PORT ANGELES — Housing, homelessness and short-term rentals dominated discussion at a candidate forum for the primary election pitting Port Angeles City Council incumbent Navarra Carr against challengers Mark Karjalainen and Nick Merrigan for the Position 6 seat.
The forum was hosted by the Port Angeles Kiwanis Club at Joshua’s Restaurant in Port Angeles on Thursday.
Carr has served on the council since 2020, is the youngest city council member and is the only present member who rents her home rather than owning it.
She is studying law through an online program at Seattle University and aims to practice law in Port Angeles after completing her degree in 2024.
“I’m excited to run for a second term on the Port Angeles City Council and continue my commitment to serving all the residents of Port Angeles,” Carr said.
Karjalainen is a Port Angeles resident currently working as a firefighter/paramedic for Clallam County Fire District 3 in Sequim. He previously served as a firefighter/paramedic for Port Angeles.
”I see this as a civic duty, to run for city council,” Karjalainen said. “The founding fathers made us a representative democracy where there are diverse voices from all different sides.
“I have seen this council over the last 20 years make a move from fiscally conservative choices,” he said. “I know this is a non-partisan race, but I am a conservative voice that I feel that is probably missing from the city council.”
Merrigan is a longtime Port Angeles resident who has taught media classes at Peninsula College and currently works as a project manager for Jamestown Excavation.
“I chose to run because of my kids,” Merrigan said. “My daughter started to ask why are there so many homeless people; why are there so many drugs out in the community. Those are two things I want to focus on — drugs and the homeless and getting people housing to solve some of those problems.”
According to Karjalainen: “I think the main thing we need to focus on is the fact that the people that are homeless are addicted to drugs and alcohol and have psychological issues.
“I think we need to focus on those issues and gain better control over the rampant drug use and associated crimes and getting treatment for those with untreated psychological issues that I have seen plenty of as a paramedic,” he said.
Karjalainen said the funds to address these issues would need to come from the federal government.
“We need to look for grants and other funding opportunities for programs, like the community paramedic program, and give our law enforcement the teeth to handle the criminal activities often associated with homelessness and drug use,” Karjalainen said.
Merrigan pointed to housing material costs making it difficult for even working people to build and buy homes.
“Being in the construction industry, there is a subdivision getting ready to be built, but a lot of builders are starting to get worried about the price of materials and new building codes that are going to be passed,” Merrigan said.
“So one of the things that I think the city council should do is make sure we are looking at that code enforcement, basically making the codes reasonable for our area and reducing the cost of housing.”
Karjalailen suggested the city reevaluate the costs of building permits and use that money to fund housing programs that allow people to build up the funds to afford their own spaces.
Carr said a number of factors go into a person ending up homeless and therefore a number of factors need to be addressed to handle the issue.
“Homelessness can happen to anyone,” Carr said. “You can work your whole life and get to a point where you simply cannot afford where you live anymore.
“The fastest growing percentage of people ending up homeless are people in their 60s, living on a fixed income and struggling to get by, and we don’t have the support systems in place to help them,” Carr said.
Carr noted that there’s the issue of homelessness and then there’s the issue of housing in the city and the city has done several things to address both over the years, but it has been difficult to keep up.
“The city of Port Angeles has done a number of things, including things that I have supported,” Carr said.
“For example, we reassessed building permits so that they could be waived for developers building any kind of multi-family units.”
She also noted that there are some issues at the state or federal level wherein the council has to lobby the Legislature or Congress for change to make development more affordable.
“Things that are effective on the I-5 corridor just aren’t effective in rural communities like ours,” Carr said.
The conversation shifted to the issue of short-term rentals and vacation rentals.
“I know the city council has been working on this. I believe that if someone wants to participate in VRBO, they should build a house for that specific purpose,” Merrigan said.
“Any houses that currently participate should have limitations on them because it does take away from our housing stock,” he added. “Just because we are a tourism community doesn’t mean that we should only have houses for tourists.”
Carr said the city’s recent temporary moratorium on new short-term rentals offers three major exceptions: the first are people who live in the house and rent out a room, then homeowners who will be on vacation for a certain amount of time and choose to rent out their home while they’re gone, and people can still build short term rentals in the appropriate high and medium high-density zones, those uses are still allowable.”
Carr said the city aims to update its code regarding short-term rentals and create a permit policy following an assessment of short-term rentals in the city and their impacts on housing stock.
Karjalainen said had he been on the council at the time of the moratorium vote, he would have opposed it.
“I am staunchly against the moratorium,” Karjalanien said. “I am a proud capitalist and think that someone’s private property is their property to do with what they wish.”
He continued: “The city was certainly happy to collect the lodging tax dollars that people have provided through their short-term rentals without doing any kind of code enforcement, so I think to say putting it all on the side of private citizens to say well they were operating outside what they knew was going on I think is completely unfair.”
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Reporter Ken Park can be reached at kpark@peninsuladailynews.com.
