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Rural Housing Page 8 Street Roots • June 22-28, 2018 Street Roots • June 22-28, 2018 Page 9 Rural Housing Housing Rural Oregon Better housing, better business The Tillamook County Creamery Association is partnering with locals to tackle the area’s housing shortage BY EMILY GREEN communities are struggling with an extreme shortage of housing that’s both affordable and fit to live in. illiana Ortega, 22, turned down several A population that’s aging in place and the opportunities close to her home in College proliferation of short-term rentals, along with an Station, Texas, in order to accept a paid economy that’s increasingly dependent on low-wage internship at the Tillamook Creamery in Tillamook tourism jobs, all contribute to the region’s housing County. crisis. Back in March 2017, the Texas A&M University The shortage has become a roadblock to junior had three months to set up a place to stay in expansion for many businesses that hire and train the coastal dairy farming new employees only to lo s e th e m a fe w m o n th s region. She would be there later because they are unable to find a decent place all summer, working on to live. research and development Over the course of the past year, said Sarah for the creamery. She Beaubien, an executive at Tillamook County Part IV Tillamook County scanned Craigslist and Creamery Association, “We’ve hired manager-level online ads, and called local people - these are not low-income folks, these are Oregon's coastal communities are churches as the company supervisors - who accepted the job, they came to struggling with a housing crisis all had suggested. For two Tillamook, and they were there for weeks or their own - one that's gotten worse months, it was one dead • months, and they could not find a place to live so every year following the Great end after another. they q u it” Recession. Short-term vacation “I was really concerned,” Beaubien was hired to be the company’s first rentals, generational poverty, an said Ortega. “My family senior director of stewardship about 2 % years ago increasingly visible wealth divide and doesn’t have a lot of money, and was tasked with streamlining and overseeing its aging populations have all pushed and so this entire sustainability programing. coastal communities to an irrevocable experience, already was a She said the company, which operates as a reckoning. For these communities to huge, very nerve-wracking farmer-owned co-op, committed its stewardship arm have a viable future, something has to situation. We were just change, but what? thinking, ‘How are we going to six platforms including “fulfilled employees” and “enriched communities.” to do this?’” But these two goals are difficult for a She couldn’t even find a 900-employee company to uphold when two-thirds motel that would allow her of those employees work at creamery located in a an extended stay. community with an extreme housing shortage. Later that spring, Ortega was on a picnic with a For one, it’s a quality of life issue when couple of her Texan friends and their families, when employees have to drive long distances to get to someone boasted to the group about Ortega’s work because they can’t find housing nearby, she upcoming internship in Oregon. The parents were said. A recent voluntary, company-wide survey eager to hear all about it. revealed 30 percent commute more than 20 miles, “I had to confess that I didn’t have a place to although Beaubien suspects those working at the stay,” she said. That’s when one of her friend’s company’s Boardman plant in north-central Oregon mothers, Jana Perenchio, piped up. She had once drive the farthest met someone from Tillamook at a craft fair in But if workers live closer to the creamery in Nebraska. She phoned the fellow crafter, a woman Tillamook, she said, “they are paying more than 30 named Lonnie Jenck, and asked if Ortega could live percent of their income on rent or mortgages, on her dairy farm for a few months. “In two hours, I was connected to someone 2,000 which ends up taxing them with things like food security and expendable income to spend in the miles away,” said Ortega. “I basically had to rely on community.” the people of Tillamook to house me because there Now the company behind Tillamook’s iconic wasn’t any kind of housing, and I’m so grateful that creamery is investing in housing solutions that the Jencks did.” could benefit the community as a whole. While this The housing difficulties Ortega faced in is not the only private-public partnership aimed at Tillamook are not unique to interns at the addressing housing shortages on Oregon’s Coast, creamery, nor are they confined to that section of the creamery association’s investments stand out as co ast Up and down Oregon’s Pacific shore, S E N IO R STAFF REPORTER L P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F T IL L A M O O K C O U N T Y C R E A M E R Y A S S O C IA T IO N The newly constructed Tillamook Creamery and visitors center. Coastal Crossroads P H O T O B Y R Y A N P E R E N C H IO Lilliana Ortega stayed on a dairy fa rm in Tillamook while she was working on research and development fo r the Tillamook Creamery. Ortega struggled to set up housing in the coastal farm ing region fo r the sum m er o f 2017. The housing difficulties she faced in Tillamook are not unique to interns a t the creamery, nor are they confined to that section o f coast. substantial. In addition, rather than placing its focus on building housing exclusively for its own workforce, as The Bandon Dunes Golf Resort has done in Bandon and Jordan Cove has proposed in Coos Bay, Tillamook County Creamery Association is working to help ease the crunch, county-wide. “We know that if we are investing in the social fiber or the economic resilience of the community, then it’s going to be a better place for us to do business,” Beaubien said. In 2017, Tillamook County Creamery Association invested 2.2 percent of its profits - more than $1 million - in the communities where it operates. Much of that was spent in Tillamook County on housing and food insecurity issues. During that year alone, the creamery association put $50,000 toward a study aimed at pin-pointing Tillamook’s housing needs, donated more than $600,000-worth of product and cash to local Oregon Food Bank efforts and the school lunch program, and gave $35,000 to Tillamook’s primary social service provider, Community Action Resource Enterprises, Inc., to help it purchase the building where it’s located. The company is also working with Helping Hands, a sober-living transitional homeless shelter, to design a training program for its participants so they will be better prepared to take jobs at the creamery. With the housing study now complete, the company has pledged an additional $75,000 for the creation of a GIS map that will highlight areas ripe for development W hether it be gap financing to build affordably- priced housing or investing in tiny home villages or apartment buildings, Beaubien said her company is keeping an open mind about how it can continue to support local housing efforts. And it has good reason to invest in the region’s social well-being. Tillamook County is where 7 8 o f the co-op’s member dairy farms are located, and it carries the company’s namesake - you can’t call it “Tillamook cheese” if it’s all manufactured in Boardman. The town of Tillamook is also the home to the company’s popular visitor center, attached to its creamery, which has grown to attract 1.5 million people annually. “It competes with Multnomah Falls and Crater Lake as the most visited site in Oregon,” Beaubien said. On June 20, the company unveiled a brand-new building where the visitor’s center will now be housed. It was built to sustain the creamery’s increased popularity among tourists. But as it stands, the creamery typically has about 20 positions it cannot fill, and that number goes up in the summer when the visitor’s center needs seasonal cooks, cashiers and ice-cream scoopers at its cafe and store. While houses, primarily built for vacation homes, are going up at above average rates, badly needed apartment buildings for workforce housing aren’t as appealing to developers. Locals say high building costs and permitting fees are a deterrent to building anything other than luxury vacation homes. But in recent years, former-commercial- fisherman, Paul Daniels, found a way to build an apartment building in Garibaldi, which lies about 10 minutes north of the creamery. He sold his boat and used the capital to begin building. The units filled up quickly. When Daniels decided to build a second, adjacent apartment building, the creamery committed to filling three of the apartments in order to help him secure financing. Since the building’s completion two years ago, the creamery has had no problem keeping its promise. Two apartments are allocated as permanent housing for creamery employees, and one is a transitional, furnished apartment where new employees can live while they look for housing elsewhere. When asked about the challenges of building apartments in Tillamook County, Daniels said, “When everybody says no, you just have to rephrase the question until you get a yes. The easiest part of the whole project is building.” Once the housing study was complete, community partners began looking for a way to follow- through on its top recommendation: Hire a housing coordinator. .... The county government and ■BI creamery association joined other local businesses and nonprofits in applying for funding through the governor’s Workforce Housing Initiative in January. They anticipated they would need about $130,000 to pay for a About this series housing coordinator over the first two years. This article Is part of Street Roots’ In May they learned their Housing Rural Oregon series. proposal w as not among the five Read previous articles from the pilot projects selected for series at news.streetroots.org. funding. However, locally owned Nestucca Ridge Development, which had also signed onto the request, did receive an award to construct 12 new homes on property it already owned. Six of those homes would be pre-leased to employees of its subsidiary, Pelican Brewing Company, in Tillamook County’s Pacific City. While the housing shortage can make it difficult for area businesses, nonprofits and government agencies to retain new employees, there is another factor, too. One hundred inches of*annual rain and rural living are not for everyone, explained Beaubien, “but some people feel like they’ve won the lottery.” ■ IL , emily@streetroots. org @greenwrites
