Average wage earner in Sheridan County can't afford the average home

SHERIDAN — A March report by the Wyoming Community Development Authority found people earning an average wage in any industry in Johnson and Sheridan counties cannot afford to buy a home for the area’s median home sales price.

“I think the most painful part of this scenario is that we all grew up with this idea of the American dream, where we can own a home,” Christopher Volzke, Deputy Executive Director of the WCDA, said in an interview with The Sheridan Press.

Yet for the last five years or so, most Wyoming residents earning a median income can’t afford to buy.

In Sheridan County, annual wages for people in the top three employment industries — natural resource and mining; construction; and manufacturing — earn $55,133, $54,145 and $54,529 each year, respectively. The median sales price for a home in Sheridan County in 2022 was $372,000.

“This issue is not just happening in Sheridan. It is not just in Buffalo. It’s cities across the entire state, and there won’t be just one solution, either, that will solve it,” Volzke said. “Solutions must be localized.”

In response to the growing demand for affordable workforce housing, the WCDA announced the completion of a Statewide Housing Needs Assessment in March. The comprehensive study, conducted by Root Policy Research on behalf of WCDA, was designed to provide crucial insights into the current state of housing, identify challenges and assist in the development of strategic solutions to address the housing needs of the state, according to the WCDA. The assessment involved an extensive analysis of housing trends, population growth, economic factors and demographic shifts.

The WCDA hopes its findings “will serve as a foundation for informed decision-making, policy development and resource allocation to meet the diverse housing requirements of our residents.”

More housing at all price points could ease pressure

The northeastern region of Wyoming includes Sheridan, Johnson, Campbell, Crook and Weston counties. The WCDA found the area is less diverse than the rest of the state, and homeownership is significantly less affordable for each industry’s workforce than home rental is.

Adding housing supply across the state, and particularly in northeastern Wyoming, would be a start, said Volzke. More affordable housing could ease the gap, but inventory across the spectrum may help.

“More supply of all (types of housing) will help,” Volzke said. “That allows people to move into a home that fits their phase of life. We need more affordable homes than at higher price points, but if you don’t have (homes at) the higher price points, people who may have bought those homes will stay in their current (cheaper) home.

“That locks up inventory, which may have been a home that would have been affordable for someone else to buy,” Volzke said.

Fluidity in the market is a good thing, Volzke said.

“We do need our key focus to be on workforce, or affordable housing, but I have really shifted my mentality to, any inventory is good inventory, because it allows people to move around,” Volzke said.

As of 2021, overcrowding in Sheridan County was more severe than in other areas of the state. Renter households experienced overcrowding at four times the rate of owner households in Wyoming, and at greater rates than owner households in Campbell, Crook, Johnson and Weston counties. But only in Sheridan County did owner households experience overcrowding at higher rates than renter households.

“We don’t know what is causing specific overcrowding,” Volzke said, adding the trend first showed up in HUD reports. “I think part of it is affordability. You have more people living with other people, because they either can’t afford their own rent or can’t afford to buy, so they’re living within the same household unit.”

Median income for renters in the northeastern region was around 40-45% of median owner income in Campbell, Johnson, Sheridan and Weston counties, and around 68% of median owner income in Crook County.

From 2010 to 2021, median income for both owners and renters increased in Crook and Sheridan counties. In 2021, Sheridan and Crook counties had poverty rates lower than that of Wyoming as a whole, at 11%.

Total employment in the northeastern region decreased by nearly 6% between 2010 and 2022, hovering around 47,000 jobs until 2015. In 2016, employment dropped by over 3,000 jobs. Losses were concentrated in Campbell and Sheridan counties, where Volzke said a significant downturn in the energy sector impacted numbers. A pandemic low of around 42,630 jobs recovered to pre-pandemic levels by 2022.

Building permits are up, and people moving in earn more than people who leave

Residential building permits have finally reached what they were in the early 2000s, nearly two decades after the Great Recession.

A total of 79% of units permitted in northeastern Wyoming since 1980 have been for single-family structures. Around 12% of permits issued have been for multifamily structures of five units or more, and housing in two-unit structures account for 5% of permits. Three- to four-unit structures account for 4% of permits.

The 2008 recession caused a significant drop in permits issued, and building permit applications continued to decline until the mid-2010s. Building has finally rebounded to early 2000-era levels, Volzke said.

“Things were relatively stagnant during the pandemic, but now the number of units being built is back to what it was in the early 2000s,” he said. “Is it enough units? That’s a larger question.”

In Johnson and Sheridan counties, in-migrants also tend to have higher average incomes than out-migrants, which Volzke said may be due to a couple factors.

“Sheridan has done a good job of bringing in some higher paying jobs, and that (data) is captured here,” he said, referencing manufacturing industry jobs added to the economy in the last decade.

“However, when you look at your demographics, the fastest growing area is people that are in that 65+ (category),” he said. “Some might have some higher wages, but not all of them. I think it is a combination of two things. People with (money saved) looking to retire, but when you’re talking about Sheridan specifically, what you have done there is different than a lot of communities, in the fact that you have focused on bringing some higher manufacturing jobs to the area.”

As of 2021, all counties in the Northeast Region had homeownership rates higher than that of Wyoming as a whole. Between 2010 and 2021, homeownership decreased in Sheridan County by only one percentage point. The statewide average homeownership rate is 72%, and in Sheridan County that number is 69%.

“You lost a little bit of ground, but you also really haven’t gained any ground either. Your make-up of renters and owners is really the same now as it was a decade ago. It is lagging the state a little bit,” Volzke said.

What’s next for the WCDA

The Statewide Housing Needs Assessment was the first step in what Volzke says his organization hopes will be a push to create actionable steps toward alleviating Wyoming’s housing crisis.

“The needs assessment was phase one, a push to get the data out there,” he said, adding that the report showed what many people already suspected. There may also be those who believe housing is not an issue in Wyoming, but the report shows otherwise, he said. The next step, he said, will be to develop a statewide strategic plan addressing solutions. WCDA Executive Director Scott Hoversland is creating a working group to begin that plan this summer.

“We will focus on different areas (of the state) and what the actionable items are for those communities,” Volzke said. “That next step is, what are we going to do to help solve some of these issues?”

This story was published on April 27, 2024.