Port Hadlock non-profit Bayside Housing has partnered with the Low Income Housing Institute in Seattle to develop a tiny-home village to provide housing for farmworkers in Jefferson County.
Bayside, which has begun early planning of the tiny-home project with community partners such as the Housing Solutions Network, the Community Boat Project, Finnriver Farm and others, hopes to initially build tiny homes for farmworkers and then develop cottages for low-income working families.
Bayside Housing is a grass-roots organization that developed in tandem with the Old Alcohol Plant Hotel in Port Hadlock. The restoration of the Old Alcohol Plant allowed for the creation of the non-profit, which receives funding from revenue generated by the hotel. As a result, 17 rooms in the hotel are available as transitional housing for individuals and families experiencing homelessness.
“The vision of Bayside was to bring people in here and, once they were stabilized, move them into more permanent housing,” said Gary Keister, director of Bayside Housing and the Old Alcohol Plant. “That just doesn’t happen. Most have to move out of the county. I don’t think we’ve placed more than five here in Jefferson County.”
Since opening in April 2016, Bayside has provided shelter to more than 80 people and transitioned 50 of those into more permanent housing situations. The hotel also provides job opportunities for people experiencing homelessness.
But since starting their transitional housing services, Keister said Bayside staff have noticed a new challenge they hope to address: providing workforce housing for low-income families and individuals in the county, specifically in the Tri-Area communities such as Port Hadlock, Irondale and Chimacum.
“For people working for $15 or $18 an hour, it’s very difficult to find housing,” said Leslie Shipley, development director at Bayside. “These are the people who are serving you food at local restaurants or clerking at local stores.”
According to research done by Jefferson County’s Housing Solutions Network, Jefferson County is the third most unaffordable county in Washington state. Not only that, but 47% of Jefferson County renters are cost-burdened, paying more than 30% of their income on rent.
Rental vacancy rates hover between 0-1% (the national average is around 7%), so even those with stable incomes cannot find available housing, according to the Washington Department of Commerce.
Seeing a need for workforce housing, Bayside Housing is considering developing a tiny village to house farmers and other workers in Chimacum, Port Hadlock and Irondale.
Currently, Bayside’s wait list for transitional housing has 60 applicants on it waiting for a place to live.
“We want to continue to do what we’re doing, but we recognize that we need to go down this other track to provide housing at whatever level we can,” Keister said.
On Dec. 12, Bayside Housing board president Ken Dane sent a letter to the Board of County Commissioners asking the county to consider a partnership to establish the village.
In the letter, Dane asked the county to consider donating or leasing county-owned property at Chimacum Park for the tiny-home village.
“The facilities are not homes per se but often described as ‘wooden tents,’” Dane wrote. “They offer shelter, privacy and lockable doors. They are serviced by portable sanitary and shower facilities. The best of the villages are clean, well-kept, supervised and afford a starting point for homeless people to begin a reintegration into the community. They are a beginning, not an end point.”
The tiny-home village would provide temporary housing for farm workers and people experiencing homelessness, Dane wrote.
The village would eventually make way for longer-term housing. Bayside hopes to build 12 to 16 small cottages or mobile homes for low-income families.
The Low Income Housing Institute is willing to partner with Bayside to build the tiny homes, Keister said.
He estimates it would cost Bayside about $500,000 to build the tiny-home village.
“The big thing is the land and the infrastructure,” he said. “If we can get the land from the county, that would make a huge difference.”
WHY CHIMACUM PARK?
Chimacum Park is located on 9635 Rhody Drive in Chimacum, next to the Tri-Area Community Center and down the road from Chimacum Schools.
“This park has been sitting vacant for 10 to 20 years,” Keister said.
Not only is the park near local farms, making it a good spot for farmworker housing, but it is also near the high school. Bayside’s proposal includes moving the Community Boat Project to Chimacum Park from its current location near the Northwest School of Wooden Boat Building. The Community Boat Project, run by Wayne Chimenti, provides jobs and volunteer opportunities for high schoolers. Many students commute to the project after school to learn boat-building and carpentry skills.
“The project will be losing its space in Port Hadlock in the near future,” Dane wrote in the proposal letter. “The land under consideration would be ideal for a transplanted project.”
But Chimacum Park is currently zoned for parks and recreation use only. Not only that, but the Jefferson County Parks and Recreation department is considering transforming the park into a campground.
“Chimacum Park is an open, public, day-use park that is well-used by many people for recreation, dog-walking and as a great corridor for kids walking to school,” said Matt Tyler, manager of the county’s parks and recreation department.
The long-range plan for the park is to develop it into a campground, he said, as a way to benefit the local economy.
“Whenever you bring in money from outside, it reverberates around the county,” Tyler said. A campground would provide recreational opportunities for visitors who come to tour Jefferson County’s agricultural areas and business for local operations such as Finnriver Farm & Cidery, the Chimacum Corner Farmstand, the Keg & I and others.
The parks department does not have the capital or staff to convert the park into a campground currently, Tyler said.
“It would require a whole new revenue source for the department to hire an additional staff person and pay for utilities like garbage and water,” he said.
However, part of Bayside’s proposal is to also start a public RV park next to the tiny-home village—which would fit with parks and recreation’s long-term plan. The RV park would generate revenue to support the non-profit’s tiny-home village.
Keister said Bayside has not yet heard back from the county commissioners regarding their proposal.
“The proposal has not been acted upon by the commissioners,” he wrote in an email to the Leader. “The plan is to start having community gatherings to explain the project and to make certain that no misinformation is being distributed.”
EARLY STAGES
No matter how the county responds, Bayside is committed to building tiny-home village, Keister said.
“We’re going to do this somewhere, somehow,” he said. “It’s just a matter of finding the right location.”
Though they are still in the early stages of developing the village, he said they have been searching for possible locations outside of Chimacum Park.
Another challenge will be working with the county on permitting.
Tiny homes used as a permanent dwelling, regardless of whether it’s on a foundation or trailer, cannot be self-contained, says the Jefferson County website. They must be connected to a permanent septic or sewer hook-up and have a permanent water source similar to park model homes, which are a growing sector of the prefab housing business.
A village of tiny homes would have to go through a very specific permitting process, said Jodi Adams, permit and administrative manager at the Jefferson County Department of Community Development. It would likely have to go through a permitting process similar to that of building a RV park or campground.
Jefferson County’s Housing Solutions Network has a Tiny Home Committee, which is working on suggesting changes to the county’s ordinances on tiny-home villages, Keister said.
“We’ve got to get creative to find a way to get people out of living in cardboard boxes and broken-down cars,” Keister said.
