Spokane needs to find solution to growing housing problem

Prospects of finding an affordable home have faded like 10-year-old paint. In Spokane County, the median price of a home has increased more than 50 percent since 2002. If you know people whose wages have kept up, adopt them.

Those who own a home, of course, are doing fine. According to the Washington Center for Real Estate Research, they have more than enough earning power to stay in their home or buy up. But first-time buyers have only 70 percent of the income they need to purchase a starter home.

Bad as that is, Spokane remains cheap compared to other urban areas around the West, as Greenstone broker Jason Wheaton noted at last week’s real estate forum. The median home value of $175,000 is some three times family income. Median value ratios in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego exceed nine times income.

Housing is considered moderately unaffordable when the ratio falls between three and four. Between four and five – where you find Seattle and Portland – homes are seriously unaffordable.

Wheaton, who moved to the Spokane area 15 years ago from Los Angeles, says old friends anxious to follow his footsteps call regularly.

“This is the promised land,” he says. “Everybody I know wants to move up here.”

They cash in their California equity and buy in Spokane, with enough cash left over to kick back, telecommute, or commute. Flights into the Bay Area from Spokane International Airport may look reasonable if drive time to work exceeds two hours, each way, as it did for Wheaton.

Immigrants from wealthier areas, says consultant Michael Luis, have busted up Spokane’s reputation for cheap homes.

Luis was addressing the Spokane Affordable Homeownership Task Force, a group organized by local Realtors and builders last fall to come up with ways the community can keep housing within reach of its workforce. Downtown condominiums that start at $400,000 are not the answer, but they do suggest a solution – more density.

Wheaton says contractors can only save so much on construction materials, or “sticks and stones.” Costs are better controlled by building more homes on smaller lots. Around Olympia, 5,000 square feet has come to be considered a large lot. Spokane draws the line at 4,350 square feet. That’s down from 7,200, which was the standard until last June.

Greenstone’s Coeur d’Alene Place development is based on 1,600-square-foot lots.

“We’ve got to find ways to increase density,” Wheaton says. “We don’t want to be in our cars.”

Californians who move in are accustomed to greater density. Even though they have the cash to buy larger homes when they move here, many are satisfied with the space they know.

Unless Spokane residents adjust their sense of space, they will not find affordable homes, Wheaton says, or adequate highways.

“Unfortunately, we still have a suburban mentality,” he says.

In Los Angeles, banks are offering “location efficient mortgages” to those who buy homes closer to urban centers, figuring the money saved on gasoline will allow them to carry slightly larger loan balances.

Spokane’s master plan, which Wheaton says is a good one, calls for development concentrated in neighborhood centers and connecting corridors. But most of those are already developed, he says, and aggregating enough land to create a mix of housing is problematic.

With traditional families expected to represent just 20 percent of all homebuyers by 2020, Luis suggests much of the stock to meet their needs may already exist, if only empty-nesters would move on.

“There’s a solution to our housing supply problems. It’s all those empty bedrooms,” he says.

If people in their mid- to late 50s could relocate within their neighborhoods, or find “lifestyle” developments where they can see themselves living for the next 30 years, the larger homes where they raised their families would become available.

“Most people don’t have an option to stay in their neighborhood,” he says.

Wheaton says local governments could encourage the building of affordable housing with more flexibility on lot sizes, allowing more density in return for a commitment to some median-priced homes, inclusionary zoning and easing up on parking requirements where residents can walk to schools, work or services.

A few years ago, housing affordability was not an issue in Spokane. It is now, and will continue to be. The task force could make a valuable contribution to the community if it can come up with solutions. Affordable housing equates to workforce housing.