Hey it’s Slav.
The Air Force plans to spend close to $7 billion rebuilding JBER. New facilities, new infrastructure, room for aircraft and missions they won't fully describe, with construction running roughly 2027 through 2035.
More planes, more people, more paychecks landing in Anchorage.
Now the number that actually touches your street: base family housing is 98 percent full. Almost everyone new who gets stationed here has to live off base, and JBER already pushes about $10 million a month into Anchorage rents and mortgages.
Anchorage is short roughly 3,500 homes.
That's the collision.
The biggest construction project in this city's future is landing on a housing market with nothing to spare. Here's my read on what it means, from the desk where I do this every day:
If you own, your house sits in a market where demand has a floor under it for the next decade.
If you rent, the competition for your unit is about to include people with housing allowances that reset every year.
And if you've been waiting to buy, understand who you'll be bidding against: arriving military families can use a VA loan, zero down, and the ones who've done their homework use it on a duplex or fourplex, not a starter home. The math favors whoever moves first.
What I'm watching next: the defense bill's Alaska line items, the mayor's housing resolution, and where the first construction contracts land. When those move, you'll hear it here.
The clocks:
Aug 31: the state decides whether oil revenue triggers about $115 million in extra school funding, $32 million of it for Anchorage.
Fall: GVEA's new assistance program opens, direct grants up to $750 toward overdue electric bills for Interior members. The date lands here when it's announced.
Hit reply and tell me which one you are: own, rent, or shopping. I read every reply.