A recent study by the North Dakota Housing Finance Agency reflects the state’s already rapidly growing population is expected to grow to almost 842,000 people by the year 2025. Until the momentum of the Bakken boom, North Dakota’s population had peaked in 1930 at 680,845. Over the past decade population had declined by almost 6% due to a subsequent farm depression, epitomized by the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.
Responding to a potential 25% increase over the next 13 year, Governor Jack Dalrymple has advocated boosting state subsidies for public works projects and low income housing. It’s anticipated that statewide demand for new apartments and homes will rise by 30% with the most acute demand in western North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields. The Housing Finance Agency’s impact study predicts that three key counties in the heart of the Bakken could grow from a current population level of 32,000 to more than 73,000.
All of this grow translates to the construction of more than 6,000 housing units per year for the next 15 years in order to keep pace with an average growth rate of 4,300 people per year. From 2000 to 2010, North Dakota housing stock grew at an average rate of @ 2,300 homes.
The North Dakota Legislature last year approved $15 million in state income tax credits to subsidize construction of low-income housing. It’s the governors intention to request the state’s legislature to raise the current allotment to $20 million as well as set aside $30 million from the state owned Bank of North Dakota for affordable housing incentives. Many residence in the Oil Patch have seen their rents rise dramatically as competition for housing intensifies. Dalrymple anticiaptes a separate initiative to provides grants to growing counties and cities for equipment and construction of public works (water and sewer lines) from current levels of $135 million to $150 million.
