SEQUIM — If you’re living in Sequim, chances are you have “housing problems.”
More than 30 percent of your income is going into your rent or mortgage. Space and plumbing are far less than ideal, and you don’t see many other housing options out there.
You may be one of the hundreds of elderly people pouring more than 50 percent of your income into housing costs, so you’ve got scant funds left over for food, health care and other basic necessities.
Or — even though you work in Sequim as a teacher, retail clerk, police officer or firefighter — a home here is way out of financial reach.
Such are the findings of the long-awaited Affordable Housing Needs study from consultant Tom Beckwith.
Beckwith, hired nearly a year ago by the Sequim City Council, outlined what he called “staggering statistics” during Monday’s council meeting.
Back in 2000, nearly 38 percent of Sequim households had housing problems, Beckwith said, citing the most recent census data available.
But now the problems have intensified. The retiree population, the home prices and the need for service workers – in health care, police, fire protection — have all risen, Beckwith said.
According to his study, the city’s population has swelled by 1.8 percent per year — faster than the state rate of 1.1 percent — and the urban growth area is expected to be home to 11,144 people by 2015.
And the number of building lots, the Sequim Planning Department predicts, will grow from 2,538 last year to 3,600 by 2012.
If city leaders want this to be a place where “critical service workers” can live, Beckwith said, then they must take a hard look at what kind of homes to permit on all those lots.
Today, Sequim has little to offer service workers when it comes to good housing, he said.
“What he’s telling you is true,” said Pam Tietz, executive director of the Clallam County Housing Authority.
‘A huge need’
“There’s a huge need in this community for housing” for regular folks, she told the council, adding that the units at Elk Creek Apartments, a complex for low-income people on Sequim’s east side, were completely rented in just four months’ time.
Elk Creek manager Betty Handly confirmed that Tuesday. The 138 units, available only to householders earning no more than 60 percent of the area median income, opened up last April and were fully leased by September.
Today just three units are available, Handly said, as some of her tenants are moving out, having lost jobs or had their hours cut.
Handly also manages The Vintage, a 118-unit complex for low-income seniors on the west end of Sequim. One apartment is available there, she said.
After Beckwith’s report Monday night, council member Paul McHugh asked the consultant about what he called an “elitist” and “racist” attitude toward low-income people, and by extension, “affordable” housing complexes.
“We’re seeing some of that [attitude] in this community,” McHugh said.
That’s left over from the days of inner-city housing projects, Beckwith replied.
‘Mixed income’
The modern solution is a “mixed-income community,” a neighborhood where both market-rate and lower-priced homes are built together.
Such communities are working in Santa Fe, N.M., and Seattle, to name two, Beckwith added.
In many cases, the cities had land held in trust and invited developers to compete for the contracts to build mixed-income neighborhoods on the land. They ended up with a blend of median- and low-priced homes you couldn’t tell apart, he said.
To make this happen in Sequim, it will take “a commitment to create a community, not just build a cheap house.”
Allowing taller buildings and denser developments, waiving some permit fees and deferring utility-connection charges are among the ways to make it easier for developers to build affordable homes, he said.
Second phase
Beckwith recommended a second phase of his study, a phase that would include an action plan custom-made for Sequim.
This add-on would cost the city $10,000 on top of the $12,540 Sequim paid for the report delivered on Monday.
Except for member Erik Erichsen, who was skeptical about the value of Beckwith’s work, the council expressed support for phase 2 and asked for a contract to be presented for a formal vote at its May 11 meeting.
Mayor Laura Dubois said she wants Sequim to be a more inclusive city.
“One of the most insidious types of discrimination we can have is economic discrimination” in which people are shut out because they don’t earn much.
Dubois added that she wants to look for partners in the effort to make room for affordable homes here — and Tietz assured the council that such partnerships are out there.
“We have a land trust. It’s called Homeward Bound,” she said. “We don’t have to re-create that wheel . . . and the Housing Authority board is willing and ready to do what we need to do. We will be at the table.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
