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