Affordable Housing In Ashland
Chris Rizo, 18.04.2007 09:32
Legislation to boost affordable housing stock
Introduced by state Rep. Peter Buckley, the bill would lift the 1999 statewide ban on so-called "inclusionary zoning" so that cities may require residential developers to build affordable housing as a part of their projects.
"This bill gives back the ability for local governments to institute inclusionary zoning," the Ashland Democrat told members of the House Committee on Consumer Protection on Friday.
Buckley said allowing cities to require developers to build below-market-rate housing could help municipalities preserve their cultural and economic diversity.
"Affordable housing is about working-class families," Buckley said, noting that many public servants, including nurses and teachers, cannot afford to live in the cities where they serve.
SALEM"" When Rich Rohde and his wife left the San Francisco-Bay Area, they decided to return to their native Oregon.
His wife, Rev. Caren Caldwell, was pursuing her first pastoral position after graduating from the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. Rohde had been a grassroots organizer for the Citizens Action League in Richmond, and followed where his wife's new career led.
The newly married couple was looking for a small town with a liberal political bent where they could raise a small family.
Lured by a thriving arts community and a politically progressive attitude, they decided to move to Ashland. She took a job at Congregational United Church in Ashland; he went to work for Fair Share, an advocacy group for low- and moderate-income families. They settled into a modest house on Ohio Street, where Rohde said families and college students coexisted.
That was more than 20 years ago.
Ashland is indisputably different from what it was when Rohde and his wife arrived. It's no longer home to as many college students or working families. The downtown, Rohde said, has evolved from hippie to chic, with more of an "urban flavor" since he moved to Ashland in 1985.
"The community has become less diverse," he said. "It was home to hippies, artists and free-thinkers that could manage on the edge of the economy and do well."
Today, there are a greater number of wealthy, older people and less diverse families, said Rohde, a regional organizer for the Rogue Valley chapter of Oregon Action, a community activist group.
Considered the crown jewel of southern Oregon, Ashland is picturesque, nestled against the idyllic foothills of the Siskiyou and Cascade mountain ranges, home to 100-acre Lithia Park and a world-renowned Shakespearean festival.
Additionally, a temperate climate and its proximity to skiing has made Ashland one of the most desirable places to live in Oregon, but at the same time have taken a toll on affordable housing stocks in the Rogue Valley.
By luck, Rohde said he and his wife were able to purchase the Ohio Street home that they had rented for 10 years after the owners decided to relocate and sell the 1,100 square-foot house for a $92,000.
"We were one of those fortunate people who got in under six figures," he said, adding the property is likely worth $300,000 today.
While the median price for a home in Ashland has jumped 7.8% in the last year, most of Jackson County saw a drop in prices, according to the Southern Oregon Multiple Listing Service.
Dan Maymar, a broker at Lithia Realty in Ashland, said, "Once in a while you'll see one or two rockin' good deals then there will be five offers on them and bam they're gone."
In Ashland, the median home price in March 2006 was $403,500; in 2007, it climbed to $447,000, Maymar said, citing MLS data. He said a steady influx of affluent retirees from California, Hawaii and the East Coast has driven up prices.
As a result, people, ranging from students to university professors, are being squeezed out of the local housing market, local activists say. The last "affordable" property Peggy Peck, a broker at Gateway Real Estate in Ashland, remembers on the market was a new one-bedroom, one-bathroom condominium for $132,000.
In the eight years she has worked in the Rogue Valley real estate market, Peck said Ashland has become a "hot spot" in southern Oregon. "People are visiting here, falling in love with it, and deciding that they want to live here," she said.
City Councilor Alice Hardesty said the city is changing rapidly as more retirees and wealthy out-of-towners decide to make their homes in Ashland.
"As Ashland becomes more gentrified it's losing some of its charm," said Hardesty, who serves as the council's liaison to the city Housing Commission.
To ensure that families can afford to remain in Ashland, city officials ought to make "affordable, family-friendly" housing a component in their long-range planning, said local activist Melissa Mitchell-Hooge.
"We're well into a housing crisis that will affect every citizen in Ashland whether they realize it or not," she said. "We need to stop and ask ourselves do we want to be a community with one elementary school because that's the direction we're headed in now."
Already, Lincoln and Briscoe Elementary schools have been closed because grammar school enrollment in Ashland has plunged in recent years. Moreover, the graduating high school class last year was 277 students; meanwhile; the incoming kindergarten class this fall was 142 students, nearly half the number of graduating seniors.
"Ashland is still a great place to raise kids," Mitchell-Hooge said. "We just need to do what we can to get more families here."
From an economic standpoint, the lack of affordable housing is a "critical issue," said Ron Fox, executive director of Southern Oregon Regional Economic Development Inc. "We hear from employees who like the pay here, like the jobs here, then when they get here they are disappointed by the housing market."
Ashland is not alone
For years, Talent has been regarded as Ashland's "answer to affordable housing." That may no longer be case, said city manager Betty Wheeler.
Like many cities in Oregon, housing prices in Talent have increased so significantly that people of modest means have been priced out of the market.
"Talent is not unique; all over the state there are similar situations," Wheeler said. "Everyone knows there is a problem, but there doesn't seem to be the willingness to give the cities the tools to do something about it."
Wheeler supports legislation being considered by the state House of Representatives aimed at helping working families afford housing.
Legislation to boost affordable housing stock
Introduced by state Rep. Peter Buckley, the bill would lift the 1999 statewide ban on so-called "inclusionary zoning" so that cities may require residential developers to build affordable housing as a part of their projects.
"This bill gives back the ability for local governments to institute inclusionary zoning," the Ashland Democrat told members of the House Committee on Consumer Protection on Friday.
Buckley said allowing cities to require developers to build below-market-rate housing could help municipalities preserve their cultural and economic diversity.
"Affordable housing is about working-class families," Buckley said, noting that many public servants, including nurses and teachers, cannot afford to live in the cities where they serve.
"If I was to try to move to my home community I would not be able to afford to do so," he added. "This bill just gives back a tool for cities and counties to determine what type of new development happens within their boundaries."
Buckley's proposal, outlined in House Bill 3284, has raised objections from the Oregon Home Builders Association and the Oregon Association of Realtors, who say inclusionary zoning is tantamount to a tax on new developments and thus an indirect levy on builders and homebuyers.
The lack of affordable housing "is a problem that all of us have to fix, not just the builders not just the legislators," said John Chandler, CEO of the Oregon Home Builders Association. "It's going to require some creativity and some hard work."
Amy Fauver, of the Portland-based Housing Alliance, said more than 200 jurisdictions have successfully implemented some type of inclusionary zoning ordinance, including San Francisco, Boston and Denver.
Brandon Goldman, housing program specialist for the city of Ashland, told lawmakers that the city already provides density bonuses, fee-wavers, and direct subsidy in the form of providing city property for affordable housing development as well as selling city property to finance work-force housing projects, as the city will do April 30 with two half-acre parcels on Strawberry Lane.
Additionally, for residential projects to be annexed into the city limits, they must have within them 15-percent to 35-percent affordable housing units.
Last year, there was such an annexation project with 113 units, with 17 of the units designated as affordable, Goldman said, adding that Buckley's proposal would help Ashland to ensure it has housing to support its local workforce, noting that in the last five years, housing prices have doubled in Ashland.
Cathy Shaw was mayor when Ashland made many of the improvements in the 1990s that officials credit for making Ashland such a desirable place to live, including the city's open space laws and recycling programs.
Reached by telephone, she said inclusionary zoning is not the panacea that many believe it to be. "Government should stay out of this and let the market correct itself," said Shaw, who was mayor from 1989 to 2000.
Rather than looking toward an inclusionary zoning ordinance, Shaw said planners in Ashland could help prospective homebuyers to enter the market by requiring developers build smaller, more affordable floor plans.
Larry Medinger, a local builder, is among local leaders who believe that Ashland is a victim of its own success. In an interview before Friday's hearing, he said after years of working to improve the city, he and others are now "sitting around, saying, 'Oh my god, what have we done?'"
Preserving Ashland's streetscape and green-space has helped housing prices "go through the roof because Ashland is perceived as so desirable," said Medinger, who has served on the Oregon State Housing Council since 2001, and is a former member of the Ashland Housing Commission.
Afterward, he told lawmakers that inclusionary zoning is "not the wonder tool" that some proponents have made it out to be, and cautioned legislators not to "gore the ox" by bankrolling affordable housing on the backs of builders and market-rate homebuyers.
"There has to be a way to think more comprehensively," he said.
Samuel Staley, director of urban and land use policy at the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation, said that allowing inclusionary zoning ordinances would not solve the state's affordable housing woes.
"The affordable housing crisis can only be met through the supply side," Staley said in a telephone interview. Streamlining often-lengthy permit process and easing cumbersome restrictions that planners place on developers could help alleviate the shortage, he explained.
Historically, affordable housing needs have not been met by new units being built, but through a robust housing market in which buyers "move up the housing ladder" by purchasing a more expensive home and sell the less expensive house to those perhaps just entering the market, he said.