Facing Housing and Labor Crunch, Employers Build Homes for Workers

​As skyrocketing prices and a supply shortage put a pinch on the housing stock in many locations, some employers are tackling the situation by building housing units for their employees.

"We wouldn't be able to staff without employee housing," said Max Weber, director of human resources at Grand Targhee Resort, a ski and year-round resort in Alta, Wyo.

In vacation areas and resort towns across the country, employers are trying to figure out how to deal with a housing crunch that is making it hard for their employees to find affordable accommodations.

Rents have surged more than 22 percent nationwide between March 2021 and this March, according to Rent.com. One-bedroom apartments rent for an average of almost $1,700 nationally, and two-bedroom apartments average $2,050.

At the same time, the median price for houses on the market nationwide reached $405,000 in March, up 13.5 percent compared with March 2021, according to Realtor.com.

The number of houses listed for sale nationally was down almost 20 percent compared with March 2021.

The area around Grand Targhee, which is just outside Grand Teton National Park, has seen an influx of new residents and people purchasing second homes in the past five years, Weber said.

"They gobbled up any inventory or rental units," he said, noting that a three-bedroom, two-bath home sells for $750,000.

It's a similar situation in Bozeman, Mont., where Bozeman Health is constructing housing for its employees.

"It's a very real problem for us," said Angela Barnes, the health system's director of human resources.

With people flocking to the state, Barnes said, median house prices are $700,000 to $800,000. That has made it challenging for employees such as nurses and laboratory technicians to afford housing.

In Panama City Beach, Fla., where land development company St. Joe Co. is about to start building employee housing, the housing crunch has been exacerbated by environmental factors.

Hurricane Michael did extensive damage to the county in 2018, leaving more than 20,000 residents homeless, according to The Associated Press.       

Panama City, the neighboring population center and county seat, was particularly hard-hit. Here, the hurricane "wiped out a lot of housing inventory," said Mike Kerrigan, vice president of marketing and communications for St. Joe Co.

Homes for sale in Bay County, where Panama City and Panama City Beach are located, had an average list price of $385,000 in March, a 22 percent increase compared with last year.

Housing is "tough for a lot of people in the service industry to afford in Panama City Beach," Kerrigan said, so they wind up living further away from where they work.

Housing Solutions

To help address their housing situation, Weber said, the Grand Targhee Resort has spent about $6 million building employee housing, which opened last summer.

The resort built 16 units, with six bedrooms each. Each bedroom has a private bath and walk-in closet, and residents of each unit share a living room, kitchen, washer and dryer, and other basics, he noted.

Employees pay $450 a month for a private room or $350 per month for a shared room, and the rent is deducted from their paychecks, Weber said.

The resort has about 430 employees during the winter and about 240 during the summer. Many of the seasonal workers come from other parts of the United States, as well as from South America, Turkey and China.

To staff the resort fully, employees are "not going to come from the local labor force," Weber said. "It just doesn't exist."

Grand Targhee also has about 80 year-round staff members, and the resort plans to start building one- and two-bedroom units to house them.

Meanwhile, Bozeman Health is working with other area employers to construct employee housing in nearby Belgrade, Mont.

The project will include one-, two- and three-bedroom units, and 100 units will be reserved for Bozeman Health workers.

Barnes declined to say how much money the hospital system is spending on the project, but she noted that employees will spend no more than 30 percent of their incomes on rent.

The health system hopes the project will help ease employees' minds about their housing situation as Bozeman Health "competes with other markets where housing is not so expensive," Barnes said.

With housing worries out of the way, employees "can concentrate on providing care to the community," she added.

In Panama City Beach, St. Joe Co. plans to break ground for almost 100 employee housing units this year, with the ability to increase that number, Kerrigan said.

The 600-employee company—which expects brisk growth, as it has five hotels under construction—currently leases several apartments in Panama City for employees. The workers pay the rent through payroll deductions.

Many of the workers are house-keeping staff, servers and cooks. The housing assistance "makes things a little easier for them," Kerrigan said.

He noted it's too early to say how much construction of the new employee housing might cost, and the company already owns the land where it will be built.

"High-quality housing will give us a competitive advantage," he said. "We realize what important assets our people are."

Susan Ladika is a freelance writer based in Tampa, Fla.