Housing shortage in Ocean City for seasonal workers
OCEAN CITY, Md. – For more than 30 years, Ocean City has relied on students supplementing the workforce in order for local businesses to be successful, but housing has remained an issue.
The majority of students are J-1 seasonal workers, who are people approved to participate in work and study-based exchange visitor programs. The programs allow them to stay in Ocean City while they’re working at restaurants, bars, and hotels.
John Fager is the owner of Fager’s Island, a bar and restaurant that employs more than one hundred J-1 workers during the busy season.
“Quite frankly, this town could not run without these J-1 students,” Fager said. “Housing is always an issue. Unfortunately, some of these kids live in substandard conditions and in some of the conditions in some of the places around town.”
Fager says a dormitory setup has been discussed for years, but nothing ever gets done.
“The economics of it don’t work. You spend a lot of money building let’s say a dormitory-style facility and it’s only occupied for 4 months out of the year.”
Several years ago, Fager tells us he even tried solving the problem by converting a building into a home for twelve of his employees.
“But because of regulations and because of zoning and because of the fire marshal requirements, so when it becomes so expensive to do with special treatments,” Fager said. “It just increases the costs, our little building for example for 12 students the fire Marshall added about 75,000 in costs.”
Zach Bankert is the Executive Director for Ocean City Development Corporation. He says his organization is working on new zoning ordinances to make it easier for additional employee housing.
“This most recent round of changes addressed was making sure that we weren’t putting a large-scale project right in the middle of a residential neighborhood in Ocean City,” Bankert said. “It’s really there to protect the neighborhoods that are in the town now, while also making it possible for developers to come in to build some employee housing to combat the shortage that we have right now.”
