address the growing crisis.
Comments
Resident wrote on Nov 24, 2009 5:42 AM:
Michael wrote on Nov 23, 2009 8:13 PM:
james wrote on Nov 23, 2009 2:40 PM:
TimeRanger wrote on Nov 21, 2009 3:29 PM:
Sorry, but unless the city denied the necessary building permits, they shoulder no blame in this one. You have to realize that it takes a MAJOR investment to build a housing complex. Before the first lease is signed, a developer's money flows like water over Niagara Falls. Permits, design, site preparation, installation of infrastructure/utilities, etc etc all come before the first nail is driven in actual construction. All of this costs MONEY. AND, each contractor has to make a profit, just to stay in business.
Financial institutions are very relucutant right now to invest in real estate - After all it was real estate that got the country into the mess that it is in now.
Even after construction is complete and people are occupying the dwellings, there are still HUGE costs involved - mortgage payments, Insurance, and the never ending maintenance. All of this has to be paid before a single dime of profit is realized, and if a developer cannot make a profit, there is no incentive to develop. "
Sister wrote on Nov 21, 2009 1:55 PM:
Jennifer wrote on Nov 21, 2009 12:35 AM:
Resident wrote on Nov 20, 2009 5:04 PM:
Jammin wrote on Nov 20, 2009 11:20 AM:
The Bakken apartments are your run of the mill typical apartments that in a normal city would rent for a one bedroom $550-$600/month yet Marcil is charging $850/month and upwards of $1,200/month for a three bedroom. Some of the apartments in town had actually lowered their rent over the last 10 months and they are now just raising them again. Supply and demand sucks at times but the city has no one to blame but themselves for the lack of housing. "
TimeRanger wrote on Nov 20, 2009 2:19 AM:
Theresa wrote on Nov 19, 2009 11:02 PM:
Michael Smith wrote on Nov 19, 2009 10:08 PM:
sue wrote on Nov 16, 2009 3:46 PM:
Resident wrote on Nov 16, 2009 6:09 AM:
Grizbr wrote on Nov 15, 2009 7:20 PM: