Borough hopes to study housing

PALMER — So how good of a job is the Mat-Su Borough doing housing its workers? Are there enough options for folks who aren’t making much money but are nonetheless working?

These are questions the borough is seeking $850,000 to answer.

“I want to commend the assembly for forward thinking for looking toward what exactly is the need in the Mat-Su Borough,” Dave Rose, who has been heading up the Mat-Su Coalition on Housing and Homelessness since its inception, said at the Dec. 4 Mat-Su Borough Assembly meeting.

“I’d love to have both of my sons come back with their families, and having a good place to live would put that in a very favorable light,” Rose said.

The resolution the borough passed last week cites a lack of coordination between housing projects as creating the need for a study.

“The workforce housing action plan is intended to identify the need for these types of housing projects in the borough as well as to engage the communities to determine the type, location and timeline for new housing projects,” according to the resolution.

The money would come from the state through its Community Development Block Grant Program.

“The CDBG program does not include a required match. However, in order to better the chances of receiving this funding, a 25 percent cash and/or in-kind match is recommended. We anticipate meeting this recommended match through a combination of cash and in-kind services,” according to a report borough staff prepared in preparation for last week’s vote.

Rose said he’d like to see the borough make moves toward locating housing closer to economic centers, closer to where people work.

“Working with the coalition, a lot of times what we hear is, ‘we don’t know how to get from our home to an employment area,’” Rose said. “We don’t have the public transportation that some other areas with higher density do have.”

He said such an arrangement benefits the workers — who don’t have to worry as much about getting reliable transportation — and their employers.

“We’re going to give employers that many more employees,” Rose said.

The resolution eventually passed unanimously without any assemblyman saying anything against it. Borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss hailed the resolution in his regular “Mayor’s Minute” podcast.

“This is so there can be affordable housing for all of the workers who are going to be flocking to the borough because of all of these jobs we will be creating, hopefully in the port district,” the mayor said.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.