Astoria is planning to build new mixed-use housing downtown. The contentious proposal includes units for low-income renters and supportive housing for people in mental health treatment. City Councilors Joan Herman and Tom Brownson have different perspectives on the plan. They join us with details.
The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: The Astoria City Council voted recently to move forward with a new downtown development. It will have a combination of workforce housing for low income renters and supportive housing for people in mental health treatment. The vote was close, it was 3 to 2. That reflects a community that’s been divided about this development. We’re going to get two perspectives on the plan from members of the city council. Right now, Joan Herman voted to go forward with the development. Tom Brownson voted against it. Welcome to you both.
Tom Brownson: Thank you.
Miller: Joan Herman, first. So the sight of this proposed development is now called Heritage Square. Can you give us the brief history of this site over the last little more than a decade?
Joan Herman: Yes. About 12 years ago, a plan was conceived to create a public square for the entire block along the lines of a Pioneer Courthouse Square, something like that with lots of open space for the community and its city-owned property so it would be completely public. The plan never moved forward at the time and again, this would have been around 2010. The estimated cost was approximately $10-12 million, which the city didn’t have. And in the intervening time, the old Safeway was demolished and there still is a giant pit which has been there for 12 years, fenced off, just waiting to determine what to do with the property. And also in the intervening time, of course, there is a dire need for affordable housing in our community, especially because we rely to a great extent on the tourism industry, which means generally speaking lower wage workers.
Miller: Tom Brownson, can you give us a sense for what Astoria’s and the broader sort of north coastal area’s housing situation is like right now? What do you hear from people looking for homes or from employers looking for employees?
Brownson: Sure, thank you. I think that the situation in Astoria is very similar to what we’re seeing across the state. We’ve had this demand, there are people moving into the area, housing in Astoria specifically has always been limited. Our geography sort of has us closed in and there isn’t much room to expand. And we’ve been seeing the houses that exist being taken up and fewer and fewer are available. So, we have an issue there. At the same time, and down at the lower income levels, there’s no new development, no new opportunities. And we’ve been listening for the last since I’ve been on council for sure that people who have had a hard time just finding a place to rent. People have had a hard time finding a place to buy. And this has been up and down the economic level. We have situations where we have job openings for professionals and they usually come from outside the area and they come into the area and they look for housing and they end up not being able to find anything and we lose those people. And at the same time, we have workers at the other end just looking for a place to live at a reasonable rate if they can find it at all. So, we’re just challenged up and down.
Miller: So, Joan Herman, with this as the backdrop, how was it that the Council ended up zeroing in on workforce housing as the preferred use for this site?
Herman: That is the greatest need. A number of employers are having trouble finding workers simply because the workers can’t find a place to live. And again, this is occurring at all income levels, but particularly at the lower levels. But just as an anecdotal piece of evidence, the Warrenton Planning Director recently resigned because he could not find a permanent place to live. And that kind of story is not unusual. And any apartments that are listed at a semi reasonable price on any classified sites on facebook will have a long, long line of people interested in trying to get into them. And it’s always hard for me to read that because I think, how are they ever going to find something reasonable?
Miller: Mhm. So, can you describe, Joan Herman, what the developer, a Portland developer, Edlen and Co., what they’re proposing on this site?
Herman: Sure. And keep in mind that this is simply a starting point as the project hasn’t been fleshed out, that’s what the City Council and the developer are going to be doing over the next 6 to 12 months, but it calls for building anywhere between 44 to 75 workforce housing units for people earning 60-80% of the area median income. And in today’s dollars, that’s roughly $15 to $20 an hour, although that will be adjusted upward by the time the building opens, hopefully by late 2024. But in addition, the local mental health agency that contracts with the county would provide wraparound services and 33 studio units of permanent supportive housing for people with mental illnesses and substance addictions.
Miller: How did the idea develop to combine these two? These are two very different kinds of affordable housing, one workforce housing, the other permanent supportive housing for people getting various kinds of mental health treatment. Why combine them?
Herman: Well, I think the developers are, actually I know, that by providing the permanent supportive housing to people receiving treatment, they earn at most 30% of the area median income, and the developer must rent to tenants earning on average, no more than 60% of that area median income. So, by allowing the mental health component, it provides room for a broader range of wage earners in the main component of the project, which is the workforce housing. Because the developer must qualify for federal tax credits and state grants that limit the average wage earner to 60% of that AMI (Area Median Income). It’s a little complicated, but that’s essentially why the mental health component was included in the project.
Miller: Tom Brownson, what’s your biggest concern about the status of this proposal right now?
Brownson: My biggest concern has been about the CBH (Clatsop Behavioral Health), that building that we’re just talking about. If you go back to where this all began with the City Council looking at the need for housing, making it a goal, I think, as far back as four years ago, a major goal to redevelop Heritage Square into workforce housing. That was our idea. The idea was not really clear. When we finally got to the point where we could have some staff work on it and we hired somebody to put out a request for an expression of interest for development there for workforce housing, we still really didn’t exactly know what that looked like because they’re just all the details needed to be fleshed out. So when it came back to us, we had two companies offering these options and all the things that Joan talked about were part of that, the 60% AMI, etc. But what we hadn’t ever talked about and what we had never anticipated was the CBH component as being part of the plan. So, seeing that initially it was really interesting because for me, it really checked the boxes: we need housing for the workforce, we need services for the homeless housing first situation. What an opportunity here. The city could actually do something. And I have to remind people that in the city of Astoria, generally speaking, we don’t have the capacity to take these things on. We don’t have the resources to do it so this is really a unique situation that we have property that needed to be developed, that could be developed and that somebody could do something with. So just the idea that we finally have something we can do and impact the community in a very positive way, we were all for that. The CBH component brought with it some serious questions. What are the programs that they’re going to be providing? What is the effectiveness of the programs that they’re providing? Also the placement of the building was going to be plopped right down next to our American Legion Building and directly across the street from our senior citizen center and would also take a chunk of parking away from them and of course access for senior citizens, American Legion Members, a lot of them are seniors. That was where a lot of the concerns by the public came up and those were my personal concerns. Again, it wasn’t what we anticipated and we’ve been sort of pushed into by necessity, a very quick timeline to bring this process forward.
Miller: And it seems that now you will have six months or a year to hammer out some of the details you’re talking about during which either you or the developer could both walk away from these conversations. Joan Herman and Tom Brownson, we will talk more about this in the future. I’m sure. Thanks very much.
Herman: Thank you. Dave.
Brownson: Thank you.
Miller: Finally, today, the State of Oregon has been rethinking high school graduation requirements and asking for public input. So we figured we would do the same thing. We asked you what you think young people need to know right now to be prepared for life after high school. Here are some of your responses.
~Hi, this is Ruth calling from McMinnville with regard to what high school graduates should know before they go into the world. We should include an expectation for personal financial management issues. Those would include credit, credit scoring interest, credit cards, banking insurance and a number of other very common and very necessary subjects with respect to students managing their personal financial lives.
~This is Brian Bazzani calling from Portland. It would be so helpful if they had more of a life skills program or course to prepare these young people how to make a budget, how to balance your checking account, how to care for elderly parents, how to deal with stress in your life, how to deal with loss in your life.
~Hi, my name is Lisa Rand. I’m from Portland, Oregon, and I really think that we need to focus on the specifics in schools a little more. I think it would make a big difference for our world if we were more civic minded. A lot of course work on knowing the self understanding basic parameters of mental health and self care, including addictions and ways of fulfilling yourself, without having to cope with self medicating yourself and also in that realm, how to ask for help.
~Hi, my name is Wesley Alice from Southeast Portland and I did not read the Autobiography of Malcolm X until I was 40 years old. I believe that should be a required reading for all high school graduates in America.
~My name is Bonnie McKinley. I live in Portland. What I wish was taught when I went to high school is environmental responsibility. I believe that learning environmental responsibility would guide community members in viewing our lands, waterways and skyways as special gifts to be protected and shared for all living things in the present and in the future.
~My name is Jason Phillips. One of the most critical things I think we can teach our kids in school is critical thinking. No more rote memorization but critical thinking so they understand how things work rather than just spewing forth an answer to something that they memorized.
~My name is Ellen Bishop and I live in Enterprise, Oregon. What I would like to see high school students know is geography. That is where countries are across the world and where states are in the United States. I say this because after having taught college classes for a number of years, what I’ve found is that my college students often have no idea where, let’s say, New Mexico is or where, for that matter, Germany is or, for that matter, where Chile is. And I think to understand world affairs, knowing where these places are, is really important.
~Hello, my name is Mane Macintosh and I just wanted to share what I had hoped to have learned in high school that would have benefited me in life would have been a course on money management, understanding how to invest my money and the financial advantages that I would see in my later years. But I think maybe a course on health may be a better course on health, not just the birds and the bees talk, but how you can prevent chronic illnesses and chronic diseases by making better food choices and through diet and exercise.
Miller: Thanks to everybody who called in tomorrow on the show.
Contact “Think Out Loud®”
If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983. The call-in phone number during the noon hour is 888-665-5865.