In the Thursday Herald I read that the Everett School District voted to list the Colby Avenue property for sale, which was a district office for years. (“Everett district trying to sell, lease century-old Longfellow Building.”) The best part of this property is that it is 8 acres, on a bus line, close to town and medical facilities.
For years I have been driving by that property, pulling over and dreaming about how to put housing for seniors there. Small cottages or clusters of design-friendly homes that would fit nicely into the neighborhood, and help fill the demand for seniors who don’t need assisted living, but do want to scale down and shed the responsibility of home ownership.
Snohomish County has nearly 78,000 residents 65 years or older. That is more than 10 percent of the population of the county and growing. From January 2011, and every single day for 19 years after that, 10,000 baby boomers in our country will turn 65. We absolutely need to take action to provide housing for our senior population that we expect to explode in the next 20 years.
The 2020 City Vision Project projects that by 2020 we expect to have 60,000 more people in Everett. Did you know that Everett has more families without children than with children? And with a large population of seniors growing annually, I think this is the perfect opportunity to create housing for the 10 percent of them that would be candidates for senior housing. I’ll put my name on the list to find a way to make it happen. Anyone else?
Barb Lamoureux
Everett
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
