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A State With Plenty of Jobs but Few Places to Live
By MONICA DAVEY
WILLISTON, N.D. — When Joey Scott arrived here recently from Montana, he had no trouble finding work — he signed almost immediately with a company working to drill in the oil fields. But finding housing was another matter.
Every motel in town was booked, some for months in advance. Every apartment complex, even every mobile home park, had a waiting list. Mr. Scott found himself sleeping in his pickup truck in the Wal-Mart parking lot, shaving and washing his hair in a puddle of melted snow.
“I’ve got a pocketful of money, but I just can’t find a room,” said Mr. Scott, 25.
North Dakota has a novel problem: plenty of jobs, but nowhere to put the people who hold them.
The same forces that have resulted in more homelessness elsewhere — unemployment, foreclosure, economic misery — have pushed laid off workers from California, Florida, Minnesota, Michigan and Wyoming to abundant jobs here, especially in the booming oil fields.
But in this city rising from the long empty stretches of North Dakota, hundreds are sleeping in their cars or living in motel rooms, pup tents and tiny campers meant for weekend getaways in warmer climes. They are staying on cots in offices and in sleeping bags in the concrete basements of people they barely know.
North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, 4 percent, but advocates for the homeless say the number of people they see with nowhere to live — a relatively rare occurrence here until now — grew to 987 in 2009 from 832 in 2008, an increase of about 19 percent.
And the problem is certain to worsen this summer as oil companies call for more rigs and thousands more workers.
“It’s hard to know where this might end,” said E. Ward Koeser, the mayor of Williston, who met this month with the governor of North Dakota to plead for state help with the housing crisis. “It’s the one thing that sometimes wakes me up in the morning and doesn’t let me go to sleep,” he said, acknowledging that most mayors can only dream of having such a riddle.
Still, where will all these happily employed newcomers live?
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Koeser, whose city had about 12,000 people at last count, but may now be closer to 15,000. “We literally have no place.”
Cranes dot the city, proof that a building boom is under way, but not fast enough.
While the rest of the country was sinking into recession, North Dakota never did. Other states nursed budget deficits, but North Dakota, even now, has a surplus. The state has a wealth of other jobs. A rise in oil production here, especially, served as an antidote to any whiff of what the rest of the nation was witnessing.
Beneath an enormous expanse of land here, workers have pumped an ever-growing amount of crude oil from a formation called the Bakken, thanks in part to new horizontal drilling technology. Government estimates put the potential recoverable oil from the Bakken, which stretches into Montana, at 4.3 billion barrels.
Now, 109 oil rigs — with scores of workers for each — are drilling in North Dakota, and some officials say that figure could reach 150 this year.
In one of the least populated states in the nation, this sudden overcrowding has upended some axioms of ordinary life.
In motels here, some people have stayed so long that they know their neighbors down the hall. Dinner comes from a microwave. “It’s a horrible way to live,” said Chris Rosmus, a Minnesotan who moved into the Vegas Motel for a month and stayed a year and a half.
In the Buffalo Trails campgrounds, an odd assortment of wooden boards, tarps and pink foam insulation are pressed up around campers, desperate attempts to add shells against the bitter cold. Fred Wise, in a camper he called his “8-by-18-foot jail cell,” was watching “Dancing With the Stars” alone at a cramped table. He grimaced at memories of temperatures dipping well below zero during the six months he has been here, temperatures at which ice can form inside these campers or freeze a camper door shut. “You’ve got to man up for this,” said Mr. Wise, 58.
Families have been pressed and strained. Mercedes Allen, her boyfriend and their 4-month-old baby, Hunter, moved here from California. Their stay with relatives stretched on awkwardly. Her boyfriend was hired to the first oil job he sought, but the living arrangements — with four adults, two children and two babies all under one roof — grew tense. By early April, Ms. Allen said, her relatives had given her a week to move out.
“It hurts to have to say, ‘I found nothing again,’ ” Ms. Allen said, as her week was running out.
If the problems are bad for oil workers, who are well paid, they are worse for locals in less lucrative jobs, who have seen their rents soar.
There are still some houses for sale here, but many of the newcomers arrive from grim chapters — foreclosures, bankruptcies, layoffs. They have little hope of qualifying for mortgages.
In the end, a relative from California drove a 31-foot camper to North Dakota for Ms. Allen, and she moved by the appointed day. The camper sits in a mobile home park without working utility connections, like electricity, for now, but Ms. Allen said she was relieved. “At least we have our own place,” she said.
In desperation a few months ago, the city began allowing trailers, campers and skid shacks (nearly windowless portable homes) to park in one of the empty, overgrown trailer parks that had been abandoned after the last oil boom ended in the 1980s.
The more than 180 companies involved in the oil operations, including Hess, ConocoPhillips and Marathon Oil, are also concerned about housing. Some have rented out entire motels, and others are bringing in large, portable housing units — known as man camps — for workers to live on site, as Mr. Scott, the man sleeping in his truck, ultimately did.
Halliburton, with more than 300 employees in the area, has a 90-unit camp in place, and has asked to cart in a 158-bedroom camp used for the Winter Olympics. Some companies are helping workers make down payments on mobile homes.
For all of these struggles, few here say they wish to go back to where they came from.
Jana and Robert Stout stayed in motel after motel for four months, not finding one that could keep them for long. When Mr. Stout left for his oil job in the mornings, Ms. Stout climbed into her Buick and began the hunt for the next place. Often she sat much of the day in motel parking lots, waiting for vacancies to open up.
A few weeks ago, the Stouts got off a waiting list at a motel that had been booked for two years. They can stay there indefinitely for $450 a month. The room is tiny, big enough for a bed, a television and a hot plate. Ms. Stout’s grown daughter and granddaughter may need to stay on the floor, if they cannot find a place.
Still, the Stouts said they would never consider returning to Wyoming, where they used to live. “For what?” Ms. Stout said. “If I was home right now, I would be way worse. There is potential here.”
North Dakota Has Jobs Aplenty, but Little Housing - NYTimes.com
By MONICA DAVEY
WILLISTON, N.D. — When Joey Scott arrived here recently from Montana, he had no trouble finding work — he signed almost immediately with a company working to drill in the oil fields. But finding housing was another matter.
Every motel in town was booked, some for months in advance. Every apartment complex, even every mobile home park, had a waiting list. Mr. Scott found himself sleeping in his pickup truck in the Wal-Mart parking lot, shaving and washing his hair in a puddle of melted snow.
“I’ve got a pocketful of money, but I just can’t find a room,” said Mr. Scott, 25.
North Dakota has a novel problem: plenty of jobs, but nowhere to put the people who hold them.
The same forces that have resulted in more homelessness elsewhere — unemployment, foreclosure, economic misery — have pushed laid off workers from California, Florida, Minnesota, Michigan and Wyoming to abundant jobs here, especially in the booming oil fields.
But in this city rising from the long empty stretches of North Dakota, hundreds are sleeping in their cars or living in motel rooms, pup tents and tiny campers meant for weekend getaways in warmer climes. They are staying on cots in offices and in sleeping bags in the concrete basements of people they barely know.
North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, 4 percent, but advocates for the homeless say the number of people they see with nowhere to live — a relatively rare occurrence here until now — grew to 987 in 2009 from 832 in 2008, an increase of about 19 percent.
And the problem is certain to worsen this summer as oil companies call for more rigs and thousands more workers.
“It’s hard to know where this might end,” said E. Ward Koeser, the mayor of Williston, who met this month with the governor of North Dakota to plead for state help with the housing crisis. “It’s the one thing that sometimes wakes me up in the morning and doesn’t let me go to sleep,” he said, acknowledging that most mayors can only dream of having such a riddle.
Still, where will all these happily employed newcomers live?
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Koeser, whose city had about 12,000 people at last count, but may now be closer to 15,000. “We literally have no place.”
Cranes dot the city, proof that a building boom is under way, but not fast enough.
While the rest of the country was sinking into recession, North Dakota never did. Other states nursed budget deficits, but North Dakota, even now, has a surplus. The state has a wealth of other jobs. A rise in oil production here, especially, served as an antidote to any whiff of what the rest of the nation was witnessing.
Beneath an enormous expanse of land here, workers have pumped an ever-growing amount of crude oil from a formation called the Bakken, thanks in part to new horizontal drilling technology. Government estimates put the potential recoverable oil from the Bakken, which stretches into Montana, at 4.3 billion barrels.
Now, 109 oil rigs — with scores of workers for each — are drilling in North Dakota, and some officials say that figure could reach 150 this year.
In one of the least populated states in the nation, this sudden overcrowding has upended some axioms of ordinary life.
In motels here, some people have stayed so long that they know their neighbors down the hall. Dinner comes from a microwave. “It’s a horrible way to live,” said Chris Rosmus, a Minnesotan who moved into the Vegas Motel for a month and stayed a year and a half.
In the Buffalo Trails campgrounds, an odd assortment of wooden boards, tarps and pink foam insulation are pressed up around campers, desperate attempts to add shells against the bitter cold. Fred Wise, in a camper he called his “8-by-18-foot jail cell,” was watching “Dancing With the Stars” alone at a cramped table. He grimaced at memories of temperatures dipping well below zero during the six months he has been here, temperatures at which ice can form inside these campers or freeze a camper door shut. “You’ve got to man up for this,” said Mr. Wise, 58.
Families have been pressed and strained. Mercedes Allen, her boyfriend and their 4-month-old baby, Hunter, moved here from California. Their stay with relatives stretched on awkwardly. Her boyfriend was hired to the first oil job he sought, but the living arrangements — with four adults, two children and two babies all under one roof — grew tense. By early April, Ms. Allen said, her relatives had given her a week to move out.
“It hurts to have to say, ‘I found nothing again,’ ” Ms. Allen said, as her week was running out.
If the problems are bad for oil workers, who are well paid, they are worse for locals in less lucrative jobs, who have seen their rents soar.
There are still some houses for sale here, but many of the newcomers arrive from grim chapters — foreclosures, bankruptcies, layoffs. They have little hope of qualifying for mortgages.
In the end, a relative from California drove a 31-foot camper to North Dakota for Ms. Allen, and she moved by the appointed day. The camper sits in a mobile home park without working utility connections, like electricity, for now, but Ms. Allen said she was relieved. “At least we have our own place,” she said.
In desperation a few months ago, the city began allowing trailers, campers and skid shacks (nearly windowless portable homes) to park in one of the empty, overgrown trailer parks that had been abandoned after the last oil boom ended in the 1980s.
The more than 180 companies involved in the oil operations, including Hess, ConocoPhillips and Marathon Oil, are also concerned about housing. Some have rented out entire motels, and others are bringing in large, portable housing units — known as man camps — for workers to live on site, as Mr. Scott, the man sleeping in his truck, ultimately did.
Halliburton, with more than 300 employees in the area, has a 90-unit camp in place, and has asked to cart in a 158-bedroom camp used for the Winter Olympics. Some companies are helping workers make down payments on mobile homes.
For all of these struggles, few here say they wish to go back to where they came from.
Jana and Robert Stout stayed in motel after motel for four months, not finding one that could keep them for long. When Mr. Stout left for his oil job in the mornings, Ms. Stout climbed into her Buick and began the hunt for the next place. Often she sat much of the day in motel parking lots, waiting for vacancies to open up.
A few weeks ago, the Stouts got off a waiting list at a motel that had been booked for two years. They can stay there indefinitely for $450 a month. The room is tiny, big enough for a bed, a television and a hot plate. Ms. Stout’s grown daughter and granddaughter may need to stay on the floor, if they cannot find a place.
Still, the Stouts said they would never consider returning to Wyoming, where they used to live. “For what?” Ms. Stout said. “If I was home right now, I would be way worse. There is potential here.”
North Dakota Has Jobs Aplenty, but Little Housing - NYTimes.com
