Cannon Beach housing too expensive for many of its workers

Published 7:53 am Thursday, March 5, 2015

The second meeting of the city’s Affordable Housing Advisory Task Force, held March 26, underlined many of the well-established reasons that low-income families cannot both work and live in Cannon Beach.

A lack of available units and the prohibitively expensive cost of the units that are available hover near the top of the list, according to task force member Todd Johnston, executive director of Northwest Oregon Housing Authority.

Many of the city’s low-wage employees must reside in Seaside, Astoria and surrounding areas, where living costs are cheaper, and then commute to Cannon Beach.

In addition, many property owners actually have little incentive to create more affordable housing: They can make as much money in a month, or even in a couple of weeks, renting out their units to deep-pocketed short-term visitors as they can renting to a low-income family for a year, Johnston said.

The Northwest Oregon Housing Authority, which administers federal Housing and Urban Development funds, runs several programs that provide access to decent affordable housing in Clatsop, Columbia and Tillamook counties. One is a voucher program that will cover up to 70 percent of a tenant’s rent if the figure is within 110 percent of what HUD considers “fair market rent.”

Though this voucher program could have a big impact on Cannon Beach’s affordable housing problem, the people who currently manage to use the vouchers in Cannon Beach seem to be exceptions, Johnston said. Oftentimes, “the landlord is a friend of a friend of a friend who agreed to lower their rent” so that a family or elderly person could live in the unit, he said.

During the next year, the six-member task force hopes to prepare a set of recommendations for the City Council to address Cannon Beach’s dearth of affordable housing options.