Houses in construction sit at the Kennedy Farm development on Hillhurst Road May 31, 2019.
Clark County is looking to address housing needs in one of the most urban areas under its jurisdiction, with the council approving a public participation plan including an advisory group to have representatives provide insight on how to handle issues keeping residents from living affordably.
During a Nov. 3 meeting, the Clark County Council voted unanimously to approve a public participation plan for its Housing Options Study and Action Plan, a project intended to expand housing availability in urban parts of unincorporated Clark County. Part of the plan includes the formation of an advisory group featuring representatives from a variety of perspectives in the community to help formulate what the county’s plan will end up looking like.
Jacqui Kamp, program manager for the study and action plan, said the plans’ overall goal was to get a better understanding of housing challenges in the county and to identify ways to encourage different housing types for different income levels in the Vancouver Urban Growth Area, a currently-unincorporated area to the north of the city.
The project was initially approved by the council in March to look at that area, which includes approximately 159,000 people, Kamp said. The area was picked as it had public transit service and utility infrastructure in place to allow for the type of urban housing that the plan would focus on.
Kamp said that transportation was the second-largest annual expenditure for many households, next to housing, so looking at transit accessibility was important in where new communities were located. She noted that Battle Ground, Ridgefield, Vancouver and Camas were going through their own processes in addressing housing needs.
Kamp said one of the goals of the public participation plan was to ensure that those most vulnerable to rising housing costs were at the forefront of the project. A generic list of potential representatives for the advisory group included developers as well as those representing schools, older adults, youth, those with disabilities, communities of color and the homeless community, among others.
The group is expected to meet close to a dozen times through 2021, according to a release from the county, beginning with remote meetings due to the COVID-19 pandemic but potentially beginning to meet in person should restrictions on public gatherings be eased.
Other areas for public participation included public meetings at key milestones in the project timeline, as well of the use of a variety of other outreach tools such as videos, independent tours of different housing types, questionnaires and mailers, according to information provided to council at the plan’s approval.
Prior work to address housing needs in the area included stakeholder outreach to begin to identify issues including a lack of housing types, restrictive or unrepresentative zoning, a lack of land supply leading to competition between for-profit and nonprofit developers, high development and impact fees, and a cumbersome review and permitting process, among others.
Council discussed how the action plan project differed from planning tools such as the county’s comprehensive growth management plan. Councilor Julie Olson said while something like the comprehensive plan was a long-range look at the direction of growth in the county, once the housing action plan was completed the county could make decisions based on the information in a relatively quicker turnaround.
Councilor John Blom spoke positively of the broad scope the project would have.
“Too often when we’re looking at housing we get stuck with just one portion of it,” Blom remarked.
Applications for interested county residents to represent on the advisory group will be accepted through Nov. 30, the county release stated.
