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Long-awaited housing report recommends deregulation, investment

A graphic depicting the United States color coded to percentage of housing cost burdened
Up For Growth
More people are now experiencing housing as a severe cost burden than they were 40 years ago.

Wyoming needs somewhere between 20,000-38,000 new homes by the end of the decade.

To hit that target, a new report from the Wyoming Community Development Authority calls on state lawmakers to launch a flexible housing development fund. That’s money that could support specific housing goals across the state — and it would be less restrictive than federal programs.

It's a big ask according to Scott Hoversland, the development authority's executive director.

"But we're in the middle of a housing crisis," he said. "We need this housing."

The authority's report outlines 26 other recommendations. Like giving local communities the ability to use tax increment financing and reforming the state's protest petition law — both of which lawmakers are trying to do during the 68th legislative session.

The COVID-19 pandemic threw America's housing crisis into the limelight.

While emergency rental assistance kept people in their homes, the scope of the problem scared Hoversland.

"During that time, I really came to the realization that I think we need to quantify what the actual housing problem is, how many units we need and what we'll do," he said.

So the development authority got to work. A report published last year outlined Wyoming's need. The action plan published this month now outlines what policymakers can do about it.

The recommended strategies also include letting city governments tax their short-term rentals and speeding up development review. The full report is available online.

It notes that the "needs of Wyomingites with higher incomes … are well met by the private market" but that most others are struggling.

"For some moderate-income Wyoming residents, regulatory barriers that overly restrict the types of homes that can be built drive up the cost of housing enough that covering the cost of housing is a stretch," the report notes. "A third group of Wyomingites, many working in the state's service sector, have incomes that are too low for the private market to supply them with housing they can afford, and rely on a complex web of federal, state, and local funding and services to be stably housed."

Jeff is a part-time reporter for Wyoming Public Media, as well as the owner and editor of the Laramie Reporter, a free online news source providing in-depth and investigative coverage of local events and trends.

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