Mammoth, Bishop invest in new workforce housing units

Mammoth gets Innsbruck Lodge; Bishop gets Sterling Heights

It is almost impossibly hard to find a place to live in the Eastern Sierra due to a long-standing and worsening gap between the growing demand for housing and the local housing stock but slowly and surely, the two main towns in the region are beginning to re-balance the equation, not just by building new housing, but in acquiring already-built buildings for housing.

For example, just last week, on Aug.4, Mammoth Lakes Housing, Inc. closed escrow on the Innsbruck Lodge with the intent to convert the boutique hotel into 16 apartments.

“Tenant occupancy will occur before May 2023,” the Town said

in a recent update. “This acquisition is the result of a joint grant awarded to the Town of Mammoth Lakes and MLH for $4.56 million through the ‘Project Homekey’ Program. The Mono County Board of Supervisors also made a financial commitment, which bolstered the grant application. Unlike other Homekey projects that are restricted to very-low income, the Innsbruck Lodge will serve households earning up to 80 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI) who are struggling to find safe, affordable housing in our community. For a single-person household that is a maximum of $45,300.

Mammoth is also building out The Parcel, as noted in another article on this page, and it is working to get other, already-built units into use for workforce housing.

In Bishop, the former senior living center, the 68-unit Sterling Heights, which closed last year forcing all its residents to move, is now being converted to workforce housing by the City of Bishop.

The need for more housing overruled concerns about traffic and parking when the Bishop Planning Commission voted last week to clear the way for the former Sterling Heights assisted living building to be converted into rental apartments.

Aaron Schat has purchased the building and the home on the lot next door. He proposed creating a total of 69 “workforce housing” rental units, consisting of 58 studio apartments and 11 two-room suites. The application states the studios would rent for $1,000 a month with the suites going for $1,500 a month. The complex located at 369 East Pine Street will be renamed Sterling Studios.

Schat’s application states the goal of the project is to “sub-lease directly to local business to guarantee workforce housing.” For example, a business would secure a set number of units, then the business would make “its” units available to its employees or contractors.

During the meeting, Kelli Davis, CEO of Northern Inyo Hospital, said the hospital supports the development which could help provide additional workforce housing options for the hospital and other local employers. Toiyabe Indian Health Services sent a letter supporting the development for much of the same reasons.

Suggestions to tear down the home and add more parking or reduce the number of rental units were rejected by Schat and the commission, which approved the proposal 4-2.

To move forward with the project, Schat needed a conditional use permit that would allow for the conversion of the building to rental/workforce housing units, construction of a new parking lot, and reducing the parking requirement to just one parking space per unit, as opposed to the current zoning for the building which would require two parking spaces per unit.

Sterling Heights was the only assisted living facility within 150 miles of Bishop. It closed at the end of June, 2021 due to long-term financial issues and challenges associated with the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the company that owned and ran the facility.

Schat said he made the $14 million investment based on financial returns created by the 69 units rented at below current market rates. “This is the closest you can get to affordable housing in Bishop.”

Davis said the hospital currently rents properties in Bishop, but is still struggling to find rentals for traveling nurses and other employees. The lack of housing also hurts the hospital’s recruitment efforts. The hospital supports Schat’s project, which “could potentially meet the needs of the community,” she said. Everyone needs to “think outside the box” when it comes to Bishop’s housing shortage, she added.

The commission approved the conditional use permit and other related requirements by a 4-2 vote.

With additional reporting by Wendilyn Grasseschi, Mammoth Times reporter