Home costs trigger debate

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, October 6, 2005

EVERETT – The hot real estate market and its expensive “starter castles” are a key hurdle for the homeless, first-time home buyers and senior citizens, several Snohomish County Council candidates agreed Thursday at a forum on housing.

But should the county jump-start the condo market or roll back property taxes? Candidates diverged on what the next step should be to make housing more affordable in the county.

A forum sponsored by the Housing Consortium of Everett and Snohomish County at Everett Station focused attention on sky-high costs and how minimum wages can’t touch the current $310,000 median single-family home prices. The median is the midpoint between the highest and lowest sales prices.

“The cost of housing is going up faster than wages,” said Ed Petersen, president of the coalition and executive director of Housing Hope in Everett.

Even median condo prices reached nearly $190,000 in September, according to the Multiple Listing Service. That makes condos the new starter home, said County Councilman Dave Gossett, a Democrat seeking his second term in District 4.

“We’ve got to get the condo market up and running, a key step for first-time buyers,” Gossett said.

Gossett’s challenger, Republican Eva Davies, said she wants to protect mobile home parks from redevelopment and homeowners who are vulnerable to rising taxes.

“We need to do something to keep homeowners from being taxed out of their houses,” she said.

High housing costs are driven by government’s dependence on property taxes and a limited supply of land, said County Councilman Jeff Sax, a Republican seeking his second term in District 5.

“We put too much emphasis on property taxes and mitigation fees,” Sax said, which drive the cost of housing.

“We have to take the costs out of housing,” Sax said. “Property tax has got to be rolled back.”

The working poor are forced to move away from urban areas because of high-priced homes, said Dave Somers, Sax’s Democratic opponent and a former county councilman.

Then those people pay high gas prices for the long commute to work, he said.

“In our district, we have people living in cars, shells of campers in the woods with no sanitation, and seniors who can’t pay their energy bills,” Somers said.

“Requiring that affordable housing units be included in new housing developments is something I support. The market is not going to create affordable housing in this region.”

Shared housing or group homes are creative options, said Greg Stephens, an independent candidate challenging Sax.

“We need to bring forward new ideas instead of thinking about more land for new housing,” he said. “We need to look at redeveloping the places closest to services” so working poor can live within walking distance of social services.

Senior citizens face a “train wreck” as high housing and health care costs collide, said Republican candidate John Koster, who is seeking a second term in District 1. Koster said converting apartments to condos would help, and he wants the state Legislature to reduce liability for condo builders to restart the market.

Koster’s opponent, Democrat Suzanne Smith, said she liked the idea of converting apartments to condos and encouraging more shared housing.

“Everybody says it’s about available land, but that’s only part of the problem,” Smith said.

Huge houses eat up that land, and instead “we could work on smaller houses, co-housing and urban villages.”

Reporter Jeff Switzer: 425-339-3452 or jswitzer@heraldnet.com.