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