V2N33: A Way Forward For Housing

After two resounding defeats, you would think the Mayor would figure this out

The low-income housing project slated for the Y parking lot was defeated at the City Council on June 24th. This was a good outcome. The project would have put dozens of parking spaces onto Saddle Rd, precluded a longer-term option for housing on a City-owned lot on Lewis St, and provided almost no housing for essential workers (more on that below). Good riddance.

This was the second defeat for Mayor Bradshaw’s program to turn every city-owned lot into a low-income housing development. This is not me putting words in his mouth. In a council meeting, he said he wanted the Y project to go forward because he wanted to condition Ketchum residents to do at least one of these projects EVERY YEAR. At another meeting, he said he plans for every city-owned lot to be developed into housing.

Like the Washington Lot. The mayor sold the lot to the Ketchum Urban Renewal Agency (KURA) to be developed into another massive housing project. He stacked the KURA board with people he selected to get the housing project built, and moved the person who honchoed Bluebird for him into the Executive Director role at KURA. The business community eventually revolted, and the project was killed.

Two defeats, yet still they won’t give up. While I disagree with what they do and the underhanded way they do it, I admire their tenacity.

The mayor and the executive director of the Blaine County Housing Authority (BCHA) still plan to turn the Lift Tower Lodge into a massive low-income housing project, three times as big as Bluebird. That one needs to be killed, too, as it is the wrong site and the wrong project.

As I will lay out below, we don’t need their massive public housing program—indeed, it will make almost everything about living in Ketchum worse. The parking versus people narrative promoted by the mayor and some of the city council members is a false one and a divisive one. We can have both.

With the upcoming election, we have the opportunity to embrace a new approach to housing in Ketchum.

Why Are They Doing This?

The City’s housing program is part of a larger plan to close the gap between Ketchum and other ski resort communities like Aspen, Vail, and Jackson Hole. I call it “Aspenization.” You benchmark everything against those cities. You replace low-revenue locals with high-revenue tourists and second homeowners, and build massive low-income housing projects to keep wages depressed for the tourism industry. Real estate prices go up. Developers make a killing. Residents lose out on their quality of life and see their tax bills soar. Success is measured in real estate price per square foot.

That’s not my vision for Ketchum, and I hope it’s not yours.

What Can We Do To Stop This?

We need three votes on the city council of people who prioritize the quality of life for the people who live in Ketchum over the interests of those who seek to exploit it. The way Idaho works, those three votes control every outcome.

In November, you will elect a new mayor and two city council members—the three votes needed to put Ketchum back on the right track.

Elections Matter!

What should the new city council do about workforce housing? Read on for my thoughts…

“Do No Harm”: Kill Upzoning

The first thing we should do is follow the basic principle of “do no harm.” Let’s not make things worse.

We need to kill the upzoning in the Future Land Use Map (FLUM) that the Mayor is trying to jam through the city council. Building more condos at the Baldy bases for the tourism and second home industry has zero benefit for Ketchum residents and makes everything worse for us. It has been justified with blatant lies that this is for workforce housing—it is not. It is part of the Apsenization program.

We have been sold a false choice between density and sprawl. We don’t have to have either (a topic for another day).

“Do No Harm”: Defund BCHA

After killing the FLUM, we need to defund BCHA. They have gone rogue and are imposing an agenda that has included recruiting homeless people from Twin Falls to move into taxpayer-subsidized low-income housing in Ketchum. Last week, the BCHA executive director pitched the Blaine County Commissioners to increase the BCHA budget, not for housing, but to fund a PR campaign. What?

Keith Perry, the BCHA chair, told the Commission that BCHA plans to ramp up public fundraising for their housing agenda, to diversify their revenue sources. This means they will compete for donations with ARCH and WRCHT? What?

The other cities in the WRV refuse to fund BCHA — they see what it is up to. It is a self-licking ice cream cone that seeks to perpetuate itself with our money. Why isn’t Ketchum smarter? Not only do we fund 100% of their staff costs, we even guarantee their budget deficits. I’m not sure that’s even legal under Idaho law. Guess how big their staffing and consultant budget is? $970K. When you add in their travel and training, it’s even higher. The Ketchum treasurer says it’s only $750k, but I am looking at the budget right now, and I think he’s wrong. What do we get for this $970K?

We need BCHA to administer housing deed restrictions. That’s it. Everything else they do can be done better, with more transparency and accountability, by the various WRV cities.

KILL BCHA.

Is Every Worker in Ketchum “Essential?”

We need some consensus on whose housing taxpayers should be subsidizing. My view is that public resources should serve the public interest and should get the biggest bang for the buck. We should limit the allocation of our scarce resources accordingly and prioritize them to mitigate the housing situation that leaves us short of essential workers.

“Essential worker” is a commonly used term for workers who provide a public service. Teachers, medical workers, and first responders are the core of that definition. I would expand it to city workers, especially the road crews.

Under this definition, baristas are not essential workers. Construction workers are not essential workers. Nannies are not essential workers. Retirees, who don’t work, are not essential workers. Sun Valley Co. workers are not essential workers. Of course, they are worthy human beings, and they are “essential” to the local economy, but they do not provide a public benefit service. They work at for-profit institutions that can adjust their pricing and wages to market conditions. If a for-profit employer can’t source enough employees because of a housing shortage, they should raise wages or build housing (or both?).

I know some people disagree with me on how we should allocate public resources and who should benefit from them.

At the meeting where Ms. Breen voted against the Y project, she said she was “offended” by the term “essential worker.” In her view, every person is essential. On a humanistic level, that is true. But I am happy to debate her position that every worker equally deserves taxpayer-subsidized housing. That is literally a path to socialism and state control of the economy. Maybe the people of Ketchum want that—if so, let’s have that debate and be transparent about it rather than foisting it on us without our consent.

I am not against for-profit employers (I am one myself). My point is that we have scarce resources and our highest and best use for them is to ensure we can house our essential workers first, and then we can debate if we are wealthy enough to house everyone else who wants to live in Ketchum.

How Many People NEED Housing?

Excellent question. We have no idea. Ketchum’s Housing Action Plan has a program to build public housing to accommodate a 50% increase in Ketchum’s permanent population based on a statistically invalid approach to demand for housing. That is, of course, absurd, because it is based on the principle that everyone who wants to live in Ketchum has a right to live in Ketchum, and if they can’t afford to live in Ketchum, residents will tax themselves to subsidize those people.

This is ridiculous.

We should shift from a demand-based model to a need-based model. How many essential workers are we short? What kind of housing do they need? This is not hard to figure out (I have proposed methods in other posts). I estimate that it is, at most, a hundred people.

As for the housing shortage's impact on the entire Ketchum economy, we should do the work to understand that. I have proposed (ad nauseam) an annual survey of every employer in Ketchum to find out how many employees they are short, what they do about that, and what the City can do to be helpful to address their needs. Guess who refuses to do that—the City of Ketchum Housing Department.

Where Should We Build Workforce Housing?

The Mayor’s plan to develop every city-owned lot into the densest possible low-income housing project is bad for Ketchum’s residents and absurdly expensive ($360 million was the estimate three years ago).

We have several sensible locations for workforce housing.

The first is…everywhere. Or at least in every new multiunit residence and multiuse building. We can give developers a floor area ratio (FAR) bonus for building workforce housing in their developments. This is what we used to do before the in-lieu-of fee that let developers buy their way out of their obligation. Let’s kill the in-lieu-of fee to get more units faster and spread them around.

For larger complexes, the obvious location is near the hospital. Across the street from it, and/or podium style above the parking lot. Depending on how many units we need, we could possibly put it all there.

Or, we could do some hardworking people a solid and upgrade their housing from trailer parking to a higher-quality building. The trailer park across from the hospital has 53 units. It could be replaced by up to 150 units in three stories.

Then there is the empty acreage around the water treatment facility and some of the land the City owns in the LI zone.

When people tell you there is nowhere else to put housing other than the Washington Lot, the Y Lot, or Lift Tower Lodge, they are being…disingenuous.

Use Ketchum Money to Solve Ketchum’s Problems First

Ketchum is special, but not unique. Housing is a national issue. However, what makes housing scarce in one city is not necessarily the reason housing is scarce in another, and the solutions appropriate to a big city might not be appropriate for a small western tourist town.

Do you know how much Ketchum taxpayer money goes to solve the housing challenges outside of Ketchum? Neither do I. But it is not unsubstantial. Ketchum taxpayers subsidize housing in Hailey, mid-Valley, and the City of Sun Valley. Ketchum taxpayers subsidize housing for people who don’t work in Ketchum. That may be the right thing to do if that’s how Ketchum residents want to spend their money.

My view: Let’s deal with Ketchum’s shortage of essential workers first. If we have leftover resources, we can then have a dialogue about paying for housing for non-Ketchum residents and workers.

Right now, we do the reverse. And the City/BCHA is not transparent about it.

We Deserve Accountability

In the real world, if you define a problem and then come up with a way to solve it, you measure the before and after situation to see if your solution worked. That is accountability. That does not exist in the alternative reality of Ketchum City Hall. Not only do they hardly ever do a cost/benefit analysis before allocating resources, but once they implement a solution, they just…move on.

Ten years ago, when he ran that other self-licking ice cream cone, the Ketchum Community Development Corp (KCDC), the Mayor led the building of Northwood Place. 36 units of taxpayer-subsidized housing on City-owned land. A for-profit project by the same developer as Bluebird. Once elected mayor, he immediately began work on Bluebird. It took seven years to get built and leased up. 51 units of taxpayer-subsidized housing on City-owned land. A for-profit project.

Did these project accomplish their goals? Based on what criteria?

We don’t know. It is impossible to get any information about them from the City, their property managers, BCHA, KCDC, or the Idaho Housing Finance Authority (IFHA). I know because I tried. Tens of millions of dollars of Ketchum taxpayer resources. Zero accountability.

Transparent, Inclusive, Accountable

I have laid out how I would approach workforce housing in Ketchum. I am not sure that I have the best solutions, although I am confident they are better than what we have been doing for the past two mayoral administrations. You may have better ideas. You may, like Ms. Breen, disagree with me.

Whatever we collectively decide to do as a community, let’s do it transparently. Let’s include the views of everyone, and let’s do it in a way that holds City Hall accountable for achieving our collective goals.

What do you think?