Generally, it was like I have.

Eric Peterson is 32 years old and was born and raised in Anchorage.

He was living abroad in Japan until five months ago when he moved back home into the house he grew up in with his parents.

I don't have to pay rent, which is amazing because the rent is out of control.

But he says he has a good paying job and could buy a modest place in town for himself and his French bulldog.

But he doesn't think he'll stay in Anchorage long term.

He says in Japan, he rented a great apartment for $400 a month.

And then I come back to Anchorage, Alaska, and they're like, We want 1400 dollars a month for like some, you know, 1980s, never remote special.

And I'm like, I'm just I'm not going to pay either.

I don't think anybody should have to.

And I just think that the average rental prices of any form of housing Anchorage, as well as purchasing price of anything, is completely out of control.

According to state economists, the average home in Anchorage costs about $469,000.

Last year.

That's up 20% in just a few years.

The cost of rent has also been climbing in recent years across much of the state and in Anchorage, especially if you look at the cost of land.

In most communities, labor has gone up.

In most communities materials have gone up, transportation from the materials have gone up.

And we've gotten to a situation where now even building market homes, developers can't afford to build it and then sell it at at what they built it for.

That's making housing prices go up.

Plus, the cost of borrowing to buy a home has climbed to the highest rates in decades.

The Alaska Housing Finance Corporation is a special agency that can tap into capital markets.

Regular lenders can't.

That way, it can offer a lot of Alaska homebuyers mortgages at better than market rates.

As an example, a year or two ago, 21% of the houses that folks were buying in Alaska were HFC loans.

This year, it's 34% in sold.

The nonprofit Rural Cap is overseeing work to build nine homes.

These construction workers, they're also the owners.

Nine local families are working together to build nine homes through rural caps, mutual self-help housing program.

The nonprofit's program connects lower income families with low interest and subsidized mortgages from the federal government.

Each family commits to work 36 hours a week on the houses.

Volunteers can contribute to their sweat equity covers the down payments.

Randy Johnson learned about the program in 2009.

She was working at Wal-Mart at the time and renting an apartment for herself and four kids.

Oh, no.

There's no way I could.

Bought a home, a sweat equity.

You who?

I would say who has $30,000 put down on the home?

I don't.

It took about seven years before Johnson qualified, made it up the waitlist and finished her home.

And then I had friends and builds after mine.

And I just help build, build, build.

And I just loved volunteering.

Within a few years, she logged thousands of volunteer hours on 45 homes.

She won a National Volunteer Award in 2021.

Now she works for a rural cap on the program.

She says it's fulfilling just to move in, and they could say it's their own home.

I built it with my hands.

Rural Caps program has helped thousands of people since it started in 1971.

But there is a new building technology on the horizon that could dramatically lower the cost of market rate housing.

3D, concrete printing.

Next year, Nome will be the testing ground for a system like this to lay the foundation walls and roof of a home.

The city and its partners are getting a federal grant to build demonstration homes to test the feasibility and economics.

But barring disruptive tech breakthroughs, Alaskans like Erik Peterson are advocating for relaxing the rules that govern what can and can't be built as a more immediate path toward affordable housing.

So many of anchorage's problems could be alleviated with cheaper housing.

Reporting from Soldotna and Anchorage, I'm Jeremy Shea.