Petersburg hospital rejects shared-kitchen lease for traveling staff

Petersburg Medical Center has dropped plans to lease a six-unit building with a shared kitchen and common area for traveling staff. The lesson that killed the idea came from two certified nursing assistants the hospital had housed together at Totem Arms, its older staff housing, who fell out over kitchen supplies. The dispute was about syrup.

The hospital's housing coordinator told the board Thursday that it had learned again how badly the arrangement works when people who don't know each other work 12-hour shifts and share a kitchen. Travel assignments run 12 to 13 weeks, she said, and staff need a studio or a one- or two-bedroom of their own.

The building had been operating as an Airbnb, and the agent wanted an answer faster than the hospital's attorney could finish reviewing the contract.

The facilities director brought the board an early alternative he had sketched himself: a two-bedroom, one-bath duplex with a garage and utility room, convertible to a triplex or fourplex if the hospital decides unit count matters more than parking. He would put it on undeveloped lots at the northwest corner of 13th Street, where wastewater service was recently stubbed in.

The site is original tundra. Building on it means digging eight to 10 feet down to reach material that will hold a foundation, backfilling with clean fill, obtaining a federal wetlands permit that requires buying land elsewhere in trade, and extending 13th Street to reach the lots. The rough budget runs above ordinary residential construction. The board took no action.

For now the hospital rents 22 units around town and still books an Airbnb when a specialist visits. The housing is not a free benefit; staff report it as taxable income.

Administrator Phil Hofstetter asked the board in July to treat housing as a workforce constraint and to look at grants, a borough partnership or buying houses in town. Other Alaska providers have built their own: Providence Kodiak put up a 16-unit project, and a bill advanced in the Legislature in February to let the state invest in workforce housing of five units or more. The National Rural Health Association warns that most rural providers don't have the resources to become landlords.

What the hospital would rather do is hire people who already live in Petersburg and don't need housing at all.