It took Laura Jones and her husband Eammon three months to find a place to live in Rapid City.
Living in Wisconsin, more than 12 hours from the Black Hills, they rented the only place that allowed them to complete the process virtually.
The couple started looking in February 2020, a month before the COVID-19 pandemic shook the world and resulted in unprecedented rises in housing prices and rent and a dramatic decrease in inventory.
“It was incredibly frustrating,” Laura recalled.
Laura and Eammon, however, are luckier than most.
“We are middle-class people. We could spend a little more than we wanted to on rent and had enough to put down a deposit and a month’s rent,” Laura said. “I can’t imagine what some other people are facing.”
Laura’s hope is to make housing easier for both individuals and businesses.
For nearly two years, Laura has been working on the area’s housing challenges as Elevate Rapid City’s Housing and Community Development Manager. Her goal is to identify issues, create strategies to improve housing and help others navigate the process. It is a role she has been building towards for over a decade.
After earning her master’s in public administration in 2013, Laura worked for the state doing benefits administration for programs like Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
“I had a lot of interactions with low-income individuals through that, and I always keep them in the back of my mind when I am working on a lot of these things,” Laura said.
Laura moved from benefits administration to grants working for the University of South Dakota, the YMCA, and an engineering firm where she began dabbling in all areas of housing. “I was consulting municipalities on funding instruments for infrastructure projects – water, sewer, street projects and gathering information as it relates to the construction of how a city works.”
Her background in grants and urban planning along with her own struggles to find a home, motivated her to apply for Elevate’s first Housing Coordinator. Her hope was to help others avoid the difficulties she had when moving to Rapid City.
She is already making a difference.
“We are definitely going in the right direction. It just takes time,” she said. “It may appear that things aren’t changing, but since I started an insane number of apartments have been permitted and there is an even crazier number planned for the future.”
When Laura started, the “at time of delivery” or how full a complex is when doors open was 80 percent. “That means that apartments were already 80 percent rented when they opened.”
That was in January 2021.
The area’s percentage is now at 40 while the national average is 30 percent. “We’ve come a long way since then. We are steadily decreasing to a normal amount.”
Laura’s goal is to get people to think differently about housing.
She led efforts to join Peer Cities Network Housing Solutions, a national program out of NYU’s Furman Center to develop innovative and equitable local housing solutions. “We are one of five cities selected to participate in the program to help develop policy related to housing challenges.”
Areas of focus include environmentally sustainable development, mitigating displacement, equitable access to homeownership, and comprehensive housing planning.
The program is a great way to see what other small and mid-size communities are doing with housing and collaborate locally on new ideas. “We are all working toward the same thing which is to prevent displacement of low-income individuals out of their current housing. Our goal as the Rapid City team is trying to figure out what could be causing people to be displaced or evicted.”
The team can then identify solutions that would work in Rapid City.
The city has made strides in housing with some mixed-use developments like Block 5 on the corner of St. Joseph and 5th Street, and the new Elements complex on St. Joseph. However, there are more opportunities. “I would really like Rapid City to work toward more infill, especially downtown. It would hit a lot of points that people have complaints about.”
Laura referenced the book “The Death & Life of Great American Cities” by Jane Jacobs, a book that inspired Laura’s interest in planning and housing. Although Jacobs was not a planner, she understood planning concepts and identified the concept of “eyes on the street” as a key to a successful community. “This is where density comes into play,” Laura said. “With more people around, it keeps you safe and makes your community more vibrant. You have neighbors to talk to and lots of activity going on,” she said. “It just makes sense.”
Rapid City has plenty of opportunities for redevelopment and adaptive reuse. However, this requires both a change in mindset and a change in municipal policies, another area Laura is working toward. “We do need changes that allow for more flexibility and density. There are really cool things that can be turned into something new like housing and creating that mixed-use space.”
While Laura looks at the area’s housing issues as whole, she focuses efforts on working with businesses whose employees may be struggling to find a place to live. “This is where my position really comes back to economic development, making sure there is enough housing for the employees of businesses, both current and future.”
Laura wants to partner with developers on an idea to block off apartments that would be available for an employer to offer to employees. She keeps up on new developments and building permits and keeps current on all the housing-related economic indicators. “I help developers navigate the city systems, keeping them in the loop for funding opportunities that would be a good fit for their projects.”
Always a visionary, Laura looks for innovative ways to deal with housing including companies that print 3D houses with concrete. Although not new technology, it would be something new for Rapid City. “There are creative solutions to address housing supply that aren’t being implemented here to their full extent.”
Rapid City’s housing challenges are not unique. Everywhere in the country is facing similar issues.
“Housing prices really skyrocketed during the pandemic and still now in its aftermath housing is really difficult to obtain and unaffordable for a lot of people,” Laura said.
Laura’s hope is for the community to work together to find creative solutions.
While there is a long list of challenges and opportunities, Laura said much more that can be accomplished through collaboration.
“I would say 90 percent of my job is collaborative. We need the community to work together,” Laura said. She works closely with developers, businesses, city officials, and foundations. “This isn’t just a one-person or one entity problem, and it is not something that one individual or one company can solve. It is fostering that collaboration and making sure we can work toward something.”