Watford City housing initiative has homes nearly ready to sell
Steve Hallstrom
Special to The Farmer
McKenzie County’s largest city is nearing completion on a housing initiative that will put nine new houses on the market in July.
The Farmer has followed this story from its inception, as the houses stand to help a housing crisis that has persisted for more than a decade. With a population surge driven first by the energy boom, then by organic community growth, the city faces a critical shortage of affordable homes, particularly for essential workers like teachers, hospital staff, and emergency services personnel.
Vawnita Best, Watford City’s Community & Business Development Director, has been a leading voice in the pilot project, which has brought together the Watford City Housing Authority, McKenzie County, and local builders.
“The community has seen itself in a housing shortage for 15 years now,” Best said. “We have taken a lot of different runs at how to get houses built in a space and in a market where transferable skills transfer into the energy industry so easily. Skilled contractors are hard to come by, and so are general contractors. They’re great partners for us, but we were really having a hard time getting to the affordability piece of rooftop creation in our city.”
To address this crisis, the Watford City Housing Authority launched the initiative last year, to construct nine single-family homes to hit the market in mid-July. This pilot project, funded in part by McKenzie County’s Job Development Authority (JDA), saw the Housing Authority act as the general contractor, overseeing construction while coordinating with three selected builders. Priced around $400,000, these homes target working families, a group struggling in a market where new construction costs have escalated dramatically.
“The Housing Authority requested funding from the JDA, and the county was a willing participant as a financial partner,” Best explained. “The Housing Authority led an RFP, a request for proposals, and anybody was eligible to apply. They went through the process and selected three builders, and the Housing Authority “generaled” it, and those three builders brought in their subs and built the houses.”
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