By VERNON ROBISON
The Progress
If the City of Mesquite can keep up its focus on its strategic plan, it could see more than 600 new workforce housing units built over the next two years.
That is what Mesquite Development Service Director Richard Secrist reported to the City Council at a meeting held Tuesday, Nov. 10.
During a presentation on the findings of the City’s Workforce Housing Task Force, Secrist tallied through a list of affordable and workforce housing projects already in the pipeline for the city.
Projects that are currently under construction included 48 apartment units being built on E. Mesquite Blvd. Also under construction are four units at Triangle Townhomes on 755 W. Old Mill.
Another 310 units have already been approved but are not yet under construction, Secrist said. These are in The Trails of Mesquite project proposed on W. Pioneer Blvd. near the Mesquite Ford dealership.
Another 234 units are ready to apply for architectural and site plan review with the city. These include 200 Nevada Rural Housing Authority (NRHA) units at Hillside Drive, 18 proposed units on Hardy Way, 12 units planned at S. Grapevine, and 4 units at Desert Drive.
None of this counted the 96 units that are in thye early planning stage by the NRHA for another project on Hafen Lane, Secrist added.
If all of these are brought to completion, it would meet one of the targets of the taskforce: building at least 435 new rental units in the community to meet existing demand, Secrist said.
In his report, Secrist reviewed that the City Council had begun a strategic planning process in 2019. One of the primary goals identified in that process was to prepare a plan to develop workforce and affordable housing for Mesquite.
“A taskforce was organized to look at this issue and come back with recommendations on how to deal with it,” Secrist said.
The first thing that taskforce did was agree upon a definition of workforce housing. Secrist said that the group adopted the NRHA definition as housing designed for people making 60-120 percent of the median income for the county where they reside.
However, a slight alteration to this definition had to be made, Secrist explained. In Clark County the median income is $70,800. But in Mesquite it is much lower than that at around $52,300, he said.
People making the 60-120 percent of that median income could afford a mortgage of between $103,000 and $257,000, the taskforce found.
But the median sales price of a single family home in Mesquite is currently at $307,730, the report states.
“So people in these income brackets are going to be pretty much shut out of the single family detached housing market,” Secrist said. “But they would, presumably be able to buy a condo or townhome, if they could find one. But the market is tight and there are few vacancies right now.”
A labor and wages survey of major employers in Mesquite, conducted by the task force, found that about 1,850 hourly wage employees in Mesquite earn only $12.50 per hour.
“That is only 50 percent of the Mesquite median income,” Secrist said.
Furthermore, a national study showed that the fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Nevada is around $1,065 per month.
“So if you can pay that plus utilities, without it being over 30 percent of your income, to afford a two bedroom apartment you’d have to earn $20.50 per hour,” Secrist said. “So you can see that a lot of people that are making that $12.50 per hour, are going to have a hard time finding housing.”
The task force also inquired of builders in the area on what were the greatest barriers for affordable housing projects in the community. Answers they received included high land costs, opportunity costs compared to better markets in St. George and Las Vegas, high development fees, the unpredictability of approvals and the increasing costs of building materials and labor in the region.
Given all of these findings, the taskforce report made some recommendations for the City going forward.
The recommendations advised the City to focus its efforts on the target multi-family and manufactured home market since hourly workers are priced out of the single family detached home market.
In addition, incentives from the City should focus on homes priced at below $257,000, according to the recommendations. This includes condominiums, townhomes and manufactured homes which would be within reach of workforce homebuyers, Secrist said.
These City incentives should also be focused on parcels already improved, graded and which had already received entitlements and zoning, the taskforce recommended.
A series of changes to guidelines, city codes and master plan elements were recommended to make the construction of workforce housing easier for developers.
Finally, the taskforce determined that, if after all these items, the City was still unsuccessful in drawing developers to build workforce housing, that a local Housing Authority be created to use public funds for workforce housing project.
“That is our report,” Secrist said. “There is progress being made. We will continue to meet with developers to try and entice them to come out here and try to overcome the issues that are keeping them from doing that.”
With very little discussion, the council accepted the report with a unanimous vote.
