Lori Townsend: High cost, complicated shipping and limited building materials in rural Alaska contribute to tight quarters in many homes.

Unknown: We are short of housing.

We have multiple families living in houses.

Lori Townsend: We're discussing the critical need for affordable housing in rural Alaska right now on Alaska insight.

Good evening.

Overcrowding is a perennial problem in rural Alaska.

But the COVID 19 pandemic has made living with it harder.

cramped conditions offer little space to work from home conduct virtual schooling or quarantine, and put many multi-generational households at increased risk of infection.

tackling the problem isn't easy.

But as Erin McKinstry reports for Alaska Public Media, federal COVID funds are offering some relief in the Bering Straits region.

Unknown: Outside a January storm winds through the Norton Sound village of Shaktoolik.

Inside, Sofia Katchatag unwinds after a long day of work.

The smell of moose soup and the sounds of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fill the small two bedroom home, which she shares with her husband and their four kids This is our hallway, this is our room where we share it with the two younger women.

Living in such a tight space has been especially difficult during the pandemic, when they've had to stay home during outbreaks.

Their teenage daughter wants her own room too.

But expanding isn't financially feasible even with two incomes.

Statewide, Alaskans are twice as likely to live in an overcrowded household than the national average.

rates are highest in small rural communities like Shaktoolik where around 60% of residents live in overcrowded conditions.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development defines overcrowding as more than one person to a room in the house, including the living room and kitchen.

We are short of housing, we have multiple families living in houses.

I think that adds to the social problems that occur when you have adults arguing or you know having a different opinion or fighting over the TV remote control and all that stuff.

Asicksik says part of the problem is Shaktoolik's geography.

The few vacant homes need work because of the harsh climate and substandard construction.

And because the town is only accessible by barge or bush plane, high construction costs keep people from building more or renovating.

Everything has to be ordered, you know.

One sheet of plywood cost you over $100, you know, 130 sometimes.

Financing is difficult, since most of the land is owned by the village corporation instead of homeowners and bank loans are often inaccessible.

Climate change is also eroding buildable land and slowing down economic activities like crab fishing, which used to provide more jobs in the village.

And he says there's a lack of awareness and resources to address the problem.

I don't think there's much consideration to what goes on in the Bush.

Shaktoolik is 97% Alaska Native and the region's federally funded tribal housing authority is responsible for the bulk of the town's residential construction.

They haven't built here in more than a decade.

But thanks in part to federal COVID relief funding Shaktoolik is getting four new modular houses which are pre built and then transported to their final destination.

That's welcome news for city clerk Isabelle Jackson.

Good afternoon, Shaktoolik.

After almost 10 years of waiting, she's getting a home of her own.

She'll pay a prorated rent for 25 years and then own Yeah, I remember the moment when they called me and after they it outright.

said I'm one of the recipients for a three bedroom home, I started crying.

I got quiet, tears rolled down my eyes, just for you know happiness.

Like many other residents, she thought about leaving because finding housing is so difficult here.

But the subsistence lifestyle and the tight knit community have kept her.

Home is home for me.

Right now she and her two kids share a hallway and our father who's sick sleeps on the couch.

That's been particularly difficult during the pandemic when they've worried about spreading the coronavirus We're helping each other out, you know, taking care of him right now and, but yeah, it's difficult.

Jackson's future home and three others are sitting in Nome's shipyard until the barge can access Shaktoolik in the spring.

The Bering Straits Regional Housing Authority is also bringing three new homes to Diomede, including a tiny home and for two Wales.

The extra funding from the American Rescue Plan and the CARES Act is helping the organization build more homes more quickly says CEO and President Jolene Lyon.

Still, it's only a small dent in the problem.

We don't have the funding.

That makes it very difficult and frustrating sometimes when you know that the need is greater than that.

And you you could deliver on doing more but it's just that's not the reality of it.

Lyon says the region needs an estimated 400 new homes to meet the need and alleviate overcrowding.

She says they'll tackle the problem, one home at a time.

Reporting in Nome and Shaktoolik, I'm Erin McKinstry with Jeff Chen.

Lori Townsend: What a great story.

Joining me tonight to discuss overcrowding and the lack of affordable housing in many regions of our state.

Our Coleen Dushkin, Executive Director of the Association of Alaska Housing Authorities, and Chris Kolerok.

Chris is the executive director of Cook Inlet Housing Authority.

And Chris chairs the Alaska Coalition on Housing and Homelessness.

Thanks both of you for being here tonight.

Chris, I want to start off with you.

Give us the picture for overcrowded homes across the state in in an earlier discussion.

You noted that the YK Delta has a 40% overcrowding rate.

We just saw an example of the problem in Shaktoolik and heard that community is at 60%.

overcrowded.

What, where are the biggest needs beyond those two statistics?

And how does Alaska compare to other states with a lot of rural communities?

Unknown: Thank you.

I'm the Director of Public Policy with Cook Inlet Housing Authority.

And it gives me a good opportunity to look at statistics and have conversations both in state and out of state.

Long and short of it is essentially everywhere rural is having a problem with overcrowding in the state of Alaska, with some places such as the YK Delta experiencing 40% overcrowding or severe overcrowding.

And it's a statistic that I think we sort of can think of in the ethereal.

When you look at severe overcrowding, that definition is one and a half people per room.

Well, you think of a small two bedroom home, it has two bedrooms, and has a bathroom, a living room and a kitchen.

And so you multiply those rooms by 1.5.

And you start quickly, getting into high numbers of people just mashed together.

And you get to a situation where there are so many people in rooms where, for example, people cannot sleep at night on all the surfaces in the house.

And so people have to make a choice.

There are people literally yesterday, who slept at night, on the available surfaces, while other people in the home stayed up all night.

They slept in shifts, so that the kids could sleep and then go to school today.

And when you think about that, we think about the downstream effects of that.

The people who have to stay up all night, they're not going to have a job.

Right?

You think about the kids.

They're carrying a lot of stress.

They're carrying a lot of baggage into school, they're not going to learn as well as they could.

Absolutely.

Every year they're going to carry that deficit forward until they're in a healthy position.

Lori Townsend: So one of the points in the Shaktoolik story was that bank loans for homebuilding are often inaccessible.

Why is that?

Why can't rural residents get building loans like their urban neighbors can?

Unknown: Well, the problem with the bank loan, and I as a former banker, this is this has been a stymying problem.

Banks often like to talk about a ratio called loan to value.

And they want a down payment on something.

And they want the loan to value to be whatever, 80%, 90%.

But if the cost of building the home is higher than the value of the home, then you're never going to reach a ratio that is bankable.

And so even with a family that has a steady income and can't afford a home, they're essentially going to have to pay 40%, 30% of the cost of the home up front just to make a bank ratio.

That's not feasible for anyone.

And the high construction costs have quite a few inputs that we can get into in a minute if you'd like.

Lori Townsend: Absolutely.

Thank you so much, Chris, for getting us started.

Colleen, I want to turn to you now.

Describe for us the condition of existing housing stock, the the old style, the old method of HUD housing, where it was sort of one style fits all, whether that's in the Arctic or in Arizona, and we've seen that that hasn't worked out so well.

Are many of these older homes repairable?

Or would it be cheaper to just simply replace them?

Unknown: Well, it depends on where, you know, when what stock we're talking about.

The homes that were built in the in the 70s and 80s, under the old 1937 Act, or the ones that were constructed in Arizona brought to Alaska put down and those homes are dilapidated and in need of repair.

The AHFC 2018 Housing Assessment said there were 14, over 14,000 homes were very inefficient.

And these are the housing stocks that yes, I believe they can be renovated and weatherized and be able to be sustainable.

And that's going to be key in ensuring that our overcrowding rates don't go up and that our housing stock doesn't fall off in our communities.

So it will exasperate a problem that's already very apparent in our community.

So I believe that yes, weatherization and rehabilitation of homes that are, that are old in our communities can happen.

And it's going to take significant investments on on all levels to make that happen.

Lori Townsend: So let's continue on that there are, I believe, 14 rural housing authorities, is that correct?

Unknown: So give us exactly 30.

Yes, Lori Townsend: Thank you, give us some examples of the work that they're doing in tribal communities and how that work varies depending on the needs of the local residents.

Unknown: Well, under the the Native American, NAHASA Native American Assistance and Self-Determination Act, is the law that provides housing funding to tribally designated housing entities or regional housing authorities.

That funding is flexible.

And so the communities and tribes each are able to determine what is best for those communities and determine what eligible activities and development will happen in each community.

So that's the beauty of of no hosta.

And that's how tribes and communities address the specific problems that are in their communities.

We have housing authorities that are focused on single family homes and others that are doing affordable rentals.

And so it it really depends on what region you're in.

And they're all approaching housing that's specific to their communities and their tribes that they serve.

Lori Townsend: Calling the the massive infrastructure package there, I think is an assumption by a lot of folks that tons of money will be flowing to rural Alaska now and fix all kinds of problems related to situations like overcrowding.

But you noted that there are zero housing funds in this funding package.

What can you tell us about why there are no funds in that infrastructure package?

And how will that affect what housing authorities are able to do this summer with the limited funds they do have, especially with a spike in supplies?

And does that translate into places saying Housing Authority saying we were planning on building four homes here now we can only build two, what are you hearing about that?

Unknown: Sure.

So to address the first part of your problem, I could speculate all day about why housing isn't infrastructure bill, and it's really a shame that that wasn't included because we all know that housing is critical infrastructure in each of our communities and it's a the driving factor for sustainable and thriving communities.

So I won't speculate about why it's not included in the infrastructure bill, but there is funding going into the infrastructure portion of communities.

And so why we were left out?

I am, I'm certainly not not sure.

And, Lori, can you repeat the second part of your question?

I'm sorry.

Lori Townsend: Well, are the housing authorities -- I'm sorry that I piled on there with the questions.

Are the housing authorities saying that they will be building less this summer because of the spike in pricing for supplies, the constraints on them, and the fact that their funding has been flat for so long, which essentially means declining?

Unknown: Yes, absolutely.

I think that the development is going to decrease as far as the impacts that we see, I don't know that I have that data going forward into the into the future into the next building season.

But yes, we're talking about an extra $70,000 per home in one region, an increase.

We're talking about three times the amount to put in foundations in another community.

So if we're talking about an extra 70 to $100,000 per home, yeah, that's gonna eat away on the number of homes that can be developed in each region.

And I think we're just gonna start seeing more impacts of the lack of, of material and the increased price brought up out from the pandemic.

So I think we will absolutely see that as far as hard data going forward into the next building season.

I don't have that hard data.

But I Lori Townsend: Just the numbers you've cited, are certainly dramatic and give an indication of what kind of constraints there will be.

Chris, turning back to you, I'd like you to follow up there.

You had mentioned that the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act, NAHASDA, the funds for tribal housing flow through there, but the NAHASDA funds, I believe you said, have increased by only $1 million in 20 years, whereas HUD's other funding has increased by 30 billion.

You called that a bitter soup.

Unknown: Yeah, it's, it's tough, because I think that we have seen quite a bit of increases in the HUD's ability to accomplish its mission, when they they have an extra $30 billion since 1999.

And looking at inflation, they're actually beating inflation by 25%.

So they're doing more with more.

But that's on the non-Indian side.

Indian housing, we've got one extra million dollars in the last 20 years into our formula.

But that means is we've lost 31% of our purchasing power.

If we look at the Consumer Price Index, but housing providers are not consumers, we are producers.

And the things that we produce, have three large inputs, construction material, construction labor and logistics.

And each of those is increased by 50 to 70%.

So while the common refrain is to say, 'Well, according to the Consumer Price Index, we've lost 30% of our purchasing power,' that's a quick way of illustrating something, we've actually lost more, because the cost of the things that we do is up even higher.

And if you talk to any building developer, if you talk to our friends at the Anchorage Homebuilders Association, they'll validate that things are actually harder than for the general consumer, for people producing housing.

Lori Townsend: So the the Build Back Better package, legislative package that stalled out did have housing funding in it, the infrastructure package does not.

But as you noted earlier, infrastructure and housing is so intimately tied together, especially in rural Alaska.

Talk a little bit about how that complicates things when there's funding for one aspect of building for communities but not in the actual realm of housing that so desperately needed.

Unknown: Well, let's, let's take a step back and think about our places and think about healthy places.

Alaska is not a place where, let's say Kasigluk.

There's not a developer developing on spec in Kasigluk.

They're not going to develop the infrastructure for a neighborhood and then begin selling lots as they would maybe in Anchorage, or in Birchwood or something.

We are a place where our population is low compared to the rest of the country and our economy is challenged.

We're a place where we are responding to demand.

The number one demand is homes.

We don't need, we don't have developers building on spec to just put in sewer systems for future homes.

We have trouble getting sewer systems for the homes that exist today.

So when you look at developing sewer systems, you look at developing roads, you look at upgrades to electrical systems, these are things that are intimately tied to homes.

You look at port systems, they serve the population.

Nothing in the state, nothing and rural villages in our remote rural places that are accessible only by air or water, nothing happens that is far removed from housing.

Even, even healthcare.

When they're trying to develop a clinic when they're trying to enlarge a clinic, staffing that clinic is a big problem because of housing.

Right.

We have to have a safe place to put our residents.

You have to have a safe place to put our public safety, our health professionals and our teachers, and we just don't have that.

And it's, that's why it's a bitter soup when HUD has increased its, Congress has increased HUDs budget, HUDs non-Indian budget, by $30 billion.

It's a bitter soup when the infrastructure package has so much money in it, but housing across the country for Alaska Natives and our cousins in the Lower 48 was not included in the thing that passed Lori Townsend: Colleen, turning back to you.

What do you see on the horizon?

We saw an option in Shaktoolik.

But what are the options that offer affordability but also meet the need for families?

Is it prefab modular homes, tiny homes, container homes?

What do residents want?

Is it sort of all of the above?

Unknown: It is all of the above.

And it really depends on the community.

Again, it goes back to two tribes and tribally designated housing entities building what's right for each community.

Will the tiny homes in one region fit the needs in another?

No.

Will they work?

I'm not sure.

It just depends on the region.

And I think that's that's the beauty of what the, the tribally designated housing entities or the regional housing authorities do is they listen to the communities now.

Increased housing, affordable housing?

Yes, that's definitely on the horizon, what it looks like is really different in each community.

Lori Townsend: Isn't it cheaper to build multi-unit housing rather than single family homes?

And if that's true, why aren't there more efforts to build them in rural communities?

Is it just not a desired way of living for a lot of rural residents?

Unknown: Well, that that really depends.

I would say, in theory, it is cheaper, maybe to build multifamily units.

However, again, the funding is flat.

And when you build those multifamily units, you need to pay for the maintenance and upkeep and they are, and there's no money for that there's no money for the operation expense side of multifamily units.

So with the increased funding, maybe that would be a more attractive option for communities.

But again, it's community driven and what works for one might not work for the next.

Lori Townsend: And we, we only have just a about a minute left here.

What do you want policy makers to do, both in the state in and our federal delegation?

Unknown: Well, I would certainly say increased funding for the Indian Housing Block Grant through NAHASDA.

That puts money directly into the the housing authorities.

So an increased appropriation in that sense.

On the state level, we advocate for some programs that are beneficial to our communities and developing housing, senior housing, teacher and health professional housing supplemental grant development fund, which helps with infrastructure and development, and weatherization, of course, so those are the four main programs in the state and then overall, the increase of funding for the Indian Housing block grant would certainly increase the supply of safe sanitary affordable housing in the state.

Lori Townsend: All right, well, thank you you both so much for spending time with us this evening.

Appreciate your thoughts on this important topic for rural Alaska.

Anyone who has lived in an overcrowded home knows how difficult it can be to keep family harmony intact.

As we heard this evening, Alaskans are twice as likely to live in a crowded home than in any other state.

Overcrowding affects the wellbeing of families and communities.

Having appropriate space for everyone and piped water systems in homes helps reduce the spread of disease.

Proper space for living sleeping and basic things like a quiet spot to do homework or reading supports emotional and physical health.

It can help ease the tension that can come from a lack of privacy, and a little more breathing room for all who live together provides for a much happier and healthier home setting.

That's it for this edition of Alaska Insight.

Be sure to tune in daily to your local public radio station for Alaska Morning News and Alaska News Nightly every weeknight.

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We'll be back next week.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm Lori Townsend.

Good night.