Affordable housing: Is there a solution?

Affordable housing has become nonexistent in Bigfork because the community’s well-off residents don’t want it here, a local advocate charges.

“To me it appears there’s a strong opposition to creating any affordable housing in Bigfork,” Tony Sagami, a Bigfork resident, businessman and affordable housing supporter, said. “The problem is that the people that come to the area want to make sure affordable housing doesn’t exist. It’s the ‘Aspenization’ of Bigfork — the wealthy retirees moving here want to keep it wealthy.”

Many wealthy people associate the term “affordable housing” with welfare, tenements, drugs, crime and “undesirables,” Sagami said, but he made it clear he’s not talking about welfare housing. He has middle- and working-class people in mind: “teachers, firemen, grocery store clerks, waitresses, maids — just the regular, everyday folks,” he said.

“And that gap between income and house prices is Grand Canyon-sized in Bigfork,” he continued. “I think the real issue is that there’s no such thing as five-acre affordable ranchettes. I mean, even one house per acre isn’t really affordable.”

That brings up a controversial subject: density. In Bigfork, three houses per acre would constitute high density, Sagami said. By contrast, the typical home lot within Kalispell’s city limits covers 0.16 acres, according to listings on Realtor.com. That’s about 6.25 houses per acre.

“You have to have high density to make [housing] affordable,” meaning between three and five houses per acre, Sagami said. The other requirement for affordability is that a home must have access to municipal water and sewer services, because drilling a well and putting in a septic tank and drainfield can cost tens of thousands of dollars, he said. In addition, Flathead and Lake counties generally allow only two septic systems per acre of land, and most moderate-income families or individuals can’t afford a half-acre lot.

“You have to have municipal services,” Sagami said. “There is no water and sewer [service] out in Creston or Ferndale. The water and sewer is in the city of Bigfork sewer district. But every time someone proposes a high-density, affordable housing development, the Aspen Club comes out in droves and does everything they can to defeat it.”

The Bigfork Steering Committee (BSC) and Bigfork Land Use Advisory Committee (BLUAC) are responsible for most of the nay-saying to affordable housing, Sagami charged. An early draft of the Bigfork neighborhood plan recommended against R-4 (four houses per acre) zoning, he said. Disallowing R-4 density would “kill affordable housing,” he said.

Bigfork Steering Committee member Edd Blackler, who also chairs the Bigfork Vision (formerly Long-Range Planning) Committee, disagreed with Sagami’s assessment of BSC and BLUAC, adding that the two organizations are open to higher-density development proposals.

“That kind of density [R-4] has a place in the neighborhood plan; it just has to be in the right place,” Blackler said.

A developer who proposed to build affordable homes on small lots should, for example, take care to address community concerns, buffer the housing from public view if necessary, install appropriate landscaping and design the project to fit into Bigfork’s overall look and character, he said. If the developer addressed all concerns, “I wouldn’t see any reason why it wouldn’t receive recommendation of approval,” he said. “There are places where that can be acceptable and work into the overall game plan. At least I would think so.”

The most recent edition of the Bigfork Neighborhood Plan, which the Flathead County Planning and Zoning Office is now reviewing, doesn’t specifically discourage higher-density building. In fact, its six-page chapter on housing starts with “Overall, the BPA [Bigfork Planning Area] needs mixed housing types to meet different price and cost demands as well as the needs of different age groups…. A major affordability issue is the difficulty that first-time homebuyers have in purchasing homes due to the relatively high costs combined with lower income scales.”

The chapter summary adds, “Rapid growth can result in housing shortages for special needs groups and inadequate assistance programs for low-income segments.”

The plan’s first goal for housing states: “The BLUAC and the BSC will strive to work with Flathead County and the local private and public sectors to facilitate the development of a mix of compatible housing while maintaining the character of Bigfork to meet the needs of residents at all income levels.”

Policies recommended to meet this goal include:

? Promote special-needs and affordable rental and owner-occupied housing in and around Bigfork.

? Encourage water and sewer districts in and near Bigfork to expand their services to help fill the need for affordable housing.

? Provide incentives for developing affordable and special-needs housing.

? Provide clear standards affordable housing should meet.

? Consult with affordable housing programs, other service providers and private industry to identify needs, opportunities and solutions.

? Encourage and support a combination of public and private programs to support affordable housing.

Whether anyone actually initiates these activities, and to what extent, remains to be seen.

The second of the two housing-related goals in the neighborhood plan - “Encourage housing that maintains traditional development patterns and protects property values and natural resources” - could be interpreted by some residents as conflicting with the goal of promoting affordable housing, given the recent “tradition” of building on multi-acre lots. The Bigfork survey, on which the neighborhood plan is based, showed high public support for large-parcel (five acres or more) single-family housing development, and the lowest level of support for parcels smaller than one acre.

Sagami served as a volunteer on the Affordable Housing Task Force that provided recommendations for the Flathead County Growth Policy in 2006, and the task force’s number -one recommendation “was to encourage R-4 zoning,” he said. “The county wrote that into the growth plan. It’s still to be determined how that fits into the neighborhood plans.”

He noted he was the only member of the task force who didn’t work professionally in the field of affordable housing, although the group was open to anyone interested. He added that no one from BSC or BLUAC attended any of the task force meetings, which he interpreted as a lack of interest and concern.

“I think that kind of shows how they feel about the subject of affordable housing in Bigfork,” he said.

The quality of Bigfork’s people is what residents appreciate most about living here, Sagami said.

“A lot of people come here because of the lake or the mountains or the rivers or Glacier National Park,” he said. “But I think the reason people stay is not because of those — it’s because of your neighbors and the people that make this place such a wonderful place to live.

“If you need help, at least in the old days they always gave it to you. There’s a strength, a self-reliance, dependability. Those are the kind of people that created Bigfork.

“But they’re being pushed out — because they can’t afford to live here.”