Housing market an 'anomaly' in Carbon County

Supply and demand of homes in Carbon County is presenting a real problem in the Carbon County housing market, according to an Aug. 22 presentation aimed to discuss housing issues in Saratoga.

According to census data, rent for an apartment in Carbon County rose 218 percent within 10 years. Rent for a house rose 243 percent in the same amount of time.

Mark Ames, a project manager for the Bureau of Land Management Rawlins Field Office, and an extensive background in real estate, those percentages are unusual.

An apartment, should have gone up 100 percent in 12 years, but it went up 218 percent,” Ames said. “Carbon County is an anomaly. It is a strange place and it is result it some real problems in the market.”

Ames said the simple problem is supply and demand of housing in the area.

“We are tied into this one big problem. We don’t have enough supply, and folks are hear and more folks are coming,” Ames said.

Ames and others in the housing taskforce meeting also discussed the issue of energy projects increasing the number of people coming to Carbon County.

According to a gravity model complied by the Voices of the Valley earlier this year, three big energy projects, DKRW, Continental divide Creston and the Choke Cherry Wind Farm project, will bring in at least 16,000 employees into the county.

VOV executive director KayCee Alameda said there is not enough housing in all of Carbon County to facilitate that workforce.

Looking at potential housing in an area from Rock Springs to Laramie and Bairoil to Craig, Colo., 200 people would not be able to find housing, according to the gravity model, Alameda said.

Alameda said the concern with the potential influx of workers is the impact it could have on the Platte Valley’s tourism industry, a top industry for the area.

“If we can’t have hotel rooms, camp grounds and cabin rentals available for this sustainable economy we already have, it’s pretty scary,” she said.

In the Aug. 22 meeting, attendees broke off into two groups to discuss solutions to the housing issues in Carbon County and Saratoga.

Alameda said a solution may be using man camps, housing that could potentially be repurposed.