Beltrami County storm damage highlights housing need in greater Minnesota
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It’s been almost three months since a microburst storm cell tore through Beltrami County, producing straight-line winds equal to a Category 3 hurricane. It toppled an estimated 9 million trees, tore roofs off buildings and knocked out power for tens of thousands.
Complicating matters further, Beltrami County is one of the poorest counties in Minnesota. Housing is hard to find. And the storm made that challenge even greater.
Many displaced by the big blowdown are still having trouble finding places to live. Economics in the region play a part but it also represents an issue in rural Minnesota, housing is hard to find.
Lisa Mattson is a single mother of two young children. When the storm hit Bemidji, the family hunkered down in the laundry room of their third-floor apartment. After it passed Mattson was met by a scene right out of the movie “Titanic” — water was everywhere.
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“It was just coming out of the ceiling and going down the stairway,” she said. “We were ankle deep in the water, like walking out of the building.”
Mattson’s mother Karen was also living in the same building but a different apartment. She said three days later the building management company contacted her.
“I got a notice that said all the people in apartments zero to six, you need to vacate the building by Friday,” she said. “So, we had, you know, two days, and if we didn’t take our things, or whatever we didn’t take would be considered abandoned.”
Later, the Fargo, N.D.-based management company gave the family three additional days to move their things. Karen Mattson eventually landed in a townhouse after there was a sudden opening. However, Lisa has had a harder time finding a new place. As a result, she’s been staying with her mom.
Beltrami County’s Health and Human Services director is Anne Lindseth. She said the county needs housing at all levels across the entire housing continuum. That includes single-family homes, multifamily homes, low-income housing and rentals. There’s also issues with the current housing stock that’s out there.
“Much of it was built more than 30 years ago, so we have issues with the housing that we do have available needing to be updated, having challenges around things like roofs, plumbing, because it’s aged and sometimes it’s not kept up to date,” she said. “Some of our renters are really struggling with having to have multiple fixes to that aged housing.”
Lindseth said many area residents continue to deal with the storm’s aftereffects.
“Ultimately, there’s a lot of homes and apartment buildings in town that are still undergoing some very significant repair work,” she said. “And some that are waiting for that significant repair work to be done where there’s no resources to pay for the work.”
And she doesn’t see that changing anytime soon.
“There’s going to be a continued effect from the storm around housing and the quality of housing that people are staying in, which is a particular concern as the cold weather approaches,” she said.
Lindseth said Bemidji, with a population of about 16,000, needs more than a thousand new housing units to meet demand.
Housing shortages are typical in rural Minnesota, even as the population there is on the decline.
“It was funny when we would talk to legislators, you know, they were always like, ‘How can you have areas of population decline and a housing shortage?’” said Kelly Asche, senior researcher at the Center for Rural Policy and Development.
He attributes Minnesota’s rural housing shortage to several factors.
The first is construction costs. A home costs the same to build whether it’s in the city or the country. But developers can charge more in the city for the same home.
There’s also aging populations. As rural baby boomers get older and leave the workforce they're holding onto their homes — giving younger workers fewer places to live. And as they get older keeping up with the home’s maintenance becomes an issue.
Ashche said more needs to be done to entice developers to rural areas.
“Get comfortable with the government probably getting a bit involved in either subsidizing or helping provide incentives for developers to do this,” he said.
Asche added developers go where they can make the most profit. And where there's the least amount of risk.
“How can municipal governments or county governments reduce that risk and make it a little bit more alluring?" he said.
According to the nonprofit Minnesota Housing Partnership, the state needs more than 100,000 more affordable homes. With just under a third of the state’s population living rurally that’s not going to be easy, given the disincentives for developers that Asche said are barriers.
Minnesota Housing Finance Agency Commissioner Jennifer Ho said the statewide housing shortage will take a statewide solution.
“We just have to kind of tackle this as an all of Minnesota challenge,” she said. “And partner with the Legislature to continue to get investments to help make housing more affordable all across the state."
And that might come down to a balancing act between developers and greater Minnesota.
“Wages aren’t rising as fast as housing costs,” Ho said. “Sometimes for even a new home that we build, its appraisal is lower than the cost of building.”
Ben Winchester is a rural sociologist with the University of Minnesota Extension office. He said homes have a massive amount of impact on local economies.
“If you have a single family home, or somebody’s making $150,000 they bring in $95,000 a year in economic activity, that’s private economic activity,” he said. “For me, the house is the launching point.”
Bemidji is currently working on two housing studies to better assess its needs and possible solutions. A housing summit will follow on Dec. 2 bringing together landlords, realtors, bankers, developers and nonprofit agencies to help combat the area’s housing shortage.
Meanwhile, Mattson is still in limbo with her housing situation. For the time being she’s been couch-surfing at her mom’s place with her kids.
She said she didn’t expect to be in this position three months after the blowdown.
“I was like, well, certainly before school starts, we will be out of my mom’s townhouse,” Mattson said. “And clearly that’s not the case.”
