Pacific County officials have long known the region has a difficult housing problem.
“The vacancy runs at zero percent almost all of the time,” said Joint Pacific County Housing Authority Executive Director Jennifer Westerman in an interview in May with The Daily World.
A large part of the problem stems from folks who want to leave the Portland Metro Area for a calmer lifestyle, she said, and local property owners reaping the financial benefits of making their homes available for short-term beach rentals.
There are other factors as well.
“It’s probably also due to not a lot of development happening at the time, and the ground makes it really difficult to develop,” said Westerman, who noted the rural, remote location of the county doesn’t get a lot of attention from developers.
But that hasn’t stopped a local group from pushing ahead with a decades-long effort to provide more affordable housing in Pacific County. The group, known as the Willapa Community Development Association, was formed years ago with the purpose of locating, and then renovating properties into affordable housing for low-income and moderate-income families.
Their latest effort culminated with a ground-breaking ceremony last month at the future site of the Willapa Center in Raymond.
The three-story, mixed-use building will feature 30 affordable housing units on the upper floors, and an early learning facility and office space for other tenants, including a nonprofit organization, on the ground floor.
The approximately $10 million project, located at 216 Third St. in Raymond, is rising from the ashes of the Willapa Hotel Fire in November 1998.
The fire, as detailed in the Nov. 5, 1998, edition of The Daily World, swallowed a city block earlier that day leaving about 80 people homeless. Seven businesses were also destroyed in the fire that likely started in the Raymond Cafe on the ground floor of the building that housed the hotel.
“It just went so fast. It ran through like a brush fire,” said Fire Department Capt. Joe Basil in an interview with The Daily World at the time. “People got out of there literally with shirts on their back, no shoes.”
Fortunately, all of the residents were evacuated without serious injury. The building, which was constructed in 1911, was estimated to be worth roughly $500,000 at the time of the fire.
The site of the blaze was eventually cleared, and the association and its partners set out on the journey to find funding for affordable housing at the location. The journey was longer than anticipated, but the situation finally turned around nearly 20 years after the fire.
In 2017, a number of organizations came together to “give it another shot,” said Rebecca Chaffee, co-founder of the Willapa Community Development Association, in an interview in June with The Daily World.
They worked with the Washington State Department of Commerce, 19th District lawmakers, and a number of other partners to secure funding for the Willapa Center.
While the Willapa Center won’t solve the region’s housing shortage, it will go a long way toward addressing the problem. And for that effort, those who have worked and supported the project should be commended for their efforts. It’s practically a model for the way these things should be done.
