Expert: Hilton Head needs 200 new housing units a year for workers. Are we even close?
If Hilton Head is to house the workforce it needs to keep its economy moving, it should build 200 affordable housing units a year, according to a housing consultant hired by the Town of Hilton Head Island.
Right now, construction isn’t matching that need.
From 2011 through 2017, there were 810 new housing permits issued — or an average of 116 per year, according to U.S. Census Bureau data on residential building permits.
The problem?
“All but 46 of these units were single-family homes,” the Lisa Sturtevant and Associates consulting team wrote in its housing needs study.
The island needs to provide workers homes in apartment complexes with amenities and a sense of community if it wants to attract the younger side of the workforce, Sturtevant said in her second public presentation to the town on Thursday.
In November, the team said the island would have to increase annual construction of all housing units — rentals and homes for sale —to 571 each year for ten years to keep up with demand.
The new target of 200 units a year is for rental units specifically designed to house the workforce, which Sturtevant says makes between $15,000 and $70,000 a year depending on the industry.
“(That’s) the range where the private sector has not delivered housing that is affordable,” she said.
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For affordable housing to work on the island, Sturtevant said it needs to be paired with transportation solutions that cut down on the over 16,000 employees who cross the Hilton Head bridge each day.
“The issue of housing is not one you can talk about without talking about transportation,” Sturtevant said to a room of about 25 members of the public and the public planning committee.
Community feedback on workforce housing
Area employers who attended the meeting offered examples of what the housing shortage really means.
“Everybody’s finding employees right now, but six weeks from now, everyone is going to be hurting for employees in the hospitality industry,” Rob Jordan, a partner of the SERG restaurant group said.
The group employs about 1,000 people and “40 percent of them live in Bluffton because they couldn’t afford to find a place to live” on Hilton Head. He said the public and private sectors will “have to work together on this.”
Sturtevant said one of the key findings so far has been that employers agree “a lack of lower-cost housing on the island is a significant impediment to employers,” and a “challenge to the quality of life and of service.”
“I employ mostly millennials,” Lucky Rooster Kitchen + Bar owner Clayton Rollison said. “I service mostly baby boomers ... .One of the things I don’t think we’ve done a good job of is being inclusive.”
Rollison said younger people who work in the restaurant industry don’t always feel welcome on the island. He said talking about workers as if they’re “widgets” to be moved to and from work “creates a very negative tone that (says) ‘you can’t be part of our community and you’re going to be brought here.’”
