The number of people served by the Minot Area Homeless Coalition is expected to be up this year, largely as a consequence of a housing crunch and people falling through the cracks of a strong local economy.
Last year, the coalition served 4,200 people. The coalition expects its numbers so far this year to already reach 3,900 once October's count is in, said Louis "Mac" McLeod, executive director.
The Minot YWCA's women's shelter has been full. Other than housing for women and their children provided by the YWCA and Domestic Violence Crisis Center, there are no emergency shelters in Minot. Because hotels are often full and the apartment vacancy rate is almost nothing, finding places for people to stay is difficult, McLeod said. The coalition has sent people to other shelters in the state on occasions when those facilities have had room.
People are doubling or tripling up in housing to have a place to stay, McLeod said. Affordability is another concern. McLeod estimated that nearly all the people seeking help from the coalition are working but can't afford a place to live.
The Minot Housing Authority has about 400 families or individuals on its waiting list for voucher assistance.
"On an average day, three to five people come in and fill out applications to get on our waiting list," said Tom Pearson, executive director.
The wait for a family to get into housing is two to four months. For individuals, it can be a year. People have the option of also getting on the waiting list for public housing, which can be faster for individuals. However, there were 85 applicants on that waiting list earlier this month.
The federal housing program limits voucher use to housing that falls under its rent limit. The number of eligible rentals declined as rents went up. A survey of rents in October resulted in an adjustment to the rent level that will open up more options. The problem, Pearson said, is that the low vacancy rate means those additional housing units may not be available anyway.
Also, he said, the housing authority has the same amount of money to work with. If it is allowed to spend more money on rents, it means fewer families will be helped.
Minot's need for more low-income housing isn't fueling any new development.
Roger Peterson, chief executive officer for Gandolf Group in St. Louis Park, Minn., said the number of investors willing to purchase the tax credits in the current economy to fund these types of projects in the Plains states has fallen off to the point where investment dollars are less than half of what they were in 2007.
"We would love to do more in Minot," said Peterson, whose group operates South Glen in southeast Minot. "The market is such that it's just hard."
Developers are building market-rate apartment units, though. For 2008 and through October 2009, Minot issued building permits for apartments that total 332 units.
Jim Mello, manager at the Grand International, said extended hotel stays have gotten shorter because people are finding permanent housing more quickly. They may stay two or three months rather than up to nine months.
Pete Zimmerman, manager of the Holiday Inn, agreed, although he said the number of people looking for long-term hotel stays still remains at a high level.
The oil industry has found other options so it is relying less on hotels. More longer-term stays involve construction workers with the wind farm south of Minot and at the base, along with military people who are coming and going.
In some cases, Trinity Health has provided short-term housing in property that it owns to new employees while they seek something more permanent, said Randy Schwan, hospital spokesman. More commonly, employees are able to make arrangements, such as sharing apartments with others, until they are able to get into permanent housing, he said.
Meanwhile, new figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show rents are rising in Minot, although the affordability issue isn't so apparent.
The latest three-year data from the bureau's American Community Survey found that the rent increase from 2005-07 to 2006-08 averaged 7.8 percent in Minot. The percentage of people spending 35 percent or more of their income on rent increased from 27 percent to 30 percent.
The 2006-08 survey of homeowners showed 17.9 percent of mortgage holders and 9.6 percent of non-mortgage holders paid more than 35 percent of their incomes on housing. That compares with 9.6 percent for mortgage holders and 4.2 percent of non-mortgage holders in 2005-07. About 60 percent of mortgage holders spent less than 25 percent of their incomes on housing, while about 58 percent of non-mortgage holders spent less than 15 percent of their incomes.
The survey categories have small margins of error that could make the actual survey percentages slightly more or less.
