Sheridan Families Are Falling Far Short of the Median Home Price

SHERIDAN — The people who teach local children, treat patients, and keep the streets safe are finding it harder and harder to buy homes in the community they serve.

Sheridan is working to address that gap for what housing advocates call the “missing middle” — working households that earn too much to qualify for assistance but not enough to afford a typical home in their own town.

The median listing price in Sheridan is about $585,000, according to Realtor.com. The county’s median household income is about $72,000, according to U.S. Census data.

Even with no monthly debt and a sizeable $30,000 down payment, a household at that income level would qualify for a mortgage of only about $336,679, according to an estimate from U.S. Bank’s mortgage calculator.

After factoring in the down payment, the buyer would still come up short by nearly the price of another home — about $218,321 — when trying to purchase a median-priced house.

That leaves essential workers such as nurses, teachers, law enforcement officers, and manufacturing employees facing an impossible equation.

Where are they supposed to live?

The shortage is already making it harder for local employers to recruit and keep workers.

It is also shutting out people who earn solid wages and want to return to Wyoming, only to find the market beyond their reach.

In Sheridan, several groups are trying to respond from both nonprofit and market-based angles.

Reaching The Missing Middle

On the nonprofit side, Habitat for Humanity of the Eastern Bighorns has finished 30 homes in Sheridan’s Weston Village development.

The homes there are priced from $231,500 to $295,000, with income caps of $90,720 for one person or $129,600 for a family of four.

Christine Dieterich, executive director of Habitat of the Bighorns, said the ceiling is set at 120% of area median income, adjusted for household size under federal Department of Housing and Urban Development guidelines.

The target was shaped by conversations about which workers are being priced out of the local market — nurses, educators, emergency responders, and people in the trades.

One of the first buyers in Weston Village was an intensive-care nurse who had previously worked as a travel nurse and whose family has three generations of roots in Sheridan, Dieterich said.

“She couldn’t afford to buy anything here until our homes opened up,” Dieterich said. “So, now she’s been able to buy a home.”

For that young single woman, becoming a homeowner also challenged what she thought was possible on one income.

“She didn’t think, as a single woman with one income, that she would ever be able to buy a home without finding a life partner,” Dieterich said.

Habitat’s traditional homeownership program has generally served households earning up to 80% of area median income.

By adding a housing land trust, the organization can extend its reach to more of the workforce — helping households that earn more but still cannot afford a home.

“We’re trying to address that missing middle through this extension of our program, by adding the housing land trust as part of our model,” Dieterich said.

Affordable For The Next Buyer

The land trust model does more than lower the cost for the first buyer.

Habitat keeps ownership of the land forever and leases it to the homeowner, who owns the house itself. The ground lease limits resale prices and requires future buyers to meet income guidelines.

“So, the investment of the community is a one-time investment that lives on with each subsequent homeowner,” Dieterich said.

Reaching that lower price point required public support and fundraising.

The city committed $1.5 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds, Dieterich said, helping make land and infrastructure available for the project.

Habitat also raised $1.8 million to fill the gap between construction costs, including basic infrastructure, and what buyers could pay.

“That $1.8 million we raised will stay in this subdivision and impact the next 30 buyers,” Dieterich said. “And the next 30 buyers — it just rolls over.”

Homeowners still gain equity under the model.

Habitat’s formula allows for 2.5% annual appreciation, along with mortgage principal paid down and capital improvements.

But buyers cannot purchase at a subsidized price and then capture an unrestricted market windfall later.

“We have a formula we use that determines what the max resale is,” Dieterich said. “So, it will always be available below market rate, and will always be available to an income-qualified buyer.”

A Different Equation

Elsewhere in town, Story House Village is taking a different, market-oriented approach to workforce housing.

Its original concept called for a neighborhood made up of 20% attainable workforce housing, 60% market-rate homes, and 20% higher-priced homes, with the more expensive units helping offset the attainable ones.

Story House serves as the master developer, preparing land and infrastructure for other builders rather than constructing the houses itself.

At the moment, its workforce-housing effort is centered on Block Six, where the company is seeking a partner to develop multifamily rentals.

Final rents and a development partner have not yet been set, and the eventual housing mix may differ from the original vision.

Still, Sean Higgins, who is leading the project, said the company remains committed to the workforce-housing piece and is actively looking for partners willing to help address Sheridan’s housing shortage.

Even if the final mix changes, Higgins said the project would still expand housing choices in a market where shortages reach across income brackets.

“All product on the market is good, because it will allow for people to upsize and downsize accordingly,” he said. “And right now Sheridan’s biggest challenge is just the housing scarcity that’s facing multiple income brackets and housing levels.”

He said adding options is not the same as making homes affordable for everyone.

“For Sheridan to thrive, Sheridan needs to focus on those starter homes,” he said. “And I would say mid-level entry type homes for young working professionals, that’s what we see as the largest gap in Sheridan and other places in the Mountain West is something that a two-earner household can step into and afford.”

A Personal Stake

For Higgins, affordable housing is more than a business issue.

When he was about 6, he was homeless after his parents divorced.

His mother, who has multiple sclerosis, was raising four children. The family spent time camping before church members helped connect them to subsidized housing.

His mother shielded him from the hardship, so he remembers that period as a kind of extended summer adventure. Only later did he understand how unstable the situation really was.

Years later, a film project in Sheridan brought those memories into sharper focus.

Higgins, a University of Wyoming graduate who later studied acting at Yale, was working on the narrative film “Early Light,” about veterans and the healing power of horses.

During filming, conversations around the campfire turned to the veterans’ own lives.

Several described living week to week in hotels or other temporary places, Higgins said.

That reminded him of his father, a Vietnam War veteran who, like the man Higgins was speaking with, spent the last 15 or so years of his life living in hotels and motels.

“As you can imagine, a single mother raising four kids is a challenging endeavor in and of itself,” Higgins said. “Then you add housing scarcity to the equation, and holding down multiple jobs … so it became deeply personal to me after my father had passed.”

Finding The Right Partner

For Block Six, Story House is in discussions with prospective partners both inside and outside Wyoming.

Higgins wants a developer who understands financing tools that can make lower-cost rentals work financially.

He said the company is open to selling the ground below market value or joining a partnership to help make the workforce housing portion possible. The eventual rents, however, will depend on the project and partner that emerge.

He also sees room to work with Habitat someday.

“We believe that Habitat is the exact type of partner who could partner with Story House and create a pathway for some of that attainable, affordable housing product,” he said.

For now, the two efforts are at different points. Story House is still searching for the right partner for its planned rentals, while Weston Village is complete and nearly sold out. Habitat is already moving on to its next project in Buffalo.

For the young nurse who bought in Weston Village, homeownership did not have to wait for a spouse and a second paycheck after all.

Through both nonprofit and market-driven efforts, Sheridan is trying to make that same opportunity available to more of the people who keep the town running.