— from Suzanne Olson —
Many local businesses are struggling to find enough staff to keep their doors open and their shelves full. We have a shortage of affordable housing all year round, and it’s especially scarce during the summer high season when every available house, room, and outbuilding is being utilized for vacation rentals.
“We’ve come close to closing our doors due to the employee shortage on Orcas Island,” said Lisa Rios of Mijitas restaurant. “Three of the last six seasons, we haven’t had enough staff to open our outdoor kitchen for lunch and haven’t been able to stay open seven days a week. It’s vital that our restaurant be fully open during the summers so we can get through our winters.”
This is a quality of life issue in the San Juan Islands for year-round residents and for tourism, which is at the core of our economic base.
I believe that YES FOR HOMES will provide an elegant solution, in the form of a referendum on the ballot in November. The Home Fund will be available to organizations and builders who have viable proposals for building lower- and middle-income housing. The money for the fund will come from a one-time excise tax, applied exclusively to the purchase and sale of property.
This is not a property tax. It is a fee that amounts to one half of one percent of the purchase price to be paid by the buyer. For a $350,000 home, for example, it would increase the buyer’s mortgage payment by about $8 per month if the fee were added to the mortgage.
Vote YES FOR HOMES to support the people and businesses at the heart of our island communities and the economic health and vitality of the place we call home.
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I do not oppose this ballot referendum. I do not, however, believe that it is a solution for our housing problems.
First, according to the estimates that I have seen, it will produce–even in boom years–very little in the way of revenue, which has to be split among at least three larger islands. It will not be enough to build more than three homes or a few more rental units a year.
Second, nothing has been done to address the fact that the positions with major shortages are paying close to minimum wage. No one paid minimum wage can afford to live on the island with one job, even as a single person–likely even when sharing an apartment, without even beginning to consider families. If businesses are struggling even while paying only the minimum wage, perhaps the businesses are not viable in the long run? I’d certainly miss many of our local businesses if they were unable to continue, but I don’t think that the solution to the problem is one-sided, i.e., taxes to subsidize housing for people who are fully employed. We need to look at wages as well.
I do hope that the County Council will take bigger steps toward a true solution. For example, amending the Comprehensive Plan to make housing less expensive by providing flexibility to develop innovative approaches, for example–one of many–tiny home communities (for those who are fans). Or reinstating guesthouses (ADUs) to their rightful place in the island community. They serve many purposes, providing additional, “right-sized” housing and some income for homeowners to apply to mortgages.