By Carrie Haderlie
The Sheridan Press
Via- Wyoming News Exchange

SHERIDAN — The Wyoming Community Development Authority recommends action at the local level when it comes to Wyoming’s statewide housing shortage, after lawmakers failed to prioritize a lack of workforce housing at the state level.

In the small town of Upton, officials have already used a local housing policy tool included in the WCDA’s Statewide Strategic Housing Action Plan to research how they can address housing issues in their own area. In that community of just over 800 people, an influx of workers related to a planned rare earth minerals demonstration factory may soon be looking for somewhere to live.

“The town doesn’t have money to throw at housing, but they wanted to do a housing study,” WCDA Executive Director Scott Hoversland said, so town staff did the study themselves, using the strategic plan, the local policy tool and the WCDA itself as a resource.

“They went out and looked at other areas, other reports, pulling things, and asked (the WCDA) if the report they created made sense. They did an excellent job,” Hoversland said.

According to the WCDA, current home production rates leave the state 389-2,179 units short of projected needs per year. The WCDA’s strategic plan followed a housing needs assessment completed last year, which found that 20,000-38,000 units need to be produced across the in the next 10 years, based on projected population changes.

Movement to address Wyoming’s housing shortage won’t come quickly, but the WCDA hopes to be a starting point for more Wyoming communities working to address shortages in their area, Hoversland said.

“We have a plan, and we have definite steps we know work,” Hoversland said. “We have a template that says, if we don’t have state legislation, here’s what some cities and counties have done at that level.”

In January, the WCDA released its released Statewide Strategic Housing Action Plan, which included state-level recommendations like a flexible housing development fund seeded with state dollars. 

Lawmakers, however, made little movement on any housing-related issue during the last session in Cheyenne.

In early April, the Legislative Management Council, a committee of top lawmakers who set priorities for study during the interim session, did not assign housing as a topic to any committee, choosing instead to cut back on the days scheduled for interim work.

Sen. Tara Nethercott, R-Cheyenne, who sits on the management council, noted at an April 8 meeting that her county “cares deeply about affordable housing (and) access to housing workforce housing,” but that in six years of prioritizing housing for discussion at the state level, there has been “no result.”

At that same meeting, Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, who co-chairs the Joint Corporations Committee, which has tackled housing in the past, said that while there “are some great advocates for us spending a lot of time on housing,” the bills produced last year “didn’t have success.”

“I would not have heartburn if you move to take (housing) from our purview,” Case said.

Hoversland said he was “disappointed (as) we did try to get some things through the legislature, not just funding but protest petition and regulatory reduction, tax increment financing.

“Another troublesome thing was that Management Council … decided to go back to four days,” effectively leaving little time for lawmakers to meaningfully address housing issues in the coming months. But the WCDA’s strategic plan includes 27 different recommendations, which Hoversland said can guide cities, towns and counties in developing policy around the unique issues facing a specific area.

“That tool really gives (local communities) direction as to what may have worked in other states with communities of their size and economic structure,” Hoversland said. “We know that there are things in our (plan) that municipalities, cities or counties can do, maybe first, to really get the process going.”

It’s also often the local community that feels the squeeze when it comes to affordable housing.

“As people are trying to support economic development in their own communities, they’re being affected,” Hoversland said. “When you try to bring in economic development, but new employers need housing for their workers, that’s where we are hitting the wall. We don’t have a housing supply there.”

Another resource for communities looking to address housing at the local level is the Wyoming Grant Assistance Program, Hoversland said. That office offers technical assistance to provide local governments, nonprofits and small businesses with support to identify, pursue and manage grants that support local priorities.

“That’s a great thing, and Wyoming is one of the first states to have an office like this,” Hoversland said.

In Sheridan, Robert Briggs, administrator for the Sheridan Economic and Educational Development joint powers board, said that like housing, economic development is a long game.

“It is not a quick shot in the arm that’s suddenly going to change the economic ecosystem,” Briggs said.

While SEEDA focuses primarily on bringing businesses to town, there’s often an element of housing in those discussions as well.

“SEEDA continually sees itself as a partner and a collaborator and a resource,” Briggs said. “A lot of the work we do in economic development is about resiliency and sustainability of Sheridan as an ‘authentic’ community.”

Sheridan, he said, is not a resort community, or a place where one specific demographic  thrives. That means the community needs diversity in its housing market.

“It can be challenging with housing for people of a certain income to be able to live here, but for us, it’s about trying to provide skilled jobs that pay a wage that make it more likely that a variety of people can afford to live in Sheridan,” Briggs said.