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SEARHC is considering building rental housing for its employees in Wrangell.

The Southeast Alaska health care provider is sketching out plans to build housing on property it owns on Zimovia Highway, about 1,000 feet down the road from TK's Mini Mart.

SEARHC officials presented preliminary site layouts at a planning and zoning commission meeting on May 8, explaining the first phase would include eight rental units, with perhaps a dozen more rentals in the second phase.

The lot, which stretches uphill, is just under 3.3 acres.

Wrangell is short of housing, making it difficult for employers to recruit and retain workers.

The situation has tightened since SEARHC opened its $30 million Wrangell Medical Center in February 2021, creating new jobs in town. New hires moving to work at the medical center frequently post on the community Facebook page, looking for rentals.

A lack of housing throughout Southeast is frequently cited in business surveys as one of the area's biggest challenges.

The two SEARHC representatives who presented at the planning and zoning commission meeting said housing is a problem in every community the nonprofit serves. They said eight rentals solves the immediate problem for employee housing in Wrangell, as the nonprofit works to divvy up its investments in new housing to serve all of its communities.

City Hall officials have been discussing housing needs with the health care provider, Borough Manager Mason Villarma said in an interview. "I wouldn't say pushing, more collaborating."

The medical center and other operations employ almost 160 people in town, Villarma said. The Sentinel was unable to verify current employee and contractor counts with SEARHC.

"SEARHC is exploring opportunities to develop workforce housing in Wrangell as part of our broader strategy to support recruitment, retention and long-term sustainability across the region," Matt Carle, the senior system director of brand and engagement, said in an email last week.

"It's part of a systemwide effort to take a more intentional, long-term approach to employee housing."

The two representatives ran through three different site development options with commission members on May 8. "What you're seeing are some early-on conceptual planning," they explained.

The two walked the lot earlier in the day, explaining that the first phase would be built uphill, farthest from Zimovia Highway, so that utility lines installed for those initial housing units would be in place for the second phase.

"We don't want to do too much excavation on the hill," the representatives said of the site development layout, noting that they found bedrock on the hillside.

The second phase of a dozen units is not definite, the representatives said. It could be less than that, but not more.

Planning and zoning commission approval would be required for the development, which would include subdividing the parcel into two lots to better accommodate the two phases of construction.

The project would require a new access road from Zimovia Highway.

SEARHC would like to finish its site development plans this summer, the representatives said, and, if there are no delays, start site preparation and utilities by the end of the year.

SEARHC is expanding its operations in Juneau, Sitka and elsewhere in Southeast, responding to a growing need for health care services.

The health care provider's first housing development project was in Sitka, where it committed to spend more than $20 million to build more than 40 new housing units as part of its negotiations to expand the Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center and buy the city-owned community hospital building, which closed in 2019. SEARHC and the city successfully concluded the property purchase negotiations in 2022.

It advertised for bids last summer to build 16 units of rental housing in Craig.

"We're not interested in being in the real estate business, it's not what we do," Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center administrator Bill Spivey told the Sitka chamber of commerce in March. "We're in the health care business. We got involved in creating places to live because we had to," he said, as reported by Sitka public radio station KCAW.

Established in 1975, the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium is one of the largest Native-run health care organizations in the country, serving 26 communities across the region.