Affordable Housing For Prison Staff?

CHEYENNE -- The state Department of Corrections is taking matters into its own hands to try to solve one of the issues causing a worker shortage at the Wyoming State Penitentiary.

The agency is soliciting proposals from contractors to build 50 residential housing units in Rawlins for State Penitentiary employees.

Bob Lampert, the department director, said Wednesday that lack of available and affordable housing is a major barrier to filling vacant positions at the state's prison for men. More than one-third of the 322 authorized security positions at the Rawlins have been vacant.

The department, Lampert said, has been working with the city of Rawlins on the housing problem, but progress has been slow.

“We need to have immediate and designated housing for our staff,” he told Gov. Dave Freudenthal and other elected state officials sitting as the State Building Commission.

If the contractors respond favorably to the department's request for proposals to build the houses, the plan is for the state to lease them and then sublease them to prison employees.

The state attorney general's office said the leasing plan is legal, even if the houses do not have 100 percent occupancy, Lampert said.

He said he also spoke to Sen. Phil Nicholas, R-Laramie, co-chairman of the Joint Appropriations Committee, who agrees with the concept.

State Treasurer Joe Meyer said Rawlins over-built housing in the 1980s. In the energy bust that followed, the city had a surplus as people walked away from their houses.

Jackson Star