All across Alaska It’s difficult finding affordable homes. Rates of construction and vacancy are declining, whereas rent and mortgage rates as well as prices for homes are increasing.
A lack of affordable housing forces residents to overcrowded housing as well as homelessness, and out of the state. A few officials are now calling it an house crisis.
Erik Peterson, 32, was born and was raised in Anchorage. He was a student for four years in Japan over four years before he returned to Anchorage in April. He moved back into the home he grew up in with his parents.
“I don’t have to worry about paying rental, and that’s astonishing,” he said. “Because rent is out in the air.”
He told me he’s got an income that is decent and could afford a decent home for him as well as their French bulldog. However, he doesn’t believe that he’ll remain in Anchorage for long. He mentioned that in Japan that he had was able to rent a wonderful apartment for $400 per month.
“And then I come back to Anchorage, Alaska, and they’re like, ‘We want $1,400 a month’ for like, some, you know, 1980s-never-remodeled special,” Peterson said. “And I’m thinking, I’m I’m not going to pay this. I don’t believe anyone should be required to pay. It’s my opinion that the cost of renting any kind of dwelling in Anchorage and the cost of purchasing everything, are completely beyond control.”
According to the state’s economists according to state economists, the average home in Anchorage cost around $469,000 in the year that was last. This is up by 20 percent in just a few years.
The cost of renting has also been rising in recent times across the state, but in Anchorage, in particular. Based on state economics the median rent for two-bedroom homes in Alaska was up 7percent in the past year which is the highest increase since 2011.
Alaska Housing Finance Corp. CEO Bryan Butcher said the cost of land, labour and materials, as well as transportation have increased in all communities.
“We’ve come to a point that, even when we build housing market houses, the developers are unable to afford to build them and then market it for the price they constructed it for,” he said. “That’s driving housing prices up.”
Additionally that, costs of borrowing money to buy a home has shot up into the highest rate in a long time. AHFC is a unique agency that has access to the capital markets that traditional lenders cannot. This way, it is able to provide a large number of Alaska homeowners mortgages at higher than market rates.
“As an instance, a year or two ago there was a 21% share of houses people bought within Alaska had AHFC loan loans” Butcher said. “This year, it’s 34%. We’re seeing greater activity.”
In Soldotna, a non-profit organization RurAL Cap is overseeing work to construct nine houses. Construction workers who cut lumber and nailing the two-by-fours to each other are also owners of the homes.
Nine families from the area are collaborating to build nine houses through the non-profit’s Mutual Self-Help Housing program. This program helps lower-income families who have low-interest or subsidized mortgages offered by the federal government.
Every family is required to working 36 hours a week to maintain the homes. Volunteers can also contribute. Their sweat equity helps pay for down payment.
Rhonda Johnson was first introduced to the program in 2009 when she learned about the program. She was employed for Wal-Mart when she was in 2009 and was living in an apartment with her and her four children.
“There’s no way I could have purchased a house,” she said. “Who would have the money to finance the house? I don’t. It’s all sweat equity, the building of your own home, and building with the people you love.”
It took seven years to get Johnson was able to get her degree, got to the waiting list and completed her house.
“And after that, I made friends and built after my own,” she said. “And I helped to build, build, and build and I like to be a volunteer.”
In a short time she completed thousands of volunteer hours at forty-five homes. She won a national volunteer award in 2021. In the present, she is employed by RurAL Cap on the program.
She claimed it’s a fulfilling job.
“Just for them to get in, and claim it’s their home,” she said. “‘I constructed it myself.'”
Programs run by RurAL Cap have assisted hundreds of people since its inception back in 1971.
However, there’s a brand new building technology that is coming which could dramatically reduce the price of a market-rate home 3D concrete printing.
The year to come, Nome will be the testing ground for a robot system that can build the foundation walls, roof and walls of a house. The city as well as its partners are receiving an federal grant to build houses for demonstration to determine the viability and economics.
Absent disruptive tech advances, Alaskans like Erik Peterson are urging the relaxation of rules of what is allowed and not constructed as a quicker way to build affordable housing.
“So most of Anchorage’s challenges could be resolved with more affordable houses,” Peterson told the Anchorage Assembly in July.
