Getting to more housing

372 issues printed since July 5, 2017. 17 weeks to paper’s final issue

Yesterday afternoon, at a hearing before the Town of La Conner ‘s hearing examiner, the case of granting a conditional use permit for a health club to open at the former COA restaurant on Maple Avenue was heard. The land is zoned residential. The restaurant operated with a conditional permit. Once the building was vacant for six months the zoning reverted to residential.

Several residents oppose the permit application, saying workforce housing is needed in La Conner and an apartment building is preferable, that residential sites are scarce.

Once again housing here is being championed by individuals. The town’s government seems unable to make workforce housing a priority or be vocal about it. The scattered efforts to “mingle” with residents seem to be these meetings’ purpose without policy or planning to guide either residents or staff. In the absence of town articulated goals, residents are filling the void as the spirit moves them.

Dyann Provenzano held a fundraiser a couple of Saturdays ago, inviting friends to visit, eat, drink and make a donation to Skagit Habitat for Humanity. Perhaps neither elected officials nor town staff were invited.

The Saturday before, coincidentally, Skagit Habitat held an informational meeting in Pioneer Park, seeking applicants for the first three homes for which it intends to break ground on property it bought at South Third and Caledonia streets last year. Neither town officials nor staff were seen at the gathering.

Diane Goetz, a Soroptimist, as is Provenzano, at the fundraiser, in the spirit of volunteerism and community, suggested her Soroptimist chapter recruit volunteer work parties and contribute shifts to help construct the homes. Volunteer labor and sweat equity provides the bulk of construction hours for building Habitat homes.

Goetz also suggested reaching out to the local Kiwanis and Rotary clubs to get their participation.

Contrast this support and the attitude of town residents, albeit activists and volunteers, with the pace of initiatives taken by town officials, both elected and staff. One planning commissioner criticizes state mandates municipalities must meet for the high ratio of workforce housing as a percentage of all housing built in town by 2045.

Belatedly, staff corrected statements made that called state housing goals suggestions, not requirements.

Only in July did the town hire a consultant to develop a plan for economic development of the area below Town Hall and across from its parking lot. Funds from the state’s Community Development Block Grant program were awarded two years ago. These are federal funds supporting housing for people with lower incomes.

And it has been over two years since Port of Skagit staff and consultants made a presentation to the town’s council and planning commission, introducing their plans for developing 13 acres at its La Conner Marina property that projected workforce housing there.

The residents, mobilized by the town council’s selling of the Hedlin ballfield property in 2021, have championed housing opportunities at every possible occasion. Their government is neither clear nor consistent on this issue. It rushed to spend $168,000 for a half-acre of landlocked property in the floodplain behind Channel Cove, below Pioneer Park. It is an unlikely housing site. Why invest in that property? Those dollars could have funded longterm planning.

Yes, small town government development of subsidized housing is complex and costly. Consider the many possible players and partners, parts of the puzzle, if you will.

Start with the mayor, council and staff.

Externally, it is critical to work with Skagit Habitat for Humanity, Skagit County government, Port of Skagit, La Conner Schools, Washington state agencies, federal agencies and local, state and national nonprofits.

This paper has recognized before that the town government lacks resources, is short on funds and understaffed, with a parttime mayor and volunteer council members. That is exactly why empowering a Town of La Conner Working Class Housing Commission will move the issue forward, as the town’s Emergency Management Commission has steadily done since early 2023.

There is a cliche that when the people lead the leaders will follow.

Some residents, at least, are waiting.