Home permits hit six-year low

Only two new homes were permitted for construction in rural Whitman County during the spring of 2011, according to a report issued Monday by Dan Gladwill, county building official.

One of those permits was for a stick-built home. The other was for a manufactured home.

The 2011 permit rate represents a six-year low in Whitman County home building. Over the previous five years, an average of nine homes were built in rural Whitman County during the second quarter.

“It looks like the recession has finally gotten to our doorstep,” Gladwill told commissioners during a briefing at their regular meeting Monday.

Commissioner Greg Partch noted cuts to the budget of Washington State University has reduced the demand for newly-built homes.

Gladwill added a lot of larger homes in the county have been built for professors at WSU over the past several years.

“A lot of the demand comes from that area,” said Gladwill.

The Legislature appropriated $108 million less to WSU for the 2011-13 biennium than it did in the last two years, a 26 percent reduction. The university will have to cut almost $50 million from its budget, with tuition and enrollment increases making up the remainder.

WSU officials told the Gazette earlier this year that cut could mean the elimination of some-700 jobs, about three percent of the county’s labor force.

Partch said he had noticed a large number of homes for sale in Colfax, indicating WSU cuts could hit the housing markets in communities like Colfax, Palouse and Garfield.

Gladwill also attributed the drop to a lack of availability of housing sites immediately surrounding Pullman.

In 2004, the county created several residential “clusters” around Pullman, areas where homes could be built closer together than if they were in the ag zone.

Gladwill said only three or four of the dozens of sites made available by the cluster creation were available for building.

Permits for remodeling were also down from the past several years. Gladwill issued 50 remodel permits during the second quarter, down from an average of more than 65 for the same period in the previous five years.

Value of that construction also saw a sharp drop. The 52 total permits issued by Gladwill totaled $2,101,501 of value, down from the 2008 high of $5.1 million and the five year average of $3.5 million.