Throughout summer, though interrupted by COVID outbreaks and wildfire smoke, the Methow Valley Housing Solutions Network finished its first phase of work, focused on studying the problem of affordable housing in the valley and identifying solutions tailored to its unique needs.
Now, the group is moving to the next phase, in which it has created five subcommittees tasked with drafting a long-term affordable housing plan for the area, pursuing funding, advocating politically for the valley’s housing needs, spreading information to buyers, sellers and real estate agents, and communicating clearly about the housing crisis.
“We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. It’s really common for municipalities to have a housing action plan,” said Danica Ready, executive director of the Methow Valley Housing Trust.
The network includes representatives from organizations including TwispWorks, Room One, the Methow Housing Trust and the Methow Valley Citizens Council, among others — all of which have a track record of getting things done.
“We believe that all local community members should have a stable place to call home, we acknowledge that this is not the case right now and we recognize that if we do not address housing in the Methow Valley soon the valley we love may be lost,” said Sarah Brooks, associate director of Methow Conservancy, who is also a member of the network, and who gave a presentation on its efforts at the Methow Housing Trust’s Nov. 11 meeting.
The network was the “brainchild” of the Methow Housing Trust, Brooks said. Last year, Ready called together leadership of other area nonprofits and community organizations to discuss the growing housing crisis.
Lots of ideas
When the network was first formed, they were inundated with ideas.
“We got a huge list of solutions, and in fact one of our tasks was keeping this huge spreadsheet of things we could try, and trying to parse them down to — but what ones fit our specific valley and which ones fit our specific needs?” Brooks said.
Home ownership isn’t for everyone, she said. The group also considered the need for rental housing, workforce housing and others.
The network also met with the Methow Housing Perseverance group and SASH, or the Senior Assessment for Support and Housing (SASH) steering committee, she said, and had workshops with elected officials on a local, county and state level. They also met with elected officials and leaders in similar communities around the state and country.
Ready is leading the first subcommittee, tasked with creating a long-term housing plan, and to identify and secure properties now for future affordable housing projects.
“We’d like to support putting that plan together for our community,” she said.
The second committee, focused on funding, is led by Sarah Brown, interim director of TwispWorks. That group will focus on grant writing, creating pro-forma “deal sheets” to show developers what might be doable in the county, and reaching out to philanthropists.
“We have some ready investors, some mystery people might even be on this call that are ready to help invest and make affordable and even market-rate housing available to Methow Valley residents,” Brown said at the Nov. 11 meeting.
Another committee, led by the Citizen Council’s Jasmine Minbashian, will focus on advocating with government organizations. The group could encourage regulation of nightly rentals, which may displace long-term rentals in the community, as well as advocating for public funding.
“I am not a housing expert but I am quickly learning a lot more about housing issues,” she said. “Sadly this is not the only crisis our community Is facing right now, in addition to the climate crisis that is impacting our community.”
One of the options, Minbashian said, is looking at potential changes to requirements for spending of lodging taxes or real estate excise taxes, to allow those funds to go toward housing.
Brooks will lead the fourth subcommittee, which plans to find funding for a “permit navigator” to guide housing developers through the process, apply the ground lease or resale restriction model to local homes and other projects.
The final subcommittee, chaired by Kelly Edwards of Room One, will focus on communications.
In the next few months, each of the subcommittees will continue to pursue its goals, and the network plans to launch a website, likely accessible through one of the organizations’ websites.
More information
• Housing roadmap subcommittee — Danica Ready, danica@methowhousingtrust.org.
• Funding subcommittee — Sarah Brown, executivedirector@twispworks.org.
• Advocacy subcommittee — Jasmine Minbashian, jasmine@mvcitizens.org.
• Tools/resources subcommittee — Sarah Brooks, sarah@methowconservancy.org.
• Communications subcommittee — Kelly Edwards, kelly@roomone.org.
