Growth in Yachats is not a question of if — but when, where and how, consultants tell city meeting

 

By CHERYL ROMANO/YachatsNews.com

YACHATS — During a public webinar last week on future housing needs for Yachats, one attendee posed a basic question: “Why is it necessary for Yachats to grow?”

The answer to that underpins the initial findings of consultants working under state grants totaling $73,000 to study the myriad factors involved in planning for the city’s future.

After leading the 23 online attendees through presentations on what’s called a “housing needs analysis,” Jamin Kimmell of Cascadia Partners of Portland answered the query this way:

“This is a question we get often when we talk about housing planning. The key thing to understand is that the city … isn’t able to control whether people want to move to Yachats or not. The question isn’t whether to grow, but to look at ways to manage that growth that protect the existing character of the community.”

Kimmell is the lead consultant on the Yachats project, which has been spearheaded by Planning Commission members Jacqueline Danos and John Theilacker. The webinar was a platform for presenting the initial analyses to the City Council, Planning Commission and the public.

A community meeting is planned for some time in September to answer more questions and solicit comments.

In the meantime, people with questions or comments are urged to email another Cascadia consultant, Rachel Cotton, a webinar co-presenter at Rachel@cascadia-partners.com. The consultants’ slide presentation is available here.

“Tell your neighbors, your colleagues, your friends … we invite everyone to come to the meeting in September,” Cotton said.

Data snapshot: some major findings

To produce the “assessment” part of its housing study, a second consultant, FCS Group, studied Yachats’ current and projected data in key areas: population, income, housing prices, workforce statistics, and future needs. Among its key findings were:

• The median Yachats home price in January 2022 was $492,000, an increase of some $158,000 since 2020. “We don’t believe this is a short-term blip in housing prices,” said Kimmel. “We doubt they (prices) will return to pre-pandemic levels.
• Yachats’ population has grown much faster than the Lincoln County average over the past two decades: a record-high 1,010 people were residents in 2021.
• More than four out of 10 households in Yachats could quality as “low income”, defined as earning less than 80 percent of the area median income of $55,800.
• The average household size in Yachats has decreased “significantly” from 2.01 people per dwelling in 2010 to 1.81 in 2020.
• Median age of Yachats residents is 64.1, compared to the county average of 51.8, and that age has been increasing over the past decade.
• Nine of every 10 jobs in Yachats are filled by workers living outside of the city. “Economically, our businesses depend on people who work here and want to live here,” said Danos.
• Single-family detached homes comprise 81 percent of Yachats’ current housing inventory; the remainder are multifamily, townhomes/duplexes/triplexes, and manufactured homes.
• To meet projected housing demand, the city would need an estimated 294 additional dwellings.

Where could more housing be?

Yachats sits between mountains and the Pacific Ocean, so land available to build any type of structure is limited.

Cotton led the webinar group through a buildable lands inventory created by Cascadia Partners. She noted that the city’s topography includes “some really steep slopes” of more than 25 percent that feature some large tax lots that are vacant or partially vacant. These lots are among the 80 acres of Yachats land zoned and available for residential development.

“About one-quarter of the buildable acres in town might potentially be difficult to develop,” Cotton said, due to environmental constraints, access, and the cost to provide city water and sewers.

“Probably the most important thing the city can do,” said Kimmell, “ is provide help to support infrastructure in those areas … to unlock development.”

In a question-and-answer segment, attendees raised concerns about housing density, water supply, potential tsunami impact on higher slopes, and workforce housing. Instead of building more traditional single-family houses, the idea of multi-family dwellings and accessory dwelling units were discussed.

The current mix of housing — 81 percent being single-family detached homes — is “untenable” for the future, Danos said.

“All the issues that are being raised — land constraints, slopes, an aging population and our lack of workforce housing — all of these issues lend themselves for people to understand where (the current housing mix) needs to be looked at a little differently.”