Penelope Haas has lived in Homer for nearly a decade. Six years ago she purchased land and is working on building a home.
“I've lived in Homer and have watched it transform, and my friends and acquaintances, everyone I talked to, make me feel like it is increasingly difficult for people with regular jobs — like teachers, people in the grocery store, contractors — to afford to live here. And that worries me,” she said.
Haas is one of over a hundred concerned residents that turned out to a recent community forum to discuss short and long-term solutions for housing in the area.
The demand for housing in the Homer area continues to climb among year-round residents and seasonal workers, while a growing number of short-term rentals and vacation homes makes it more of a challenge for people to find places to live.
She said she’d like to see regulation of short-term rentals listed through platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo, like through a permit system. Homer currently does not have a bed tax — often charged to transient guests in hotels or motels — or a business tax for these types of short-term rentals.
“I’ve thought about this a lot,” Haas said. “You can see in the data that about half the homes built in Homer in the past couple years are not occupied. That's a huge pressure on the cost of living here. So looking towards solutions, I'm looking at trying to push that pressure downward.”
She points to a permit system used in Lake Tahoe, California, a popular year-round tourism destination, to regulate the numbers of vacation rentals.
“It's a limited entry permit system, which is how we manage our salmon fisheries,” Haas said. “The limited entry permit system as it applies to Airbnbs in Homer would help us, first of all, get a handle on who has Airbnbs and how many there are. Then it would help us from that point, go ahead and manage where those Airbnbs are. So you could decide that we wouldn't want to have them right around schools, for example, and you could direct them towards places that are more appropriate for tourism. You could also begin to understand what number of Airbnbs can this community handle, and that would be a very positive step towards this community.”
Haas said she doesn’t want to curtail tourism, which is an important economic driver for the community, but wants to see residents' needs put first.
Shannon McBride-Morrin echoed the need for addressing the growing number of short-term rentals. She was born and raised in Homer, and is owner of the Kachemak Bay Wilderness Lodge in China Poot Bay. She said they employ roughly fifteen summer workers, which they provide housing for. But she wants to see affordability addressed.
“I care deeply about people who come to live and work in Homer,” McBride-Morrin said. “Whether it's just to work seasonally for the summer, or someone who wants to start a family or just who wants to live here feeling like it's possible, and it's affordable, and they can do it. And they're not using every penny they make to pay their rent and to buy their groceries. So it's the bigger picture of building a quality of life, and building an affordable community that we all want to live in.”
McBride-Morrin said she wants to see higher density in town, and incentives for building affordable housing for year-round residents. Participants also discussed building tiny homes, lease-to-buy yurts, hostels and affordable transitional housing for seniors and low-income residents.
Ana Reid is a Homer-based realtor. She grew up in the community, and has also struggled to find year-round housing as she is saving up to buy a home. She pointed to a gap between the number of vacant homes and number of renters, and the need for a central platform like a Homer app to connect the two.
“So [for] homes that are sitting vacant, whether that be finding house sitters, or finding renters, it’s kind of having an efficient system that documents and allows people to find housing,” Reid said. “Versus, you know, word of mouth, which is very effective if you’ve lived here for a long time, and you know a lot of people. But I was actually interested in the idea of developing some kind of app that catered to short-term season renters, and then long-term, year-round rentals so that people can find resources a little bit more easily.”
Reid said available housing is quite low, and recent increases in interest rates make it challenging for buyers seeking loans. She sees a good short-term solution in building multi-family homes or additional units on existing properties.
“One of the solutions that I found to be really interesting was taking a home that's already existing, that’s laying vacant and having some sort of help,” she said. “Whether from the city or some sort of loan, where someone could easily add an additional dwelling unit, whether just by putting up a wall, or a doorway, through a staircase, or a kitchenette, or a bathroom — something kind of small that would allow someone's otherwise large vacant home to be kind of sectioned off in a way that they feel comfortable and secure. And they could rent that small portion of their home out.”
Another challenge discussed was protecting tenants’ and property owners’ rights in housing transactions. Jocelyn Ciarlone is a paralegal with Alaska Legal Services, a statewide organization that helps connect residents to housing assistance and legal services.
“The Landlord Tenant Hotline can be a great resource,” Ciarlone said. “We also have a bunch of self help materials on our website that are really helpful to kind of walk you through different landlord or tenant issues without having to talk to an attorney. But if you qualify, and you're experiencing an eviction, people should definitely apply for legal assistance.”
Residents also talked about land availability, and exploring incentives like public land sales from the city or borough at affordable rates for building more housing.
“I think another solution that came up is looking at our vacancy rates, land that doesn’t have any structures on it, why is that happening?” said Robert Ruffner, the planning director for the Kenai Peninsula Borough. “It seems like the return on investment for developers right now is not to develop tiny homes or more affordable solutions for housing. But the market is really primed for seasonal rentals, or simply just speculation because we see the land values are going up so high in Alaska because it is such a nice place to live.”
Forum participants discussed how to address property sales to non-residents versus residents. But Ruffner said the borough sells land on the free market to the highest bidder, and they’re seeing a lot of buyers for land as investment properties. He said many are waiting for public utilities to be built at a later date.
Organizers of the community forum will be compiling the ideas for housing solutions generated by residents, as well as data from the Homer Housing Needs Survey for residents and employers which is open now (until 5 p.m. Friday, April 28) and will be making it available to the public later this month.
