Emma Bolin

National Public Radio recently aired a story about Seattle runners getting bludgeoned by barred owls in city parks. 

Barred owls are territorial and their behavior is temporary while guarding a nest. One woman wears an owl mask on the back of her head to ward off the animal’s behavior. It reminds me of the discourse in this paper and in the community about housing and land use. Like barred owls, people are launching hostilities toward their perceived adversaries to avoid change or argue against density unless it is permanently affordable for workforce home buyers.  

At the Nov. 7 council meeting, I presented a short-term, midterm, and a long-range planning roadmap to advance one of council’s 2023 priorities: Deliver targeted, timed, and impactful zoning code changes to unlock and inspire affordable, dense, quality infill development. 

Infill development includes types of housing such as attached townhomes, duplexes, quadplexes, accessory dwelling units and cottages, that throughout our country, historically provided opportunities for social mobility. Infill housing unit availability traditionally launched Americans into home ownership for the first time. 

The city wants to eliminate barriers and incentivize unit development as much as possible while exploring what is on the horizon to ensure an element of permanent affordability for our workforce. 

On the horizon, there are emerging and established ideas that can make some meaningful change on the housing makeup and affordability of our community. We also have established codes over the years we need to liberalize all that which blocks us from getting the housing built, but there’s still more to do and some ideas might work well here, and others may not. We want to engage the community as a fun experience, learning side by side about infill housing incentivization and affordability so we can create opportunity to own or rent units affordable to people at a variety of income levels. 

If we are the barred owls protecting our nests, it will require someone to hold up a mirror to see our reflection — territorialism wastes our creative brain trust. It is not mutually exclusive to have a nice home and affordable, dense neighborhoods in our city. I overheard from one advocate that “if Port Townsend isn’t creative enough to solve the housing crisis, nowhere is.” 

Here are some near-term opportunities you don’t want to miss to get involved in our city projects to deliver tactical wins on infill housing affordability. We hope these projects will engage the community for our collective vision.  

The city will complete a master plan for the 14-acres it owns south of Sims Way as part of the Evans Vista neighborhood. The project will plan financial affordability models to deliver a mix of housing types at a diversity of income levels, the target is long lasting 30 to 50 affordable housing units to low-income households earning 80 percent Area Median Income (AMI) or less and 50 to 100 units of long-lasting workforce housing earning 80 to 120 percent AMI. 

The master plan will engage with the community to develop a vision and plan to ensure the housing mix, phasing, and aesthetic meets the community’s expectations for a community asset where we live, work, and play. Future engagement events will be shared. 

As part of the short-term project, the “Residential Building Capacity” effort, on Dec. 15, the city planning commission will host an open mic event to collect community ideas for code amendments, and in January, we will evaluate them for strategic interdependence and prioritize which ones will attain quick, sustained results in housing provision. 

In early 2023, there will be a community forum on the prioritized list and resultant draft amendments. 

Finally, in order to help educate and stoke creativity, the Port Townsend library added a category to its annual gingerbread house contest, called “Housing For All” that we hope will inspire entries of infill housing like rowhouse neighborhoods, cottage housing, apartment buildings, or ADUs.  

Learn more on the city’s website at cityofpt.us. 

I really look forward to working with the community to innovate. We will need every ounce of energy and confidence to solve housing challenges together. 

(Emma Bolin is director of Planning and Community Development for the city of Port Townsend.)