Transferred from a sister Lafarge plant in Nashville last summer, Miller wasn’t sure she was going to be able to take the Alpena job when multiple in-person and online searches netted no viable houses to buy and only one rental option that met her needs.

Like many other parts of the country, Alpena faces a housing crunch as existing homes fill and high costs limit new construction.

A lack of for-sale signs spells trouble, employers say.

A recently formed task force addressing the area’s housing challenges could bring relief, but such fixes could be a long time coming.

News File Photo A "help wanted" sign appears in the door of a Rogers City business in this May 2022 News archive photo.

In the meantime, some potential workers could be forced to turn down Alpena jobs because they have no place to live, Miller said.

“It’s sad,” she said. “Because there’s great opportunities here.”

INADEQUATE SUPPLY

Jeff Scott, plant manager at Lafarge Alpena, recently got permission to post 20 new jobs at Lafarge, including some that would attract out-of-town talent.

He’s worried he may not be able to fill all the positions if people can’t find a place to stay, Scott said.

With no place else to put them, the company may have to rent hotel rooms to house several interns expected to work at the Alpena plant this summer, he said.

Scott has reason to worry. Employers in Alpena and across northern Michigan report applicants backing out after fruitless house hunts.

Missing out on that talent hurts both the employer and the community that would have benefitted from the fresh ideas newcomers would bring and the dollars they would spend locally.

Miller recently found and secured a for-sale-by-owner house listed on an internet sales site.

Had she stayed in Nashville, where prices are sky-high, Miller said, she could never have afforded to buy a house.

Northeast Michigan’s relative affordability serves as an attraction for people who recently realized they can work remotely. With their move north, the stock of available housing has decreased, falling farther with the increase of people buying houses to use as short-term vacation rentals.

NO QUICK FIX

New construction isn’t filling the available-housing gap, said Rachel Smolinski, Alpena city manager.

Smolinski and Alpena County Administrator Mary Catherine Hannah are part of an Alpena housing task force fighting Northeast Michigan’s housing shortage.

Employers are struggling to conduct their business and school enrollments are dropping because young families can’t find the homes they need, Hannah said.

“This may be the most important, critical issue in our community,” Smolinski said.

Both elsewhere and locally, cost of new construction poses the largest hurdle toward an adequate housing supply, Smolinski said.

Even before supply-chain blockages hiked prices of wood and other construction materials in the last two years, builders couldn’t build homes cheaply enough that the average homebuyer could consider them, she said.

Before hiring on as Alpena city manager in late 2019, Smolinski worked with a coalition on the west side of the state formed to address that area’s housing crisis.

Smolinski and the group’s other founders – which included Hannah before her move to Alpena County in 2021 – initially thought they could find a solution quickly, Hannah said.

Instead, she said, they learned the complicated issue would take years or more to address, with changes and education needed on multiple levels.

STEPS FORWARD

Alpena’s housing task force, only a few months old, focuses the combined efforts of people with their fingers in the housing pie on finding a fix for the sunrise side’s housing shortage.

Even with the task force’s efforts, a balance between homes and people who want to live in them could be five years or more down the road, Smolinski said.

In its monthly meetings, the task force has compiled an organized but still-in-flux spreadsheet of problems impacting housing, contributing factors to those problems, existing resources, and possible next steps.

Task force members need to gather current data and connect pieces of the housing puzzle, ensuring bankers, contractors, builders, and housing advocates each know the others’ role in creating a better housing landscape, Hannah said.

Local governments can invigorate new construction through tax credits, creative financing options, new partnerships, zoning rule changes, land banks, and other tools, and the community can push for policy changes that open the door for new housing development, Hannah and Smolinski said.

Those potential solution steps won’t happen right away, but they’re on the horizon, and, with the concerted effort of the task force and others, employers may someday not have to fret about “help wanted” posts going unanswered because workers can’t find a home to buy.

Until then, inadequate worker housing impacts everyone, Hannah said.

“If we don’t have it, people are going to go elsewhere,” she said. “If you can’t find people to staff your restaurant, if you can’t find people to work in your hospital, if you can’t find people to work in the gas station or fix your plumbing in your house or repair your roof, then nobody is going to live here.”

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