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Prescott HR director tells committee housing shortage is blocking recruitment and raising costs
Summary
City HR director Brandon Nunez told the Prescott Workforce Housing Committee that local housing affordability is the primary barrier to hiring for specialized city roles, leaving 42 open positions on average and driving costly recruiting and onboarding cycles.
At a meeting of the Prescott Workforce Housing Committee, City of Prescott human resources director Brandon Nunez said housing affordability has become the city's largest obstacle to hiring and keeping specialized employees.
Nunez said the city once averaged about six open positions but "consistently we've had 42 positions" open since the pandemic, and that slow fills are common for specialized roles such as planners, plan reviewers and engineering technicians. "It can take us 3 to 6 months to fill them," he said, adding that candidates who review housing costs often withdraw from offers.
Why it matters: committee members said understaffing has direct operational impact across departments and recommended quantifying recruiting and retention costs to argue for targeted programs. Vice Chair Randy Goodman pressed staff to convert the problem into a dollars-and-cents figure that the city council can evaluate.
Nunez said the problem is acute for police recruiting as well: the department is "down 14 positions" and the starting officer salary is about $66,000. He described a two-part challenge: many roles are not sourced from the local labor pool, so hires must be recruited from elsewhere, and prospective recruits struggle with Prescott housing prices and availability.
Private-sector costs were supplied by committee member Jeffrey Miller, who said his architectural firm calculated direct recruiting costs of "16,085 through that point" for candidate advertising, screening and interviews, and, he said, "through training and onboarding, the total cost when an employee leaves is about $7,075,213." Miller and others said prospective hires consistently cite lack of rental or starter-home options as the top concern.
Committee members identified three near-term priorities: (1) produce a department-level estimate of recruitment and turnover costs to compare to any housing assistance program cost, (2) explore employer- or third-party funded models for down-payment assistance and (3) preserve momentum on educational and outreach materials to clarify what "workforce housing" means to residents.
The committee also recorded a routine procedural action early in the meeting: a motion to approve the minutes was moved by Jeff Miller and seconded, and the chair announced the motion carried.
Next steps: staff will collect the requested cost figures from departments, coordinate follow-up with the HR director on program design, and the consultant Pollock and Company will present a strategic implementation plan to the city council at a work study session next week. The committee plans to review council feedback at its next meeting.
