Juneau needs more housing

Juneau’s primary economic limitation — a chronic lack of sufficient housing — is also its oldest economic challenge.

In 1895 Miner Bruce conducted the U.S. Census for Juneau. He wrote: “Juneau is rightly called the metropolis. Whether she will retain this prestige remains to be seen. If so, one of two things must occur. She must plane down the sides of her mountains or erect skyscraping buildings with elevators to accommodate her populace, for nearly every foot of available ground is already occupied.”

Juneau’s housing shortage and high costs have been consistently documented since 1885, but the drivers of our housing crisis shift every few decades or so. Juneau has actually done a good job creating new housing. Between 2014 and 2024 we have added 1,300 new housing units to the community, building just over 100 new homes per year. Yet over the same period the Juneau population shrank by 2,000 residents, and still our housing crisis persists. 

The reason is our aging populace. Due to shifting demographics, our community suddenly has significantly fewer children — 1,200 fewer over the past decade — who lived with their parents. In the same period, through aging in place, we've gained 2,100 residents aged 65 and older, a demographic more inclined toward single-person households. Between 2013 and 2023 we have added 1,300 “living alone” households to the community — including 870 one-person senior households — entirely erasing all of the housing gains we achieved through the last decade of housing construction. 

Meanwhile, the cost and limited availability of housing are chasing away young families and people of workforce age. In a 2025 survey, 85% of Juneau employers said that housing issues directly cause turnover and deter potential hires from moving to the community. The Alaska Department of Labor projects this trend will continue and that we are going to lose another 3,000 people by 2045 — but this is an outcome we can change. 

We need a large-scale housing vision that will simultaneously provide professionals opportunities to move here with their families, attract new workers, provide more options for our seniors to stay in Juneau, alongside solutions geared toward the creation of housing for lower-income residents. By expanding the overall housing supply, market pressures will ease, leading to increased affordability across the board. A regional concept for more housing development is the #1 priority of the new five-year Southeast Alaska economic plan. 

In James Michener’s book "Alaska," set in the early 1900s, the story’s young protagonist comes to Juneau and tries to find a place to live. “Usable land was so scarce and precious in Juneau that Tom was unable to find either a house already built or land on which to move, and although he liked the town and considered the mountains which edged it into the sea picturesque, he began to despair of ever finding a place there in which to live.” Tom never does find reasonable housing—a situation mirroring today's young families who leave Juneau, unable to find or afford homes.

In order for Juneau to have an economy capable of further growth, there simply needs to be a much higher level of housing abundance. It will be hard, it will be expensive and will take good leadership, but it will mean that Juneau can once again be attractive to the young people we so desperately need to secure our economic future. 

• Meilani Schijvens is the owner of Rain Coast Data. She has more than 20 years of professional and academic experience with Southeast Alaska's economic, transportation and natural resource issues.