Wyoming’s investment in affordable housing is worth the fight

Here’s a fundamental question Wyoming lawmakers keep ignoring at the state’s peril: What kind of a future do we have when workers can’t find anywhere they can afford to live?

I know it pales in comparison to subjects the Legislature spends so much time on, like determining what bathrooms people can use, banning library books that mention sex and erecting more barriers to voting.

But the affordable housing crisis is destined to get worse if lawmakers don’t find the political will to act now. Combined with two other major Wyoming problems — lack of affordable health care and our state’s frustrating inability to provide adequate and constitutionally mandated school funding for all students — it’s taking a huge toll on our economy and well-being.

The Legislature has had ample opportunities to address these issues, but has noticeably devoted the least attention to housing.

A grassroots group wants legislators to focus on Wyoming’s affordable housing crisis and do something that’s been effective in 48 states, the District of Columbia, and the territories of Guam and Puerto Rico. 

Only Wyoming and Mississippi haven’t created a state housing trust fund.

The Wyoming Housing Investment Alliance is gathering signatures on a letter of support to send to the Legislature so it will consider a housing bill that the extremist Freedom Caucus didn’t even deem worthy of an introduction vote during this year’s general session. 

The Legislature needs to be forcefully pushed in that direction. A Wyoming Community Development Association report last year found there’s not a single county in Wyoming where a family earning their county’s median income can afford a typical home in their community.

That should be a shocking statistic, but Wyomingites understand it all too well. The lack of good-paying jobs in most sectors other than the minerals industry has long pushed young people to leave the state to find employment.

But now those who have jobs and want to stay — including such bedrock occupations like teachers, nurses and government workers — pack their bags and flee to proverbial greener pastures because they can’t find an affordable place to live.

One factor is an influx of older people moving here from out of state who can afford to spend more on housing. Long-time residents find limited and more expensive housing stock if they want to upgrade, so they stay where they are, leaving fewer “starter homes” on the market for young families.

There are also few financial incentives for developers to construct less expensive housing with much lower profit margins.

“Lack of affordable housing is stifling our economy and making it hard for working-class families to establish roots,” Rep. Trey Sherwood, D-Laramie, told me in an interview earlier this year. “If we want our young people to stay and grow the economy, the state must invest in housing.”

A bill that would have put $15 million into a state housing trust fund in 2023 never made it out of committee. 

This year, Sherwood sponsored her own measure to create a $20 million housing investment fund that has the potential to make a significant impact on affordable housing problems statewide. It’s the bill the new Wyoming Housing Investment Alliance wants to resurrect, because the Freedom Caucus that controls the House’s agenda had neither the good sense nor courage to let it be debated.

Sherwood’s bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Evie Brennan, R-Cheyenne, would allow Wyoming nonprofits like Habitat for Humanity and the Wyoming Housing Network to be eligible to receive half of the funds through grants and zero-interest loans for new construction, repairs and rehabilitation, transitional housing, first-time homebuyer assistance, and rental voucher programs.

For-profit businesses could apply for up to 45% of the funds available through a low-interest revolving loan fund for new construction, repairs and rehabilitation.

These components are what the National Low Income Housing Coalition stressed in a June report examining the 843 housing trust funds established across the country. They target a wide range of housing problems in rural and urban areas, from helping young people buy their first home to assisting the most marginalized renters who need safe, decent, affordable and accessible housing.

The details can be tweaked, which should appeal to lawmakers who insist that whatever the problem is, it requires a “Wyoming solution.” That old chestnut has probably killed bills clear back to the first days of statehood in 1890, because it’s something lawmakers love to say but rarely know how to accomplish.

But it needn’t be the death knell for the housing issue. 

Trust funds have been effective pretty much everywhere they’ve been tried in states, cities and counties. Many states have used trust fund legislation to empower local governments to set up their own trusts to tailor affordable housing development to unique community needs. Enacted here, it would create a set of de facto “Wyoming solutions.”

Lawmakers who don’t want to create a huge bureaucracy to deal with affordable housing should be encouraged by the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s report. More than half of housing trust funds are managed by one to three staff members, and about one-third had an annual administrative budget of less than $50,000.

Sherwood and Brennan told the Sheridan Press that while Wyoming’s leaders like to talk about economic development and diversifying the economy, the bottom line is the state needs a workforce.

“In order to have that workforce, we have to have affordable housing,” Brennan said. “We cannot keep our children here or attract new families if we don’t have the infrastructure. Affordable housing is part of that infrastructure needed for our communities and state to thrive.”

The pair has an even steeper hill to climb at next year’s budget session. This year’s bill only needed a simple majority to be considered, but in 2026, it will take a two-thirds supermajority to be introduced.

I’m glad to see the public lobbying for the state to make a strong commitment to invest in housing. Lawmakers need to hear directly from people whose lives have been upended by their inability to find an affordable place to buy or rent.

Whenever you hear legislators try to steer the conversation to some hot-button cultural issue, disarm them with a real-world problem about housing. You’ll be fighting for Wyoming’s future.