Plan details recommendations for adding more Mattawa housing

MATTAWA — An overflow crowd filled Mattawa City Hall March 30 for a discussion about updating the city’s housing policies and regulations. Mattawa City Council members are scheduled to vote May 18 on a “Housing Action Plan,” which is the first step in that process.

About 40 people attended the meeting, which featured a review of the proposed plan. Rachelle Bradley of SCJ Alliance, the city’s planner, said the plan is still a proposal and encouraged residents to comment.

A copy of the plan is available on the city’s website, www.cityofmattawa.com, and comments can be emailed to Clerk-Treasurer Anabel Martinez or Deputy Clerk Jazmin Hernandez.

“This is a two-part (project). This part is the plan, and the next will be implementation,” Bradley said. “And the implementation will include updates to the city’s municipal code.”

Mattawa residents will have additional opportunities to comment on any actions, like changes to city regulations when those are proposed, she said,

Victor Ramos of SCJ Alliance said Mattawa is growing, and that’s part of the challenge.

“Housing is going to be really needed, really soon. It already is,” Ramos said.

Researchers conducted extensive surveys around Mattawa to determine what kind of housing already exists. They found that about 60% of existing housing is mobile or manufactured homes.

“Those mobile homes typically have a lifetime of 25 to 50 years, if they were well built and maintained,” Ramos said.

Many of them are old enough that they will need to be replaced relatively soon, he added.

More than half of Mattawa households, about 58%, rent rather than own their residences, according to the report. That’s considerably higher than Grant County as a whole, where about 65% of householders own their residences.

One of the recommendations in the draft plan is to make changes to city regulations to provide more notice to residents of upcoming rent increases and to avoid regulations that could displace renters.

About 12% of the respondents in the survey said they were living with friends until they could find permanent housing. About 10% of households are spending more than half their income on housing costs, according to the study results.

In the past 12 years, Mattawa has issued 11 permits for single-family residences, according to the draft plan. In that time period, the city issued 140 building permits.

Housing is expensive, Bradley said, and local wages are not keeping pace with local housing costs. One audience member joked he could buy a house, but his grandsons would still be paying it off.

The draft plan suggests allowing the construction of accessory dwelling units, also called “mother-in-law apartments,” in existing neighborhoods, as well as changing development rules to allow more townhouses. It also proposes provisions for “cottage housing,” typically 1,200 square feet or smaller. Bradley called those three housing types “middle housing units.”

The draft plan proposes updating city zoning regulations to make it easier to build in Mattawa and to build ADUs in more parts of town.

The housing plan suggests providing tax incentives for the construction of multifamily residences to promote development of affordable housing. It also recommends writing development standards requiring a percentage of houses in any new development to be affordable housing.

“Through this program, affordability is actually based off 80% of the area median income, which is catered more toward low- to middle-income houses,” Bradley said.

An audience member asked what the effect would be on housing subsidies as wages increase. He cited people making $20,000 per year who don’t qualify as low-income, he said.

“This is better, because instead of using the federal poverty line, it uses area median income, and that fluctuates every year,” Bradley said. “So it’s more responsive and more inclusive than the other federal low-income (programs).

“Certainly define what affordable housing is, because it doesn’t mean the lowest of the low. It means middle income, the average person,” she said.

Bradley said the city’s existing water and sewer systems are inadequate for the projected growth, so Mattawa needs to work on upgrading those systems. In addition, Mattawa’s development impact fee structure should be updated to take into account the work needed to expand and upgrade the city’s infrastructure, she said.

The draft plan also recommends changing city regulations to allow more housing density, that the city promote education about home ownership and encourage programs like renting to own.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.