About 1,000 more housing units are on the ground today than San Juan County will need to house its population over the next 20 years.
That’s even with the addition of 6,413 new residents by the year 2025.
Still, according to Colin Maycock, county senior planner, it’s not the numbers but rather the cost of housing which, if current trends continue, is likely to significantly reshape the face and the fabric of the community over time.
The County Council last week got a large dose of unsettling numbers and troubling trends to digest as Maycock set the stage for the pending revision of the Housing Element of the county Comprehensive Plan. That element, which county officials previously vowed to update to settle a lawsuit filed by Orcas Island architect John Campbell, establishes goals and policies by which housing would remain available to islanders of all income brackets.
Currently, that’s not the case, Maycock said.
“At the moment, there are far more housing units than necessary for the total population and, in fact, there would be more housing units than are necessary to meet the population growth in the future,” Maycock said. “So, really the issue is not the number of units … but rather affordability, which is a much more sort of slippery subject to get ahold of.”
He said statistics from the Western Washington Real Estate Research Center “consistently show” that housing in the San Juans is the least affordable in the state. Furthermore, according to the state Office of Financial Management, he said local wages are about 30 percent below the state average while housing costs are among the highest.
In addition, he noted that the number of islanders between the ages of 25 and 40, at 15 percent, is less than half the state average while the percentage above the age of 45 — 58 percent — is nearly double.
San Juan Island School District Superintendent Michael Soltman, among a half-dozen islanders who testified at the March 24 public hearing, said the high cost of housing contributes to steady enrollment declines that public schools countywide are grappling with. Families are falling even even further behind with the recent economic downturn and housing costs are at the center of it, he said.
“We’re probably closest to the working families and see their struggle and see their vulnerability in terms of housing and wages here,” Soltman said.
Possible remedies included in the pending update, endorsed earlier by the county planning commission, include establishment of a housing authority, creation of so-called limited improvement districts, which could purchase property or pay for infrastructure by levying taxes, and implementing a dedicated funding source for construction of permanently affordable homes.
The council will continue its public hearing on Tuesday, beginning at 10:20 a.m. The deadline for handing in a revised housing element to the Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board, which approved the legal settlement, is March 31; however, the council also set aside April 7 for a work session and agreed to ask the Hearings Board for an extension.
