A6
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, AUGUST 9, 2022
Funding: Project could be completed by 2024 Disrespect: Quit rate
for Oregonians was
at or above 3% for
seven straight months
Continued from Page A1
Adair Annex.”
Gertler said the remain-
ing funds for the project will
come from other state and
federal sources. She said
the agency already owns the
land, which is a signifi cant
contribution to the devel-
opment cost. The project’s
operations budget also con-
templates the agency’s part-
nership with Clatsop Com-
munity Action, which will
be staffi ng the Owens-Adair
Annex for resident services.
The project will update
the existing 46-unit complex,
which has struggled with
maintenance issues. T he new
building, built over the hous-
ing authority’s parking lot,
will include 40 one-bedroom
apartments, 10 studio apart-
ments and a basement with
55 parking spots.
Half of the units would
be reserved for people on
the housing authority’s hous-
ing choice voucher pro-
gram waiting list. Most earn
30% and below of the area
median income, and many
are seniors.
Thirteen units would
be reserved for supportive
housing for people facing
homelessness.
Now that initial funding
has been approved, Gertler
said a project team will meet
to go over the timeline.
The project, which will
go before the city’s Historic
Landmarks Commission for
review, could be completed
by the fall of 2024 .
Tug of war: ‘This is very discouraging’
Continued from Page A1
In the letter sent to the
Magie s earlier this year, the
city said the four plex was
originally constructed as resi-
dential housing and has been
consistently used to house
people.
The Magie s claim they
purchased the property and
began converting the units
to vacation rentals before the
city restricted that option, giv-
ing rise to a vested right to
continue.
City Attorney Blair Hen-
ningsgaard said the city
has not agreed with that
assessment.
“The facts are fairly com-
plicated and the parties have
been exchanging informa-
tion,” he said in an email.
Henningsgaard said the
city is still trying to determine
when each of the units started
being used as vacation rentals.
“Unfortunately, our code does
not provide a clear procedure
for us to follow,” he said.
T he city may hold an evi-
dentiary hearing at the P lan-
ning C ommission and the
issue could wind up before
the City Council.
The Magie s say that com-
munication from the city has
been inconsistent, including
an email in 2020 which the
couple interpreted as approval
to convert all the units to
vacation rentals.
“It feels every time there
is a staff change at the city
we have to revisit all of this
again (with great stress) and
now that we have invested so
much time, money and eff ort,
the city has now threatened to
pull the rug out from under-
neath us after accumulating
all this debt,” the couple said.
The Magie s requested
approval of their develop-
ment as a lawful non conform-
ing use in May.
In the application, the cou-
ple said their intention has
always been to transition the
units into vacation rentals .
T he process started with the
fi rst cottage, they said, which
was converted into a vaca-
tion rental under the business
name, Astoria Downtown
Cottages.
Over time, the other cot-
tage and three units in the
four plex were also turned into
vacation rentals.
The application included
letters from Shannon Fitz-
patrick, who owns Pacifi c
Capital Management, and
his brother, Sean Fitzpatrick,
who owns Wecoma Partners,
affi rming the Magie s’ original
intentions.
Pacifi c Capital Manage-
ment managed the prop-
erty from May 2018 through
November while the cou-
Lydia Ely/The Astorian
Two cottages and a fourplex have been improved off Exchange Street.
ple was attending to other
business and family matters,
Shannon Fitzpatrick noted in
his letter.
“We worked together on
upgrading and updating units
in a manner that would set
the units up for use as future
short-term rentals as tenants
vacated the units and new ten-
ants were put into place,” he
wrote.
“As you and your fam-
ily were winding down your
other business and family
matters and starting to take
over more management and
upgrades at the property, we
started to slowly transition the
units, one at a time, to short-
term rentals.”
Sean Fitzpatrick, who
serves on the Planning Com-
mission and is running for
mayor in November, advised
the Magie s as part of his role
as an adviser with the Clatsop
Small Business Development
Center.
In his email, he noted that
the high costs associated with
restoring the buildings were
beyond what fair market rents
could support. “As a result,
you would have to utilize the
commercial zoning to create
cash fl ows that could support
the restoration, repairs and
ongoing maintenance, which
meant short-term rentals,”
Fitzpatrick said.
He added that after signif-
icant investment, the build-
ings are safer and look better.
“A great contribution to the
neighborhood as it transitions
from housing to commercial,”
he said.
The Magie s told The Asto-
rian that they specifi cally
searched for property with
commercial zoning down-
town to allow the fl exibility to
have vacation rentals.
They said the operation
provides a full-time salary
for their manager, part-time
income for multiple cleaners,
generates lodging tax reve-
nue for the city and county
and brings tourism dollars
downtown.
“We love our town, we
love the historic architecture
here, we live here and are rais-
ing our family here, we work
here, we provide quality long-
term housing here and have
spent everything we have
to restore an historic prop-
erty downtown and we feel
we are now, at the 11th hour,
being scolded for that eff ort,”
the Magie s said. “We put
our heart and soul and much
blood sweat and tears to bring
this property back from the
edge of falling apart.
“If we knew the city would
change its mind after we’d
invested so much, we would
not have bought this property
or done any of the restoration.
Furthermore, we had no idea
that the city could come and
try to take our outright use
away — three years after
the limitations on STRs took
eff ect, after spending so much
on these buildings and getting
all required approvals to oper-
ate them as short-term rentals.
“This is very discourag-
ing to developers and housing
providers and ultimately has
and will continue to reduce
investment in our community
as we know of investors and
builders that will no longer do
work in Astoria due to similar
diffi culty with the city.”
‘It no longer felt
like a home’
Austin
Kettleson,
a
small-business owner and
a veteran of the U.S. Coast
Guard, has lived in a unit in
the fourplex for over three
years with his girlfriend and
her two daughters, ages 9 and
6.
Kettleson has watched
tourists replace his neigh-
Bubble guy: Blows bubbles at sea, too
Continued from Page A1
Blowing bubbles goes
beyond a simple hobby for
him — it’s an art.
“A lot of people, they
just have this impulse to
just destroy the bubbles,”
he said. “It’s like, well,
would you take away a
painter’s paintbrush? Or a
sculptor’s chisel? You’re
kind of just ruining the art,
running around popping
them.”
Most of the time,
Lampert draws a crowd of
onlookers that enjoy watch-
ing the bubbles. But occa-
sionally, Lampert gets into
“bubble trouble,” as he
likes to call it.
The commercial fi sher-
man occasionally brings his
“ bubble sauce” with him
to work. “Blowing bub-
bles out at sea is the best
thing of all time,” he said.
The diff erent air currents
on the water create unique
shapes with the bubbles to
the delight of some of his
co-workers.
Lampert was blowing
bubbles out on a boat once
while his captain was look-
ing for a buoy. “We were
going with the wind … ”
he said. “He could not see
where the buoy was. We
were fi lling the sky with
bubbles. ”
He’s also had the police
called on him for blowing
bubbles on private property.
But
despite
these
encounters,
Lampert’s
love of bubbles carries on.
Going into town dressed in
a clown suit or a puff y chee-
tah print coat and blowing
extra large bubbles lets him
be his “normal, weird self,”
he said.
“I’m always a fan of the
extra weird,” he said.
Garth Porteur, along with
Gavin Lampert, is one of the
‘bubble guys.’
bors as the units around him
became vacation rentals.
Eventually, his unit was the
last long-term rental left.
So it wasn’t unexpected
when Kettleson received a
termination notice in May.
“It no longer felt like a
home … ,” he said. “You
don’t feel like decorating or
anything.”
Although the 90-day
notice said his apartment
would be used to house one
of the owners’ family mem-
bers, Kettleson expects it will
eventually turn into a vacation
rental like the rest of the units.
In a statement to The Asto-
rian, the Magie s said they
provided one month’s rent to
Kettleson as required under
Oregon law. They said they
off ered an alternative unit at
another location, but Kettle-
son said he declined because
it was more expensive, had
less square footage and was
on the other side of town.
While the couple and
the city work toward a con-
clusion, Kettleson has been
working overtime to close on
a house.
He feels lucky that his
family is fortunate enough to
make that move. “But there’s
so many people that can’t
swing that,” he said.
Over the p ast three years,
he has watched the number of
vacation rentals tick up on the
Airbnb website while work-
force and aff ordable housing
in Astoria remains scarce .
Kettleson worries about
the message that will be sent
to other apartment owners if
the Magie s are able to turn all
six units into vacation rentals.
“I think it’s only a mat-
ter of time before owners of
those buildings say, ‘Well,
these people did it with theirs,
why can’t I do it with mine?’
and just start doing it the
same,” he said.
Continued from Page A1
When school closed for
Richardson’s children “that
support system of the edu-
cation system — and all of
the social benefi ts that are
packed into our public edu-
cation system — were sud-
denly absent.”
“Recognizing a mis-
alignment of values is one
thing, and then having it
become like a very real part
of your everyday profes-
sional life is kind of next
level,” she said. “All of a
sudden, these low-level
value misalignments or dis-
satisfactions are very pres-
ent and very immediate.”
Though she wanted
more fl exibility in logistics
and expectations from her
employer, Richardson “still
thought that it was a change
that I could help achieve
within my workplace.” But
when her current position
opened up, “I decided to
just take the leap.”
“In hindsight, it was past
time,” Richardson said.
The quit rate for Orego-
nians was at or above 3%
for seven straight months
in late 2021 and early this
year , according to the fed-
eral Bureau of Labor Sta-
tistics. Pre-pandemic, the
monthly quit rate had only
reached 3% or higher a
handful of times since at
least 2001, and never for
more than two consecutive
months.
In the survey, 33% of
Oregonians said that they
at least partially agreed that
the reason employers have
had diffi culty fi lling jobs is
because since the COVID-
19 restrictions , “people
have gotten used to not
working and are continu-
ing to live off savings and
unemployment
benefi ts
and are not feeling a sense
of urgency to work.”
Unemployment bene-
fi ts were expanded during
the height of the pandemic,
but have since shrunk back.
Laid-off workers, who pay
into unemployment insur-
ance through payroll, can
receive roughly 65% of
their weekly wages when
unemployed. A person
working 40 hours a week
at minimum wage could
receive around $350 per
week if laid off . The addi-
tional weekly payments
approved by the federal
government — initially
$600 and then $300 —
ended in September .
People receiving unem-
ployment benefi ts typi-
cally have to demonstrate
that they are searching for
employment. The work
search requirement was
suspended during the height
of the pandemic, but rein-
stated more than a year ago.
One in fi ve Oregon
workers switched to remote
or hybrid work during the
pandemic.
Workers who make
$100,000 or more were
three times more likely
than workers making less
than $50,000 to have the
fl exibility to work from
home or go into the offi ce,
the survey found.
One in four workers
making less than $50,000
had to go on unemploy-
ment at some point during
the past two years. Just
1 in 10 workers making
$100,000 or more went on
unemployment.
Still, 38% of working
Oregonians said that noth-
ing had changed in their
employment in the past two
years.
Sienna Fitzpatrick was
halfway through a year-
long AmeriCorps program
in c entral Oregon when
the pandemic hit. Despite
the pandemic, Fitzpatrick
was hired on as a full-time
employee in September
2020.
Fitzpatrick’s organiza-
tion went to remote work
and only returned back to
the offi ce this spring.
“We had a lot of really
long and sometimes kind
of tense discussions as a
department,” about the
return to the offi ce, Fitz-
patrick said, which resulted
in a hybrid schedule that
has had increased fl exibil-
ity when needed, like for
a co-worker struggling to
fi nd consistent child care.
In the survey, 44% of
Oregonians said the option
to work from home would
determine whether they
would accept a job.
“Part of the experience
we all had was seeing our
employers try to react and
make decisions and come
up with policies,” regard-
ing both public health con-
cerns and racial equity,
Fitzpatrick said.
While they enjoy the
work they do and the orga-
nization they work for, Fitz-
patrick said they still see
issues within their work-
place. But their employ-
er’s response to issues that
emerged in the pandemic
— while not always per-
fect in everyone’s view —
showed they were receptive
to employee’s concerns.
“If I were to go to
another organization that
wasn’t interested in hear-
ing that kind of feedback
or wasn’t willing to have
those kinds of hard conver-
sations with their employ-
ees, that would defi nitely
inform me as to how happy
I would be with that group.
I’ve defi nitely raised my
standards for the kind of
organization that I’m will-
ing to work for,” Fitzpat-
rick said.
The statewide survey
was conducted online from
July 8 to July 16 among
1,572 Oregon residents.
The margin of error was
2.47 percentage points.
The Oregon Capital
Bureau is a collaboration
between EO Media Group
and Pamplin Media Group.