by Shea Smith / photo courtesy of Canva
City commissioners of Manhattan met Tuesday, May 11 to review requests for new private workforce housing grant requests. Funding for these requests comes from the Workforce Housing Sales Tax (WHST) program.
This helps to encourage private development of a variety of housing structure types within a defined workforce housing range, of which Manhattan needs 3,500 to 4,000 more over the next 20 years, according to Stephanie Peterson, Director of Planning and Development.
“We know that the availability and the affordability of housing is one of the top concerns of the individuals wanting to relocate to Manhattan. So we know that for businesses, in order for them to attract employees, they need to make sure that there is a reasonable amount of housing available.
And then the price of that home is also within that reasonable range and affordability. Obviously, there’s a lot of different ways that you can define that. There’s even different communities define it in a different way. But that’s why we have that defined workforce housing range, so that when we say workforce housing, we all know kind of what that price point is,” Ms. Peterson said.
The WHST, passed in 2024, specifically looks for a mix of rental and owner-occupied units, with projects that utilize existing public infrastructure given preference.
Since 2024, the city has awarded three projects under this tax, all currently under construction. Tuesday’s meeting was to determine if they would go forward with the one project that had been submitted for the grant this cycle.
Formal applications are accepted every April and October, though project managers can submit preliminary applications outside of those months.