Housing booms, despite oil slump

WASILLA — Wasilla appears poised to lead the way to fill demand for multi-unit housing during the 2015 construction season.

The city has 90 multi-family units approved for construction, though officials say they are uncertain whether that number will actually be finished by the end of the year. The number is unusually high, and is a sign developers see a need for housing in the middle of the price belt, said Mayor Bert Cottle.

“I think they know the demand’s there,” he said. “A lot of people are looking for first-time houses, first time apartments, things like that.”

The majority of housing starts inside Wasilla were targeted at attracting median-income apartment and condominium dwellers into the city, with rental prices ranging between $1,200 and $1,600, Cottle added.

Affordable multi-family housing was listed in a housing needs assessment produced by the borough in late 2014. In general terms, the study showed shifting economic and social demographics were driving up demand for affordable multi-family units, like apartments, while the majority of new construction in the borough was focused on single-family residential construction. Housing stock in the borough was 85 percent single-family residential and only 7.4 percent multifamily. Of the housing units the Mat-Su Borough, 511 of 45,553 specifically targeted low-income families.

It’s also been the talk of local community groups, including the Knik Tribal Council, which took up the issue at a recent stakeholders meeting, including the connection between housing and homelessness, said executive director Richard Porter. The group plans to construct 38 units next to 10 existing units near the existing duplexes constructed in partnership with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Premier Builders of Wasilla, Porter said.

“It’s going to be one of the prettiest multi-family units in the Valley, or at least one of the well-planned,” he said.

“Our main focus is on affordable housing,” Porter said. “We don’t have an interest in building projects, the overall interest that the tribe has is getting people into home ownership.”

Another very visible project is the Bluff of Summer development along a Church Road, which will be single-family homes, said Dennis Byler, who’s developing the property.

“It just lends itself to high-end single-family,” he said.

Byler said he has noticed an increase in demand for multi-family residences.

“We are building quite a lot of multifamily residences right now,” he said. “There is huge demand for it, I will say.”

The number of housing starts might catch careful economic observers by surprise, particularly because of the slumping price of oil. Housing is a significant indicator for the Mat-Su economy, according to Neal Fried an economist with the Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

About 8 percent of the total number of jobs in the borough relate to work on the North Slope, particularly hard hit by the price of oil in recent weeks, and may represent a disproportionate amount of local income, Fried said.

Palmer presently has no multi-family housing units slated to come online, according to city planner Sandra Garley. And no multi-family residential construction was planned for Houston either, according to planning commission chair Christian Hartley.

Borough-wide, the picture gets hazier. The borough doesn’t maintain a process for permitting new residential construction, said planning officer Eileen Probasco.

“Quite frankly, since people don’t need to come in and build new land-use permits anymore, we don’t have any idea who’s building what where,” she said.