Up, down: Home prices versus kids in school

Two weeks ago 60 seniors graduated from La Conner High School in an old fashioned indoor ceremony. The 54 students graduating last year did so in an outside ceremony at the football stadium. In 2020, each of the 33 graduating seniors was delivered to the parking lot ceremony by their parents in the family car.

The last two graduating classes have been huge. Future classes will not be that big. For the fall, the La Conner School District is projecting a 11% decline in enrollment, maybe 530 students, down 56 from this year’s 586 students.

This week’s page 8 story reviews where in the district students live. Only 12%, 71, live in the Town of La Conner. Of the five school director districts, the Swinomish Village district, with 231 students, 39%, has the most students by far.

There are specific reasons for fewer students next year. Two are home schooling or choosing out of district schools. Another is fewer school age children in the district. That comes after the 2020 census counted the district’s population as growing to over 5,000. The median age in the 98257 zip code is 59 years reports Cubit Planning, Inc., using 2020 census data. That makes half the people in the zip code older than 59.

There is a graying of our population, driven in part by a shortage of starter homes and rental units. Last week’s front page lead story was the $500,000 May median sold home price for the nine homes sold in the La Conner area. In Skagit County, the May median sold home price was $560,000 for the 165 homes sold that month. Locally and countywide, sold prices have increased since January.

In La Conner the first two Landed Gentry Maple Field homes are newly on the market, with one under contract. The three bedroom homes are listing for $759,900 and $789,900(see page 3). The Center Street condominium project owners' marketing is to “seniors wishing to downsize.” The units will be too small for families raising children and probably too expensive for school staff to buy.

Private developers will always seek maximum profits unless they enter into contracts with government entities or nonprofits that restrict price and land ownership. Those arrangements are few and far between in the United States. They are difficult to structure and slow to finalize.

Locally, The Port of Skagit has started planning development of some 13 acres of the La Conner Marina. Multifamily housing is a project goal. Project fruition requires years of planning, permitting, funding and construction, whatever its specific goals and targets for adding housing working people can budget.

Vastly increasing the quantity of starter homes for first time home buyers in a short term time frame is a project beyond the capabilities of the town or perhaps the county and state government.

Significantly increasing housing stock, especially starter homes and apartments in quantity, is one of the most complex and intractable issues our society faces locally, statewide and nationally. Climbing this steep mountain is now more difficult in the third year of the coronavirus pandemic, with inflation, labor and material and supply problems each needing years to resolve.

Writing editorials on a periodic basis when school enrollment declines and rising home prices appear in the news is a drop in the bucket – a tear on the cheek – of sharing concerns and keeping those concerns current in the community.

All politics is local is the cliché. Residents speaking with their elected officials and involving themselves in every activity and project around housing is the surest way to take even the smallest steps beyond the status quo and the increasing graying of La Conner.