Arline LaMear

In 2010, a portion of the block now known as Heritage Square collapsed, leaving an unsightly pit. That pit is still there going on 12 years. In those years, our lack of affordable and workforce housing and our homelessness problems have grown exponentially.

We have an opportunity to help remedy that through at least one of the proposals being presented at the City Council meeting at 7 p.m. on Tuesday. This project is critical for several reasons, humanitarian as well as economic.

Workforce housing

Astoria has a desperate need for workforce housing. The provision of more affordable and workforce housing has been a goal of the City Council for many years now.

Local businesses, including Columbia Memorial Hospital, breweries, local retailers and restaurants, canneries, state and county employers and more, all lament the lack of affordable and workforce housing. Their employees simply can’t afford to live in Astoria.

If you own a house, you know that the value of your property has risen astronomically during the past few years. I don’t know about most of you, but I couldn’t afford to buy my house in Astoria today. Rents are just as problematic. The rule of thumb used to be that you should pay no more than one-third of your monthly income for housing. With rents of $800 a month and up, many members of our working population are paying over 50% of their income for monthly rent.

Homelessness

As most of you know, Clatsop County has the highest rate of homelessness of any county in the state, with a rate of 17.4 homeless people per 1,000 in population. That’s deplorable.

In 2017, when I was mayor of Astoria, I appointed a task force to work on the challenges of homelessness in our city. There were representatives from our downtown businesses, health providers, social services and mental health organizations, law enforcement agencies, city and county government entities, etc.

We soon changed our name from the homelessness task force to the homelessness solutions task force. We didn’t want to be another committee of talking heads that didn’t accomplish anything. We wanted to identify solutions and bring them to fruition.

We developed partnerships within the task force that have proven invaluable, but much of our work has remained unseen by the general public. One goal of the task force has been to increase the inventory of affordable housing, including to those who are living on our streets.

Support the project

This project has the real potential to change the trajectory of Astoria but, to do so, the City Council needs our support to make it happen.

I encourage the City Council to vote “yes” on all the amendments approved by the Planning Commission. Multifamily housing must be an allowed use, and we need to recognize that parking right in front of our intended destinations should not come at the expense of providing housing for our workforce, our artists, young adults and those who need a little stability to join the workforce.

This development will address the urgent needs of our downtown businesses in need of workers, individuals and families who cannot afford to buy or rent in our city anymore, and those who are forced to live on the streets because they don’t have adequate resources or services.

Be part of the solution and lend your support to this much-needed development.