||| FROM HILARY CANTY |||
Employer provided housing is frequently cited as a viable option to the shortage of available staff. That solution comes with challenges as the current sale of Rosario is demonstrating.
Of the 45 employees being laid off, 24 are also losing their homes, as housing was provided as part of their employment. Many have lived on Orcas for several years and feel deeply connected to the community. They will need to vacate their homes by the end of March. If they are fortunate enough to find an available rental, many do not have the resources needed to pay the first month rent, last month rent and a security deposit that is generally required to move into a new space. It is truly unfortunate and a challenge for all of us as we consider the ongoing economics of a community where housing costs have so outpaced a living wage.
Thanks to OPAL Community Land Trust, we have some glimmers of hope on the horizon. They are building 10 new homes on Kidder Way, as well as planning a new neighborhood on the recently purchased Pea Patch property. Rep. Debra Lekanoff is supporting a Capital Budget request of $350,000 to help support the Pea Patch project. If awarded, this funding will pay for an archaeologist and cultural resources expert, wetlands biologists, architects, civil engineers, surveyors, people with lived expertise and others to design a site plan for the future home of the Food Bank, Resource Center and supportive rental housing.
If you support this request, please let Rep. Lekanoff know by emailing her, as she needs to hear from you that this funding is important to the Orcas community.
The email could be as simple as:”I support a capital budget appropriation of $350,000 in support of the Pea Patch project.” Or you could personalize it. Either way, it is an action you can take today to help build a stronger, more resilient community for all who call Orcas home.
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The employees at Rosario are getting “at least 4 months” separation pay. Don’t be so negative. Get with the facts.
“Of the 45 employees being laid off, 24 are also losing their homes,.” You get with the facts… you gonna rent them a room?
It’s odd that people are so short-sighted around housing issues. Like they can’t think about the big picture.
Building more housing is like widening a highway. The highway carries more traffic, temporarily improving traffic flow. But as more people start to use the highway, it eventually becomes just as congested as before.
More housing will simply attract more people. The cycle of housing shortages, and the pressure to continue building housing, will not be solved by building more housing. More housing means more people, and more businesses, with more unfilled job openings due to housing shortages. Does it sound counterintuitive? If so, think about how this process plays out over the decades. Building more housing is a temporary band-aid on a deeply flawed growth-oriented economic model.
These islands aren’t immune from the economic processes that turn wild places into parking lots, retail storefronts, and apartment buildings. We will continue to see farms, fields, and forests turned into housing developments. There will always be pressure to accommodate more people and our local planners and plotters should avoid falling into the trap of temporary fixes that feel good in the short term but don’t actually impede the underlying process. As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Every new housing unit that’s added only makes the housing problem worse.
Though it’s true that the cost of housing outweighs the cost of conservation lands, I applaud the OPAL group, and the Homes for Islanders as they provide affordable housing for many working class families and elders alike. I moved into an OPAL home nearly 20 years ago when I was a jack-of-all-trades (commercial diver, carpenter, mason, tree-faller, farm-worker), and am now retired and still able to remain here because I live in one. The reality is that if it wasn’t for OPAL and Homes for Islanders that nearly 200 local families would be bereft of affordable housing, (we’d be in cars, buses, tents, boats, yurts, your spare bedroom, in the streets, or would have had to move somewhere else).
When it comes to the Rosario sale, beyond the heartbreak of locals losing their housing, there’s also a shared concern regarding the possibility that the resort might be used as Airbnbs, as Master Planned Resorts were exempted from the short-term rental limits that were set by the county council several years ago.
It’s ironical that Rosario, one of the island’s largest employers, has a history of importing cheap labor from foreign countries, while also supplying housing for their employees, (this being something, of course, that more and more employers have found the need to do), and that when the new owners took over the resort several years ago they bought up rental housing around the island (including the airport apartments on Crestview), and in doing so they forced the long-term renters that lived there to move out in order to accommodate their employees at that time.
You’re right (David) when you say, “These islands aren’t immune from the economic processes that turn wild places into parking lots, retail storefronts, and apartment buildings. We will continue to see farms, fields, and forests turned into housing developments.” And also, “… plotters should avoid falling into the trap of temporary fixes that feel good in the short term but don’t actually impede the underlying process.” Wise words all, but in saying this realize that it’s more than just inevitability, the island’s are over-promoted, with much of the housing stock having been bought by the investor class, and much of it having been converted to short-term rentals. Realize that there are groups, and many individuals in the community (including the leadership of OPAL) that have resisted this, and have been lobbying the county for years to stop with the quick fixes, and to look at the root causes of the crisis surrounding the failure of our affordable housing, and our long-term rental housing markets. It is here like it is in many places… it’s a lot of people against a lot of money.