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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (June 1, 2018)
Street Roots • June 1 -7, 2018 COOS COUNTY, from page 7 something else pops up. With housing vouchers, which renters can use toward rent at market rate units of their choice, it’s a different story. Tuner said thé housing authority usually pulls 100 people off the wait list. Half respond, and of those, only half complete all the necessary paperwork. All in all, she said, there are only 12 or 15 percent who actually find a place available that will rent to them. “We see this massive lack of follow through. Maybe some people cannot help themselves. It could be the health of the community - for so long, everything has just sort of been given,” she said. “I’ve done housing for 12 years. It’s a very interesting dynamic here.” She said 83 percent of her voucher program recipients are elderly or disabled, and even for those who do everything they can to secure housing, it can still be a challenge to find a landlord willing to rent to a voucher-holder when there are other potential tenants. It’s also a challenge to find housing that is up to code and qualifies for the assistance. For those who provide services at South Coast Community Action, it’s just a cycle of sending people out with the promise of providing rental assistance, only to never see them again because they couldn’t find anywhere they could spend it, said Lehman. “That’s our process, and it’s terrible,” he said. Building confidence ancfhousing Given the demographic cliff facing the community, Buki explained if nothing were done to solve the housing crisis, it would fix itself in 15 years. That’s because with few young people and families, the countywide population - more than half of which is 55 or older - will eventually drop steeply from Rural Housing 63,000 as older residents pass away. An abundance of increasingly crappy houses will be available but, he said, “your affordability problems as they are today will go down.” Coos County residents know they will not be able to solve their housing problems without addressing the overall health and well-being of their community. Low educational attainment and the looming threat of widespread disinvestment from all areas that aren’t waterfront seriously threaten the county’s future viability. They need living-wage jobs and additional trade skills-training programs. But, if the county is successful in attracting new employers, and if the new jobs attract skilled workers from outside the community, they will have nowhere to live. The economic and housing problems go hand in hand, and must be addressed simultaneously. Buki and Eddington were only hired to look at the housing question, but they acknowledged the connection. What they offered up was a partial solution that came with a price tag of about $1 million a year, for 10 years. They said if the community diversified funding - getting most of the money from the private sector, nonprofits, the medical community, schools and in donations from residents - they wouldn’t be constrained in the way that government-funded housing dollars would constrain them. They could use the funding to strategically rehab 120 old units on streets where it would count, while also building about 120 new units, all over the next decade. It’s a plan that’s in line with what the consultants said they’d seen similar-sized communities do in the past, and would be enough to loosen what they described as the area’s “stuck m arket” Ten million dollars may seem like an astronomical amount for a rural area, but Coos County has spent $6.3 million on urban renewal projects over the past four Page 9 workers, should the project come to fruition. At the completion of the construction phase, the temporary housing would be torn down. Where the 175 permanent employees will live has not been publicly addressed. Buki and Eddington think North Bend should negotiate a contractual agreement for 20 percent of the workforce housing to be permanent and donated back to the county upon the project’s completion. While discussions about the implementation of the housing report recommendations will resume in the fall, locals participating in the brainstorming sessions at the housing summit honed in on rebuilding pride. Ideas such as investments in programs to assist elderly residents with yard work were suggested, along with finding funds for exterior maintenance and additional code enforcement officers to both enforce codes and gently remind homeowners of their responsibilities, depending on their financial means and the seriousness of their property violation. Someone mentioned replicating Myrtle Point’s block-by-block program. Myrtle Point is located in Coos County about 20 miles east of Bandon. While it fizzled out about four years ago, the city government used to years, and czbLLC figured the county’s challenge its citizens to beautify their contribution to the project should be just neighborhoods by maintaining their homes, $300,000 annually from the general fund. making landscaping improvements and In its final report, which it released a encouraging their neighbors to do the same. couple weeks after the summit, czbLLC also The most improved block would win a block recom m ended alternative solutions, party. including a housing Community partners bond and the across the county paid implementation of czbLLC $61,500 for its more employer-funded It the county is successful in services, with Jordan housing programs. Cove’s contribution attracting new employers, The Bandon Dunes falling into the $1,000 and if the new jobs attract Golf Resort already to $5,000 category. has its own employee shitted workers from outside housing complex, and the community, they w ill have Other contributors included local Buki and Eddington nowhere to live. The eco government and tribal see opportunities for nomic and housing problems bodies, Wild Rivers other large area go hand in hand, and must he Coast Alliance and employers to step up addressed simultaneously. United Way of and provide housing Southwestern Oregon, for their predominantly low- which took a lead wage workers, as well. position in organizing Along with code and zoning revisions, the effort starting a housing trust and other ideas for The day after the housing summit, North funding, building and rehabbing housing, Bend Police Chief Robert Kappelman posted czbLLC also suggested taking advantage of to his department’s Facebook page a before the Jordan Cove LNG project to get housing and after photo of a house that had been built freshly painted and the front yard newly In a county in dire need of an economic landscaped. boost, everyone Street Roots spoke with “Our little community has its misgivings, about the massive natural gas pipeline like every other city. However, one thing project said they thought Coos Bay’s this community has is pride ... although you population was pretty evenly split on the idea. Either residents want the jobs it would wouldn’t know it as you take a city tour,” Kappelman wrote. “It doesn’t take a lot of bring, or they believe the project will harm money to make some significant the environment and natural beauty of the improvements. A gallon of paint is less than bay, along with all the tourism jobs that $20, a quart less than $5. A pack of flowers environment creates. According to the Jordan Cove LNG is often less than $3.... Have neighbors that website, during construction, Pembina will have trouble keeping up with their yards? employ an average of 900 workers, with up Ask them if you can give them a little help.” to 2,100 workers during peak construction. In the comments section below the post, Theories on what the workers will do for North Bend resident Matthew Hays wrote, housing vary. There’s been talk of workers “Someone went to the sum m it... already staying in motels and campsites, and the workin’ on my curb appeal, boys.” company has proposed building its own temporary housing for construction emily@streetroots. org
