COMMENTARY: Affordable housing is important now, while living within our water resources

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, February 7, 2017

The 2016 Vashon-Maury Community Plan process has sharpened concerns about two critical elements: our water resource and affordable housing. In two decades, Vashon has changed from a sleepy place to an upscale destination, with corresponding increase in the cost of housing, especially the rental market. Today, families earning even twice the median income for King County have difficulty finding housing on Vashon.

While our community is known for its outspoken environmental and social justice values, closer to home we have a heartbreaking homelessness problem, and a growing number of island workers who commute from the mainland via ferry because they can’t afford to live here. Our present zoning emphasizes rural single-family development that is inherently expensive. A handful of parcels are zoned for greater density, but not dense enough for new affordable housing projects to be economically viable. This disconnect between our values and the provision of affordable housing makes people’s lives difficult, weakens our community and is bad for local businesses.

Water District 19, which serves Vashon Town, has been in moratorium for over 20 years. Every element of the water system is stressed in some way that challenges planning. Past trends are clear: Usage patterns change, summer stream flows decrease, farmers grow more food, well performance deteriorates and water quality suffers. Climate change and future rainfall are wild cards.

The Water District 19 board is working to objectively incorporate all these factors into long-term capacity planning. At the same time, the district has worked diligently over decades to serve more families using our existing water resource, through conservation incentives and bringing additional sources online. The district only recently started issuing new water units. Most likely, the waiting list will be served in the near future, and water made available to parcels not presently on the list.

The district’s draft capacity report, still a work in progress, suggests Water District 19 can add up to 300 customers over the next 20 years, using the resource we have — perhaps more, perhaps far fewer. The board consensus is to release units gradually, while monitoring sources and demand trends. By refining our planning process as more data is gathered, the district can ensure that we will meet our obligations to serve customers and to protect the water resource.

Under present zoning, future development in Vashon Town will continue to be mostly single-family homes with some denser market-rate projects. After the water units that are now becoming available are allocated, we are unlikely to ever see additional water units offered in the quantities required for affordable housing projects to be economically feasible.

Given the 10- to 20-year land use planning horizon, Vashon as a community has a one-time opportunity to embrace affordable housing. If the current revision fails to accommodate it, the windfall of water units will be consumed by market rate housing before the next opportunity for a significant revision; our community as a whole will be worse off for it.

We commend the Community Advisory Group’s effort to increase density for affordable projects, but its compromised form, a proposed overlay allowing 12 units per acre for affordable projects, falls short. We are concerned this gives lip service to affordable housing, while ensuring that nothing changes in reality.

Some are concerned that increased density and market pressures may force Water District 19 to build a pipeline or desalination plant, but our community plan and overwhelming community sentiment already precludes that option. Our state code regulating utilities is clear about water right limitations taking precedence over the concept of a utility’s duty to serve.

If we as a community truly want affordable housing, please do what it takes to make it work. Zone for the density that will allow projects to be financially viable, and do it now so projects can be planned while water is available.

This opportunity will not come again.

— Margot Boyer is a teacher and author, and Bob Powell is a commissioner of Water District 19 .