YACHATS – Two consultants helping the city of Yachats determine its future housing needs will report their initial findings to the City Council, Planning Commission and the public during an online meeting Monday afternoon.
The webinar is from 3 to 4:30 p.m. A link to the material on the city website and to attend the webinar is here.
The city received two state grants totaling $73,000 to help do the work. A $30,000 grant to Cascade Partners of Portland is to gather data on existing structures, land and zoning, establish a baseline of what housing the city currently has and determine want types of land may be available for future residential and commercial use. A $43,000 grant to FCS Group of Redmond, Wash. is to collect data and provide a 20-year forecast for Yachats’ housing needs.
Representatives of both companies will lead Monday’s webinar to present initial reports of their findings.
Planning commission member Jacqueline Danos spearheaded efforts to get the grants and worked with fellow commissioner John Theilacker to put together a small working group to help the consultants learn more about Yachats and gather data.
Monday’s meeting is designed to present data to the council and planning commission. The commission and consultants plan a community meeting in September with reports finished after that and then formally presented to the commission and council in October.
“Yachats is not very different from a lot of small places around the country,” Danos said. “We haven’t spent enough time on planning and zoning and now that’s affecting our housing options and choices.
Some tidbits from the housing study:
- Four of 10 households in Yachats could qualify as “low income” by federal standards;
- There are 509 jobs in Yachats and 90 percent of them are filled by workers living outside the city;
- There are 783 “housing units” in Yachats – 330 occupied and 453 are seasonal, vacant or for sale; and
- 81 percent of the housing is single family.
“This phase is really data gathering,” Danos said. “Nobody can take the data away. We can show people the data and we can show how you can do things with a goal and vision of what your community can be.”
But it will be up to city commissions and the council to eventually decide what they think of the reports and act – or not — on them.
“The next phase is where people will want to get more involved,” Danos said.
The impetus for the grants behind the Yachats project is House Bill 2003, passed by the 2019 Oregon Legislature. It requires cities with more than 10,000 people to conduct a housing need assessment to plan for the future.
Some 15 south coast cities — including Waldport and Florence — have received the state housing study grants.
Yachats was able to get the grants with the help of Hui Rodomsky, a south coast regional representative for the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development, who lives in Yachats.
With a housing needs analysis, if the city council decides the city needs to expand its urban growth boundary, the housing needs assessment is the first step in beginning that process with the state. The other potential change is for the planning commission and council to discuss changes in housing density.
To read the consultants’ initial reports, go here
