YACHATS — Have an opinion about housing in Yachats? Want to know what consultants are suggesting as ways to meet future needs — like possible changes to zoning, density and lot sizes? A public meeting next week is your chance to learn more and sound off.
From 6:30-8 p.m. Tuesday the city’s Planning Commission will host a meeting in the Commons Pavilion to present the latest ideas on Yachats’ housing needs and to encourage suggestions and comments from the public. The consultants will also present their findings to the City Council and Planning Commission during an online meeting at 1 p.m. Tuesday.
The session is the latest in a series of steps to use $73,000 in state grants to first analyze Yachats’ housing and then to make recommendations on meeting future needs. The consultants are Cascadia Partners of Portland and FCS Group. This summer, Cascadia presented a webinar on its initial findings to the City Council, Planning Commission and the public. The Yachats project has been spearheaded by Planning Commission Members Jacqueline Danos and John Theilacker.
The latest data and suggestions from Cascadia can be seen here.
“People can read this if they want to comment ahead of the meetings, or simply get better informed,” said Danos. She described Tuesday’s session as “where the consultants are hoping to get community members to share their thoughts, insights and ideas about the current data and what they think are the best ways forward.”
In the meantime, Danos urged those interested to email her at jac.danos@gmail.com, with “Yachats Housing” in the subject line.
To date, Cascadia has found that trends in Yachats’ population, age, home prices and buildable land suggest the need for about 294 additional dwellings to meet demand over the next 20 years. Yachats’ location between mountains and the Pacific Ocean severely limits the land available to build any type of structure.
The Yachats Housing Project is funded by the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development. If the city decides to move forward on the consultants’ recommendations, the next step is a housing implementation plan that would be completed in the summer of 2023.
