ISSUE #25: A Local Solution to Workforce Housing: ARCH

Local. Non-Profit. Workforce.

Local Non-Profit Solutions that Work: WRCHT and ARCH

In Issue #20, I wrote about the Wood River Community Housing Trust's novel approach to delivering true workforce housing for the WRV. While I hope they don’t fall prey to the KURA’s plan to destroy local retail in the commercial core, I do hope they persist in bringing their projects to appropriate sites.

This week, we look at Advocates for Real Community Housing (ARCH). ARCH is a local non-profit that has built dozens of units of community housing in the WRV and plans to build dozens more.

ARCH: Advocates for Real Community Housing

Unlike The Troika’s approach, ARCH focuses on housing for our community’s lifeblood and has partnered with BCSD and St Luke’s to build housing for teachers and health workers.

In partnership with Blaine County School District, ARCH has 8 rental units under construction, with 5 units ready any day. ARCH is exploring ownership models like ground leases to enable teachers to purchase homes. The school district has been a great partner, making land parcels available and providing teachers with housing stipends.

In partnership with the City of Sun Valley, ARCH renovating the Ellsworth Inn property into 19 affordable housing units. The infrastructure work is underway and the construction bids have been awarded.

ARCH partners with cities like Hailey and Bellevue on affordable housing projects. The BCSD units are in Sunbeam. Hailey has been ARCH’s biggest municipal partner, providing land and support. Hailey is the location of ARCH’s biggest project to day, Blaine Manor. Bellevue allows ARCH to build two homes on single-family lots.

ARCH is working on three ownership homes in the County with funding from the State of Idaho; they should be coming next spring. ARCH is in continuing conversations with area developers like those at Gannet Ranch on potential partnerships.

Notice some themes here? ARCH works in partnership with almost everyone. They move fast to get housing built in a much shorter period of time than the City of Ketchum. ARCH is not ideological.

The ARCH approach stands in stark contrast to that of the City of Ketchum/BCHA, who only work on affordable housing that has income caps to ensure it is for only part-time workers or the lowest wage occupations and only build massive single-use apartment complexes on absurdly valuable land in to displace economic activity.

ARCH's annual fundraising gala is on July 24th. I am sure they would welcome your attendance and support.

City of Ketchum Housing Approach: Lies and Expensive Failures

Guess where ARCH doesn’t work. Ketchum. Ketchum is the only political entity in Blaine County that doesn’t work with ARCH. I think it is because ARCH focuses on housing for essential workers, who are not the kind of people the Mayor of Ketchum (or his Housing Director) is interested in housing.

In Issue #22, I called out the Mayor as a liar for claiming that he was building Bluebird for what he called the “lifeblood” of the community: teachers, health workers, and first responders. I failed to provide a link to where he put that in writing. Here it is. Some of these lies are amplified by the for-profit Bluebird developer in this Mountain Express puff piece.

In over six years in office, the Mayor and his colleagues Ms. Breen and Ms. Hamilton (aka: “The Troika”) have been an epic fail for housing locals and essential workers. \

We need to stop The Troika. They are wasting Ketchum’s scarce financial, land, and community character resources to provide corporate welfare for those seeking to exploit Ketchum.

The Troika’s approach to housing will replace locals with transient, underpaid workers for external owners of exploitative businesses. They are using Ketchum taxpayers to fund a growing bureaucracy that has spent almost as much on salaries as it has for housing people. Ketchum’s Housing Dept has bloated to nearly the same size as ARCH and WRCHT combined. We should take comfort that the bureaucracy is taking longer to build fewer units given they target the wrong answer to our local workforce challenges.

And then, there is the parking crisis The Troika has created and their failure to implement our Comprehensive Plan (if you can find it on the City website, I will send you a free bumper sticker “Keep Aspen a Tree in Ketchum”).

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