Page 6 ■ Thursday, November 24, 2011


BAKKEN NEWS


Oil boom raises rents in N.D., pushes seniors out


By JAMES MacPHERSON Associated Press


WILLISTON -—After living all of


her 82 years in the same community, Lois Sinness left her hometown this month, crying and towing a U-Haul packed with her every possession. She didn’t want to go, but the rent on her $700-a-month apartment was going up almost threefold because of height- ened demand for housing generated by North Dakota’s oil bonanza. Other seniors in her complex and across the western part of the state are in the same predicament. “Our rents were raised, and we did


not have a choice,” Sinness said. “We’re all on fi xed incomes, living mostly on Social Security, so it’s been a terrible shock.” It’s an irony of the area’s economic


success: The same booming develop- ment that made North Dakota virtu- ally immune to the Great Recession has forced many longtime residents to abandon their homes, including seniors who carved towns like Williston out of the unforgiving prairie long before oil money arrived. In addition to raising the rent, Sin-


ness’ landlords were going to require even long-term tenants to pay a $2,000 deposit. She fl ed for a cheaper apart- ment in Bismarck, beyond the oil patch, where her daughter also lives. Her new home is 230 miles away. Thanks to new drilling techniques


that make it possible to tap once-un- reachable caches of crude, a region that used to have plenty of elbow room is now swarming with armies of workers. Nodding pumps dot the wide, mostly barren landscape. But because it has limited housing,


the area is ill-prepared to handle the in- fl ux of people. The result is that some rents have risen to the level of some of the nation’s largest cities, with modest two-bedroom apartments commonly going for as much as $2,000. The skyrocketing cost of living is all the talk at the senior center in down- town Williston. “Grandma can’t go to work in the


oil fi elds and make a 150 grand a year,” said A.J. Mock, director of the Williston Council for the Aging. Many of the se- niors who are moving out “have lived


Associated Press


Alton and Mary Lou Sundby take a break during a move into a senior housing complex in Williston on Oct. 27


here their entire lives and wanted to live here until they die.” Ellavon Weber, 88, is getting elbowed


out of the state entirely. She’s reluc- tantly moving to Arizona, where two of her three children live, leaving behind friends, her church and her weekly aer- obics classes, as well as pinochle games and quilting bees. She said she will even miss the brutal winters. “I thought I’d be in North Dakota


the rest of my life, but evidently, that’s not the case,” Weber said. Drilling operations have trans-


formed the area, which now resembles an industrial park. Previously uncon- gested highways and city streets are clogged with 18-wheelers. Some workers live in tents, cars and


campers. Hotels are booked for months. Just a handful of homes were listed for sale in October in Williston, includ- ing a humble mobile home priced at $149,500. Two mobile home parks that were abandoned after the last oil bust are now full. In most of the surrounding towns,


temporary housing camps have sprung up. Because many of them are little more than dormitories made out of shipping containers, some communi- ties have banned them for sanitary and


safety reasons. Flooding that damaged thousands


of homes in nearby Minot last summer has exacerbated the housing shortage. Developers have been slow to build


more apartments, largely because they got stung by the region’s last oil boom when it went bust in the 1980s. About 1,000 new housing units are planned for this year, but no one expects them to make a real dent in demand. Local offi cials are “turning over ev-


ery rock to see if we can fi nd a solution,” Mayor Ward Koeser said. But “nothing has been found yet.” He blamed the is- sue on supply and demand, and in some cases, greed and gouging. North Dakota law forbids capping


rental rates. And dozens of low-income housing units built decades ago are now being used to house oil workers at high- er prices. Jolene Kline, director of the state’s


Housing Finance Agency, said landlords who have pulled out of the low-income program have fulfi lled legal require- ments to provide the housing for 15 or 30 years. But, she added, that doesn’t make it right. “You can’t put people in these situa-


tions, and in the worst cases, make them homeless because they can’t afford shel-


“Grandma can’t go to work in the oil fi elds and make


150 grand a year.” – Director of Williston Council for the Aging A. J. Mock


ter anymore,” Kline said. Eighty-year-old Mayo Miller hand-


delivered her rent check last month just so she could give her landlord a hug and thank her for not raising the rent. Miller’s rent has jumped just $200


in 20 years, to $550. She said that in- crease has been fair, especially since her apartment could easily fetch $3,000 a month from a homeless-but-moneyed oil worker. Nancy Hoffelt’s family owns the


apartment complex, and she remem- bers when tenants were in short supply just a few years ago. The family made a decision to keep rental rates within rea- son, especially for seniors. “You just realize that not everybody


out there is making money from oil,” Hoffelt said. Like many apartment owners in the


oil patch, Hoffelt no longer answers the telephone. “We don’t have vacancies,” she said.


“When we’d get calls, their stories were just heart-wrenching.” Alton and Mary Lou Sundby, both in their early 70s, were notifi ed last month that their rent would nearly triple. The two were almost forced to move in with their children who live out of state. But an apartment opened recently at a se- nior housing complex where they had been on a waiting list for more than seven years. Mary Lou Sundby, who works part-


time with mentally challenged adults, said she never thought she would be ashamed of the town where she and her husband, a retired truck driver, were raised and raised their own family. “It just boils down to morals and


ethics,” she said. “And I think we’re los- ing those in our hometown and every- thing it stood for.” Sinness hopes she’ll eventually be


able to return to her hometown. She’s on a waiting list for an assisted-living com- plex for seniors. She also owns mineral rights on land where her grandparents homesteaded a century ago. Oil companies are now eyeing the


property for drilling, and she may reap oil royalties. “I’m going to be buried in Williston,


next to my husband, so I’m coming back dead or alive,” she said. “But I’ll never pay $2,000 for rent.”


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