As MHProNews has reported in the Daily Business News for several years now, the oil boom in western North Dakota’s Bakken Region has brought an influx of factory-built housing to the area, including modular man camps, manufactured and modular homes, even some Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers to house employees of Williston State University in Williston. Bloomberg reports employees of one of the energy companies live in modular housing trucked over from the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The housing vacancy rate and the unemployment rate are both under one percent, leading some major employers to purchase housing for their employees, or risk not having workers who will have been lured away to the higher-paying jobs in the oil fields. A hospital is building a 68-unit apartment building just for its employees; a local bank is charging employees one-third of the market rate for townhomes it bought just to retain staff. Some restaurants are only open certain days because of a staff shortage. With the oil boom expected to last for a while, North Dakota is now the second largest crude producer in the nation behind Texas.

(Photo credit: dl-online/Homark Homes–modular man camps))