The Haines Economic Development Corporation recently held a survey to address the housing needs of Haines residents. The Interim Director of the HEDC shared some preliminary findings after the conclusion of the survey.

The Haines Economic Development Corporation housing survey ran from December of last year until the 18th of January. The survey was constructed in 2021 by the Haines Housing Working Group. Interim Executive Director Cindy Zuluaga Jimenez explains what form the survey took and what information was gathered.

“We have received fantastic feedback, actually, I’m quite impressed by the number of responses that we’ve received on the survey. It’s actually a three-part survey, which was pretty fun. I won’t call it an informal survey, but it was an online voluntary survey.

The first part was on demographics. So trying to understand what the demographics of Haines are right now. And then the answers that we’ve gotten is age ranges, who are homeowners, and what age range those are, income levels, if they chose to write those down, that was a voluntary response along with everything else. And also, one of the biggest aims of the survey was to figure out if people want to buy, would you prefer to rent? If you do want to rent, how many bedrooms? What are you looking at? What is your limit? How much of a percentage of your income do you want to use? If you are looking to buy what kind of home? Are you looking to buy? Are you looking to buy a three-bedroom home or a two-bedroom home? Or are you looking into buying land and then building your own home on it? So we’re kind of trying to gather all that information and put it in data is easy to analyze for future decisions of the borough?

The second part of the survey was geared towards a sentiment, what is the sentiment of Haines in regards to the housing. And this is actually quite an interesting thing. We’re going to do sentiment analysis on the text that came in from that survey. So community members were able to express how on a scale, how affordable is Haines and to live? Do you think that you are able to afford a home in Haines? If you do have a home in Haines, how satisfied are you with that home? Are you looking to improve your home? Or if you’re not satisfied? Why are you not satisfied? Is it too far from town? Does it not have enough space? Isn’t that ADA-compliant?

And then the third part is aimed more at community cooperation do we have in business kind of an asset mapping of the community. It’s do we have carpenters and plumbers, and electricians that are willing to participate in a home-building program that’s aimed at helping locals to build their own home in the loss of a purchase? Do we have any interest from the community in participating in a focused community gathering in regards to what the next steps of the borough should do? So I guess what I’m the whole point of the survey was to kind of get a real baseline which has not been conducted in Haines in regards to housing.”

Jimenez noted that Klukwan has conducted its own housing survey separate from the HEDC survey. In addition to the Haines townsite, responses came from Mosquito Lake, out the highway, Mud Bay, and Lutak. 90% of responses were from full-time residents. Although Jimenez still needs to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the collected data, she shares some preliminary information.

“So the majority of the responses came from homeowners and renters, which is to be expected. The majority of Haine live within a nuclear family so that includes your immediate siblings and close family….40% of the survey participants pay between 11 and 20% of their monthly income towards housing, which is at the threshold for affordable housing is 30%.”

Among the information gathered were the three most important factors to Haines residents when selecting their homes.

“The first one 94.2% says it’s close to work, which I think the nation could agree to that. The subset of that specified within town, so being close to town is the second most important thing. And the third most important thing is cost within budget. So those three are kind of the most expected things in terms of housing in general.” Jimenez said.

After the housing data is analyzed, Jimenez says the next step is presenting it to the Borough.

“So we are preparing a report for the borough that will show all these three analyses, demographics, sentiment analysis, and then we’re going to put in this report options moving forward that the borough, so we’re going to suggest, according to the data and the community feedback, ways that the borough can move forward in expanding on that feedback.”

Originally the deputy director, Jimenez became Interim Director after the previous Director, Lee Hart, submitted her resignation last month. Jimenez says the separation was on amicable terms and the HEDC board has not yet made any decisions about permanently filling the Director position. For more information regarding the survey, contact the HEDC at (907) 766-3130.