City representatives touched on a number of topics, but available housing — or lack thereof — was a popular topic for new Sequim mayor Tom Ferrell and new city manager Matt Huish at the “Coffee With Colleen” discussion on Feb 2.

Hosted by Colleen McAleer, executive director of the Clallam County Economic Development Council, the series features guest speakers on a variety of topics hosted over Zoom.

“Every community has this problem,” Ferrell said about affordable housing. “I always argue with folks about how the market will fix itself (but) that might take 20, 30, 40 years.

“Somehow, magically, to come up with enough units to solve this problem is baffling to me. I don’t have a clear answer.

“I see this as a bunch of little fixes toward helping solve the problem.”

Colleen Robinson, executive director for Habitat for Humanity of Clallam County, said her organization has purchased 5 acres in Sequim where they hope to put in 40 workforce homes structured with four-plexes. The residences would help house service workers such as hospitality workers, bus drivers and paradeducators, she said.

Huish echoed Ferrell’s comments, and lauded Habitat for Humanity’s efforts for affordable housing.

“Your model provides equity in the project … that’s the only way something’s going to be sustainable.”

Robinson asked how she could advocate for the city to allow for zoning changes to build those four-plex homes; Huish said getting involved with the city’s comprehensive plan is key.

Huish encouraged Robinson to get involved with changes to the city’s comprehensive plan, a document that in part addresses city zoning issues.

Ferrell said it makes sense for the city to consider going away from a strict single-family house zoning approach.

North Olympic Legislative Alliance lobbyist Josh Weiss said there are two bills being considered by legislators in Olympia regarding housing, forcing cities of certain sizes (10,000 and larger) to allow duplexes in any zone where single-family dwellings are currently allowed.

Weiss called it a mandate-type of approach, with legislation moving forward without consult of city officials.

“It’s been a really ugly conversation,” Weiss said.

“It’s all based on the premise that if you open up zoning that the market will just respond that the significant problem with the housing market right now is that there is not land available to build missing middle types of units — which is partially true — but we also know in jurisdictions that have done this … the market hasn’t responded,” he said.

“It’s not like those parcels now all of a sudden become cheaper. In fact, the reality is those parcels become more expensive, because you can build more units on them. We haven’t seen additional units come on line from these types of land use actions.

“As mayor Ferrell mentioned, it’s going to have to be a number of actions.”

Patricia McCauley, who has been involved in hospitality marketing for more than 25 years, said she is seeing single-family homes across the board being purchased and turned into vacation homes through entities such as VRBO and AirBNB.

“Sequim has an enormous amount of vacation rentals, not in vacation places,” she said, such as downtown areas.

“It’s really sad to see this happening. All through town there are these cute little houses that are starter homes. You’re looking for middle market. You don’t need middle market; you need starter homes. And those are the ones being sucked up and sold as AirBNBs and modernized … and then they’re not starter homes anymore.

“I’m all for the multi-family thing as long as there’s restrictions to 30 days occupancy so that can’t happen.”

Huish said he saw something similar happen on the Oregon Coast which in his view lost some of its “personal charm” as it became inundated with vacation rental homes.

“There are a lot of factors that council policy-makers need to consider as they move into these waters,” he said.

Industry to Sequim

McAleer said the EDC receives a number of leads on businesses seeking new bases, but that nine times out of 10 Clallam County won’t work for them because they require a rail system.

The other 10 percent, she said,almost always require heavy industrial zones. She said an example is a biochar facility, one that would be clean and support a number of jobs but would require significant acreage.

“Is there an area within city limits that might fit for that kind of use? That’s where the opportunities lie for counties like ours,” she said.

Ferrell noted, “I think it would depend on footprint and output, the noise levels, a lot of environmental factors we’d have to consider in our community. It would have to fit, relative to many characteristics.”

Huish said there are some parcels on both ends of Sequim’s city limits that are zoned for high tech businesses, “trying to invite or encourage that industry to the market.”

Mayor, manager goals

Ferrell said he is hoping to help facilitate bringing some really good paying jobs to this area.

“I understand and respect the region, the people who have lived here a long time … but, we have some sites where it would be good to have some good, solid, clean industry and other development. That would be ideal.”

He also said he’d like to bring more “common sense” to the mayor position.

“What I want to do … as the mayor is to make the citizens understand that we are seven individuals with different attitudes toward economic development, socials issues and so on. And that system needs to work. I want that to get back to common sense.”

Huish said that while he’s still so new he couldn’t speak in depth about Sequim issues, he’d like to bolster the city’s technology and customer service departments.

Terry Ward, publisher of the Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum, serves on the Economic Development Corp. board of directors.