Oregon Faces Affordable Housing Crises
The following is part of a series by the Newport News-Times on the state of affordable housing in Oregon. As Oregon home loan costs continue to rise to heights beyond what residents can afford, how to address the situation best has become a topic of great debate.
Need a doctor? Interested in preserving and enhancing quality education in our schools? Want to pick up a quick bite or enjoy a nice dinner out?
If you answered “yes” to one of these questions, you may want to ponder the far reaching impacts the affordable/work force housing crisis currently has on the Oregon housing market and the community.
The impacts truly do affect us all.
Consider a doctor who may wish to establish a practice in Lincoln County. The doctor can expect to develop a good client base fairly quickly.
But before a physician will establish a practice, they’ll consider the needs of the medical support staff they’ll require.
Can qualified nurses and other technicians needed for any medical office, earning a fair wage for their services, find housing within their means for themselves and their families?
What about our teachers?
The starting salary for a teacher in Lincoln County is $32,500 per year. Oregon mortgage lending institutions estimate that no more than 30 percent of a family’s income should go toward housing.
That gives a teacher $10,800 a year for housing expenses. With the median sales price of a newly constructed home in 2005 at $298,250, amortized over 30 years at 6 percent interest with 20 percent down, the Oregon home mortgage payment for such a home would be $17,000 a year.
Add property tax and insurance, and that same Oregon mortgage requires 60 percent or twice the recommended allocation.
Now look at one of Lincoln County’s more promising industries and consider the housing market facing hotel and restaurant workers.
For this segment of our community, the average income is about $14,850. Apply 30 percent toward housing. There’s $4,900 a year or $400 a month in a market where median rent for a one-bedroom unit is $543 … if you can find one.
Yes, price is an issue. But scarcity has clearly become its rival.
While construction abounds in Lincoln County, more than 80 percent of new construction is for absentee owners, and more than 30 percent of all housing is vacant or serves only a second home or vacation use.
Ask virtually any employer and they will confirm that among both strong and struggling wage earners, the availability of housing at Fair Market Rent has seriously impacted the local employment market.
If you’re among the lucky there’s a tendency to think of a community’s need for affordable housing as serving the poor and disenfranchised:
- Single parents earning minimum wage
- Someone ill or disabled and unable to maintain a steady job
- Those among us who for any number of reasons struggle to function in our society
But the reality, especially on the Oregon coast, is the cost and availability of housing inventory has far outpaced wages and supply.
So much so that most average wage earners have little hope of securing the home mortgage financing needed to provide adequate housing for their family and their future, and many of the professionals and skilled trade workers we wish to lure here are turned away because they can neither afford nor find a place to call “home” in this community.
Yachats, Gem of the Oregon Coast, is currently struggling with the issue of affordable/work force housing along with every other coastal community.
As with other communities, a growing number of Yachats citizens are not content to watch the issue to see if any one does anything.
Yahatians, as the locals sometimes facetiously call themselves, choose to get involved. A small group of concerned folks have organized a committee to seek answers to the complex questions of affordable housing.
SOURCE: Newport News-Times