One of the items the city of Pipestone intends to get done this year is to develop an action plan for workforce housing needs.
Driving that need would be expansion plans for local employers. Mayor Myron Koets posed a hypothetical situation during the Pipestone City Council’s annual planning session last month in which JBS added 100 employees to its Pipestone plant.
“We need to get some sort of direction,” Koets said. “How are we going to tackle this.”
The council decided that the best way to tackle it was to bring all the area’s largest employers to the table.
“That’s one of the spots where we should start is get a meeting with these guys and say, ‘What do you need,’” said Councilor Rodger Smidt, also asking them, “How do you think the city can help you with that?”
Needs for a five year period between 2016 and 2021 were also illuminated in the Housing Study the city commissioned in 2016. The study concluded that through 2021 there would be a demand for 20-to-24 rental units, half of those in the general occupancy market category through new construction, the other half in more modestly priced workforce housing through renovation or conversion of existing buildings.
The new home recommendation called for the construction of four-to-five higher priced homes, four-to-five affordable homes and four-to-six units via twin homes.
The study indicated that 3,650 employees are commuting into Pipestone daily for work, a number that surprised officials when the study first came out. Some of those employees would potentially move to Pipestone if additional housing were available, the study found.
Koets said that a sit-down with employers would provide the city with direction. If they learned, for example, that they needed 75 units collectively, the city could consider its development policy — would they be willing to help a developer with new roads and utilities when the city’s current policy requires the developer to pay for all such costs.
“I think it’s time to update that,” said Councilor Dan Delaney.
Other ways the council may tackle the issue is by updating zoning codes that pertain to buildable lot sizes and setbacks. City Administrator Jeff Jones, who attended a conference last week hosted by the Southwest Minnesota Housing Partnership, said during the council’s Feb. 3 meeting that “workforce housing was the number one topic of conversation,” at the regional conference. He said several cities shared solutions they’ve developed to address the need. One idea Jones brought back to the council was to update zoning laws to allow for the construction of smaller houses on smaller lots, something the council also talked about during their planning session.
“We’ve run into that with some of our blighted properties,” Jones said. “We take down the house of course knowing that the lot is too small to meet current zoning standards.”
Since the council meeting, Jones said he’s working with Southwest Minnesota Housing Partnership on some dates when the agency could meet with the city and Pipestone Economic Development Authority to help facilitate a conversation about workforce housing needs.
Some assistance for communities looking to create more workforce housing has been included in Gov. Tim Walz’s bonding bill recommendations for the 2020 legislative session. Walz has proposed that $200 million be available through a competitive process to private for-profit and non-profit developers for supportive housing, preservation, senior housing and manufactured home park projects, with an additional $60 million to help public housing authorities, like Pipestone’s, preserve their properties.
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