Co-owners of Sitka Construction Solutions, Derek James and Kris Karsunky, stand in front of the four 450-square foot houses that they built for the Yakutat Tlingit Tribe in 2021. Efforts to stimulate housing growth in Southeast Alaska in recent years have had mixed results. For example, tiny homes have not really caught on, despite policy changes to allow them, while the Sitka Community Land Trust has been a major success. Learn more about past efforts to improve housing availability in KCAW’s 2021 series Building Solutions. (KCAW/Erin McKinstry)
The issue has been in the background for a few years now. The steady economic growth in sectors like cruise tourism and healthcare is undermined by a continued shortage of housing in Southeast, and by a lack of childcare.
Sitka Chamber of Commerce director Rachel Roy was the commencement speaker for the University of Alaska Southeast Sitka Campus graduation ceremony in May. Roy told the graduates that she had her first child the summer after her freshman year, and continued to juggle babysitters and coursework through earning her Master’s Degree.
Roy stuck it out, and encouraged her audience to do the same.
“We need you,” she said. “We need your skills, your curiosity, your resilience. We need your voice in research labs, in fishing boats, in classrooms, on city assemblies, and in boardrooms.”
But it will take more than curiosity and resilience to keep young people in Southeast. In February, Meilani Schivjens presented a detailed report to the mid-session meeting of the Southeast Conference in Juneau. Many of her numbers, like the growth in jobs and wages, were really promising, but she told a story that spoke more loudly than any pie chart.
“I ran into someone at the gym the other day, and I said, ‘You know, when we’re looking at these early numbers for 2024 I can tell you, just in a nutshell, the Southeast Alaska economy is great.’ And she said, ‘Well, tell that to my four daughters in their twenties that really want to move home and live here, but can’t afford to because the cost of housing is too high,’” said Schijvens. “And so I have a caveat: The Southeast Alaska economy is great, depending on who you are.”
It wasn’t too long ago that an efficiency apartment in Sitka cost about $750 a month. The March edition of Sitka’s Economic Trends, published by the local Economic Development Association, reports those rents are now over $1,000. A three-bedroom unit in Sitka now goes for $2,100 a month.
The four daughters Schijvens heard about at the gym are a statistical sample of an even larger problem that has developed in Southeast over the last decade.
“We have 6,000 fewer people of that sort of prime workforce age,” said Schijvens. “We have 7,600 more seniors. But at the same time, we have 1,700 more jobs. So we’re doing great on jobs. We’re just struggling when it comes to having that strong workforce age population.”
“Prime workforce age” refers to residents between the ages of 20 and 59. When prime workforce workers leave Southeast, so do their children. School enrollment in Southeast communities like Sitka has been in steady decline for at least two decades. Teacher turnover has been extraordinarily high the last few years – Sitka alone lost 14 teachers for the academic year that just ended.
Sitka Rep. Rebecca Himschoot is a former teacher. In an interview with KCAW, Himschoot said that she hopes an all-new teacher retirement bill (HB 78) now working its way through the legislature helps stabilize education, and attracts a younger demographic to the state.
“So when we have teachers who come here because we have, I hope, a great salary, we have great working conditions, and we offer some sort of retirement with dignity, and they invest in their community, and they raise their kids here and they become great teachers over time – that’s a win,” said Himschoot.
Sen. Bert Stedman, who represents communities from Sitka to Ketchikan, has reservations about the new retirement bill and its impact on the state’s liabilities. But he too (also in an interview with KCAW) recognizes a serious problem.
“When a young Sitkan graduates from Sitka High School, goes off and gets a teaching certificate, and then goes to work in the Midwest or Florida or wherever, because they can pay them more as an entry level teacher than we can in Alaska, something’s wrong,” said Stedman. “We have a higher cost of living. And then you take a look at Sitka, in particular, we have extremely high housing, so we get a double-whammy.”
New housing is being built in most Southeast communities. Juneau tops the list with almost 1,200 units in the last ten years. Ketchikan is next with 366, and Sitka third with 291. But Meilani Schijvens’s report suggests that it’s not enough to cure the shortage, or to create affordability. Basically, the downward pressure of these economic factors is greater than the surge in jobs and wages. Southeast has lost over 4,000 residents in the last decade, and the strengthening economy is not bringing them back. State Department of Labor projections show 15,000 people leaving the entire state by 2050, with 12,000 coming from Southeast alone. But Schijvens and others at the Southeast Conference believe this trend reversible, like the Ghost of Christmas Future: a vision of what might happen that caused Ebenezer Scrooge to make significant changes now for the better.
Shijvens told the Southeast Conference meeting that there will always be a big upside to living in the region.
“We know Southeast Alaska is an incredible place to live, an incredible place to raise families,” said Schijvens. “We know that the main reason people live here or stay here is for access to just absolutely world-class recreation. We know that people who are from here are more likely to stay here long term, and we know that people absolutely love living here for the high quality of life that Southeast Alaska has to offer.”
