Skyrocketing real estate prices on the North Olympic Peninsula aren’t just creating big profits for sellers.
They’re also putting a big squeeze on low-income residents seeking affordable housing.
Beverly Gates-Lapenckas, a single mother of three, is one of them.
Since January, she has searched unsuccessfully for a Port Angeles home where the rent is low enough to qualify for a Section 8 federal housing voucher.
“It’s not so much frustrating as it is disheartening,” said Gates-Lapenckas, who works part-time to avoid raising “latchkey kids.”
Even though she currently lives in a four-bedroom unit at Mount Angeles View housing projects, her goal is to move her family into a private home so her children can escape the stigma they sometimes endure because they live in subsidized housing units.
Six months after qualifying for the federal voucher, however, she still can’t find a three-bedroom house with rent less than $750 per month — the highest rent the voucher rules will allow her to pay.
“The prices being set out there by real estate agents are about $200 higher than what Section 8 housing allows for,” says Gates-Lapenckas, who spends 15 to 20 hours weekly combing Port Angeles for new rental postings.
“That makes it a lot harder for people with limited incomes to find places to live.”
In Port Angeles, about 35 people are in the same boat as Gates-Lapenckas, according to Clallam County Housing Authority executive director Pam Tietz.
“Part of the problem is that even when someone has a Section 8 voucher, which is basically a public subsidy, the [U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development] puts a cap on the rent,” Tietz said.
But that’s just one obstacle.
Too few subsidized units
While the Clallam County Housing Authority owns and operates 368 low-income units, it isn’t enough to meet the growing demand for affordable housing.
Tietz said more than 200 people now wait on a list to move into one of the subsidized housing units, which translates into a wait of six to 18 months.
“In the meantime, they double up with other families, live in their cars or do whatever they need to do to get by,” Tietz said.
While low-income earners are having a difficult time finding affordable housing units in Port Angeles and Forks to an extent, the crunch is worse in Sequim.
“Sequim has the worst problem,” Tietz said.
“Their rents are the highest and the availability the lowest.”
Sequim has only one emergency family shelter unit, a two-bedroom house the Housing Authority leases to Serenity House.
Port Townsend doesn’t fare much better.
While subsidized housing units exist in Port Townsend, low-income earners are being squeezed out because so many other homes are utilized solely as vacation retreats.
“Affordable housing is taken out of the supply relatively quickly by people who are paying cash and who don’t even live here year-round,” said Vanessa Brower of Olympic Community Action Programs, which rents out 56 subsidized units in Jefferson County.
“It’s pricing the wage earner out of the market in some ways.”