Group ponders where work force can afford to live

The weather taught the University of Washington a lesson about affordable housing.

When the November snowstorm shut down Seattle, the UW realized the employees it counts on to keep the campus open couldn't get to work. Seattle's rapidly escalating housing costs had forced its groundskeepers to move many miles out in search of homes they could afford.

"This surprised us," Weldon Ihrig, the UW's executive vice president, told attendees at a housing conference Thursday. Ihrig said the university's solution is now to rent hotel rooms for key employees in advance of predicted snow.

But Ihrig stressed that that was just a short-term fix to a problem many employers are facing: how to keep a work force that increasingly cannot afford to live near their jobs.

The problem, potential solutions and roadblocks were laid out at the conference, the first of a series of seminars sponsored by the Urban Land Institute's Seattle chapter.

According to a city study, workers must earn $38 an hour to afford the median-priced Seattle condo and $50 an hour to afford the median priced in-city single-family home. (Median means half sell for more, half for less.)

But with housing prices surging ahead of wage gains, many workers can't afford either. Among those priced out are high-school teachers, loan officers, retail salespeople and administrative specialists, the city found.

Half those who work in the city don't live in it, noted Adrienne Quinn, director of the city's Office of Housing. They leave when they get to the $60,000-to-$100,000 earnings level.

"They can afford to buy, but not in the city," Quinn said.

Businesses should care because productivity and retention suffer when workers commute long distances, said John McIlwain, a senior resident fellow with the institute.

"People will commute about half an hour; after that they'll look for another job," McIlwain said. "Companies then move out to where the workers are, and the city gets hollowed out."

That's why he says "the issue of having work-force housing close-in should concern everyone."

Developing more affordable housing is the key, but there's no simple solution to that, he said. Washington's constitution prohibits municipalities from providing the types of incentives found elsewhere, McIlwain said

One is city help in assembling sites for affordable-housing development.

Another is loaning money to buyers who earn too much to qualify for low-income housing aid but too little to buy a home.

Hal Ferris, a partner in Lorig Associates, a large local housing developer, said affordable housing could be provided in exchange for allowing increased project density. Granting certain tax breaks would be beneficial, too, he said.

Finally, one solution put forth was to raise workers' wages, thus helping them keep up with housing costs.

Elizabeth Rhodes: erhodes@seattletimes.com