'You have to grow yourself out'

Buying entry-level housing in Saratoga is challenging. Teachers take a job in Saratoga for a year and then move on to a town with more affordable housing.

Bryan Drake builds homes in Saratoga. He said he would like to see people take a job in Saratoga and stay. Bryan and Kathy Drake, co-owners of Triple D Construction, are looking for ways to make constructing housing in Saratoga affordable to the entry-level buyer.

The Drakes have been building in Saratoga since they came to town in 2013, Bryan said. About a year and a half ago, the Drakes proposed building three-bedroom, two-bath homes on 30 non-conforming, smaller lots by Carbon County School District No.2’s bus garage, he said. The six-acre site is located by the North Platte Valley Medical Center on the west side of town.

The plan was to sell the approximately 1,000-square-foot homes for about $250,000, he said, as a way to help people get into home ownership by either rent-to-own or buying them outright. These lots by the bus garage are what he described as “blight” lots, he said. The plan was the town could condemn the lots and then sell them to him.

“I would scrub them and get rid of the trailers,” he said.

“The idea didn’t go anywhere” and met with “resistance,” he said, adding he did not want to comment further on this.

“New teachers come here and get a year’s experience and then leave because they can’t find a place to live,” he said. It’s the same with the hospital employees.

He said he would like to see people come to Saratoga and stay, not just take a job for a year and then move on to an area with more affordable housing. The Drakes have constructed other homes in town that sell for higher prices, but these are not entry-level housing. One project the Drakes are currently working on is to build housing on two lots they own on Bridge Avenue near the soccer field. He said the two lots would be divided into three. The development is in the fact- finding phase in the town planning department.

“I am hoping to get approved for a spring start to have them built by the end of summer,” he said. “Hopefully, before the teachers come to town.”

These three-bedroom, two bath homes would sell in the $300,000 range. The construction would be self-financed.

The Drakes also have a subdivision by Saratoga Forest Management. He said they own 50 lots in this area and the homes sell in the $400,000 to $550,000 range. He has sold 40 lots in this subdivision called Overlook. The Drakes also have a condominium project that is located behind the high school.

The homes in this project, Vista Dawn Condominiums, are “ideal for hospital employees, because it is close to the hospital” and it is affordable to families with two incomes, he said. This is a 48-unit project.

“I am trying to hit the single worker [market] who can’t afford Overlook or Vista Dawn,” he said. “That’s behind the bus garage, 30 lots by the hospital on the west side of town. I will work with anybody who wants to help fund [the sewer, water and road infrastructure].”

Funding the infrastructure to the lots would cost many thousands of dollars in engineering fees alone.

“I have spent time on the phone with the mayor trying to facilitate this,” he said. “It’s a simple numbers game--numbers in and numbers out. Triple D [Construction] owns the land. I have everything on the property –sewer, gas, electric.”

Bryan said he needs to find a way to bring the infrastructure to the lots—sewer, gas, electric as well as water and roads. He said if he funds the infrastructure to the lots, he would have to sell the homes at “market-rate,” and they would not be affordable to the entry-level homebuyer.

He said he has tried to work with HUD, the USDA and the state.

“There were some avenues, but it did not happen, because the strings that were attached did not work,” he said.

He has made many phone calls trying to find a solution, he said. Everybody talks about getting a solution and that there is not enough affordable housing in town.

“A feasible path forward has not been discovered. What’s hurting us is the lower end of housing is being bought up by out-of-town investors and that is a problem,” he said. “You cannot legislate yourself out of this problem. You have to grow yourself out. The more housing that is available, the cheaper the price will be.”

Saratoga Mayor Chuck Davis said the Town of Saratoga is well aware of the problem with housing.

“Some of our town employees face the same issue. There is nothing the town directly can do about this,” said Mayor Davis. “Affordable housing is not just an issue in the town, but also statewide. The Governor, along with State Legislators, are trying to address the same issues.”

He said the “things the town can do is streamline permitting and work with contractors to keep costs down.”

The mayor said the town “can’t do a lot.” It is “all set in ordinance” what can be done.

If the town funded the infrastructure to the lots for the Drakes for example—just a hypothetical—for $400,000, what would happen is the other four or five contractors in town would want the same arrangement, the mayor said.

“This would be a cost the town could not bear,” Davis said.