On The Way?

YAKUTAT - With 682 predominantly Tlingit Yakutak residents counted in the 2010 Census, the City and Borough of Yakutat on the shores of the Gulf of Alaska in the state's southeast panhandle is, says the Bureau, the nation's 8th least populous county. On the other hand, at 9,643 square miles - six times the size of Rhode Island - the Census says its the 9th largest "county" in the United States.

So, it might surprise you that Yakutat is facing a housing crisis. As are, by the way, many predominantly Native Alaskan communities. "Every house in Yakutat is full whether it's habitable or not," Derek James, co-owner of Sitka Construction Solutions in Sitka some 277 miles southeast of Yakutat as a raven flies told Erin McKinstry and KCAW Radio (www.kcaw.org/2021/04/16/portable-sitka-built-mini-homes-may-help-regional-housing-crunch/). "I mean, unless the walls and the roof are falling down, there's probably somebody in it."

Overcrowding is not uncommon in Alaska, particularly in smaller towns and villages. In 2018 the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation's Alaska Housing Assessment (www.ahfc.us/application/files/3115/1638/5454/2018_Statewide_Housing_Assessment_-_Part_1_-_Executive_Summary_and_Housing_Needs_011718.pdf) reported that the statewide average of overcrowded units is twice the national rate "with nearly half of all households in some areas being overcrowded." Eighteen months later 43 percent of the 62 Alaska Native household's that responded to The Yakutat Tribal Housing Assessment Survey (www.regionalhousingauthority.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Yakutat-Tribal-Housing-Survey-Analysis.pdf) commissioned by the Tlingit Haida Regional Housing Authority said their homes were overcrowded.

So why, you might be asking, don't they just build more housing? Sensible question. A map answers it. To build a house in Yakutat, you need to order the building materials - the doors, the windows, the fixtures, the whole nine yards - to be barged up from Seattle about 1,100 miles away. Once supplies arrive, you have to import the electricians, plumbers, roofers, carpenters, dry-wallers and everyone else to put all those pieces together. "Prohibitely expensive," you might say if you were the one paying the bill.

It turns out that two young men born and raised in Yakutat and now living in Sitka - Derek James and his business partner partner Kris Karsunky - have a more effective and less expensive way to solve their hometown's problem. They call them "mini-housing" that, says KCAW, "bigger than a tiny house and smaller than a conventional one, but built to the same standards. There's a bedroom, small bathroom and basic kitchen." And energy-wise they expect they'll attain a 5-star rating.

Right now, Sitka Construction Solutions is building four homes using some of a $900,000 grant of HUD Indian Community Development Block Grant (www.kcaw.org/2020/08/07/yakutat-tlingit-tribe-awarded-cares-act-grant-to-build-energy-efficient-housing/) from the Tlingit Haida Regional Housing Authority awarded last year. Energy efficiency was a key goal of the grant to Yakutat. It's anticipated they'd be awarded a 5-star efficiency rating.

"The price per square foot to build in a rural community," says Derek James, "is pretty outrageous." Not these four homes. Why? Well, at 450 square feet the homes aren't McMansions. Costs also are lower because 95 percent of the work is done in Sitka where efficiencies are in place and there's no need to import and temporarily house and feed skilled craftspeople.

Once completed, the four essentially modular houses will be put-on a barge to set sail north to Yakutat. And the price at delivery? Around $125,000. Not bad, not bad at all when you realize that last August in Anchorage, reports the Alaska Association of REALTORS (www.connieyoshimura.com/reflections-on-the-2020-real-estate-market/), the average sales price for a home in August 2020 was $404,000.

In the small and isolated Native Alaskan villages, says Jackie Pata (www.kcaw.org/2020/08/04/cares-act-dollars-help-southeast-alaska-tribes-tackle-affordable-housing-issues/), president and CEO of the Tlingit and Haida Authority, overcrowding "is our way of dealing with homelessness." Thanks to two guys from Yakutat, it may not have to be.

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