Packwood residents voice concerns at public housing forum

By Isabel Vander Stoep / isabel@chronline.com

As the crow flies, downtown Packwood is roughly equidistant from White Pass Ski Area and the base of Mount Rainier.

For the adventurer, this makes the town in the far east of Lewis County an idyllic stay.

Every weekend, this point is proven. The city center is teeming with tourists filling the restaurants and shops. And all of these people need a place to lay their heads. On Airbnb.com, selecting a short-term rental (STR) in Packwood for any open weekend from March through May gives guests 298 options to choose from.

The situation has its advantages. According to residents of a January 20 public forum on housing in Packwood, these include jobs for people who clean STRs and income for landlords who rent out their homes. But it also has its drawbacks: 298 STR would represent approximately 16% of the approximately 1,800 single-family residences in the sector. It’s also likely an underestimate of the total stock of STRs, because Lewis County didn’t register them as businesses.

That leaves only so many homes for full-time residents of Packwood to buy or rent. And some locals resent the heavy influx of traffic on weekends.

As one forum participant put it, “Short-term rental customers feel like it’s the Wild West.”

Other issues are also at play. Those identified by meeting participants included the lack of infrastructure needed to set up multi-family housing, a large percentage of seasonal workers – with White Pass or land agencies – who need homes and rising property taxes. These factors, according to attendees, contribute to a loss of the “small town vibe” they love about Packwood.

There are few incentives to rent property long term. Landlords could earn, at most, a few thousand dollars in rent from tenants each month or charge up to $300 a night if they had an Airbnb.

As demand for STR continues to grow, Lewis County is developing a sub-area plan for the Packwood area. It will be created using information gathered from community members to draft policy guidelines in the region for 20 years after the plan’s implementation.

The Jan. 20 forum was hosted by Lewis County Senior Long-Range Planner Mindy Brooks, a Packwood resident who leads the sub-area plan, and Lewis County Special Projects Assistant Attorney Eric Eisenberg , who is currently working to answer a countywide question. housing crisis.

At the meeting, which was held in the Packwood Community Room and on Zoom, 52 people signed up for the list in person and at least 39 attendees showed up online.

The bulk of the sub-area plan will be created at monthly meetings by a community advisory committee to be held privately with meeting notes uploaded to the county’s website. But, Brooks said it was easy to see that the community as a whole had to weigh in on housing. Future public forums could be organized on other subjects if the need arises.

“The subzone plan is really about creating a compass for Packwood. He sets visions and goals on many topics so that there is a direction in which Packwood is heading. And housing is clearly one of those big, important topics for this community,” she said.

Resident feedback guides the plan moving forward. The county will host future housing forums, which will be set up to dig deeper into each of the topics raised by the first, and the advisory committee may incorporate public input into its workshops. There are also surveys available for the public to provide feedback and Brooks is taking feedback via email.

Brooks has received criticism from residents who feel the process – which is expected to take about a year – is moving too slowly for something urgent. She says that in her decades as a planner, it’s the quickest project she’s ever taken on.

“I understand because it seems urgent to me. It feels like a lot is going on in Packwood and it feels a bit behind the times. But the way I’ve explained it to people is we have to know where we’re going before we start going there,” Brooks said.

She compared it to packing for a trip, saying you have to know where you’re going before you know what to pack. Community members should set goals so that the sub-sector plan reflects their needs.

The community advisory committee is made up of 38 residents and about ten alternates.

These members represent full-time and part-time residents of Packwood and people on all sides of housing issues. Throughout the year, the committee will define issues, objectives and solutions, in that order.

The issues will first be outlined next month in an “existing conditions report,” Brooks said. Other committee meetings will be held at least once a month, but Brooks anticipates the committee will split into sub-committees to meet more frequently.

While defining and writing policy to maintain a “small town vibe” seems largely subjective, unpacking it as a team of locals offers the best chance of getting it right, she said.

“Maybe for me, the sense of community means that I feel really good to be able to walk down the street and say hello to all my neighbors when I’m walking my dog, okay? So for that to happen , does that mean we need sidewalks and speed limits? You know, there’s an element that we can do from a county perspective,” she said. “That’s as we proceed. We unpack every problem. We ask, ‘What do we mean? Really, really. What do we mean?’ And then we start figuring out what we can do.

To give input:

• The Housing Forum Series is open to the public. The meetings will take place from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. with a location to be determined on the following themes/days:

Short-term rental: February 17

Affordable Housing: March 24

Zoning: April 21

• Email Lewis County Senior Long Range Planner Mindy Brooks at mindy.brooks@lewiscountywa.gov.

• Take surveys or read more material at https://bit.ly/3ufKshd.