Housing costs outstrip incomes

Tom, 62, works in the environmental services section of the Ashland Community Hospital and Pat, 57, is a homemaker. Their 30-year-old daughter, a student at Southern Oregon University, lives with them, as well as her 8-year-old daughter.

The family searched for a house in Ashland while they rented, but couldn't find much of anything under $250,000.

"We're pretty common people who needed a roof over our heads," Pat Ryan said. "Tom wanted to be here in the worst way.

"But we knew we couldn't afford it."

In Ashland -- where the average house price is $186,000 -- that's what's called affordable. But in West Medford, that's way over the average house price of $100,000.

With vacant houses in short supply, an increasingly high profile on the national scene and rising city fees, Ashland's not going to get cheaper anytime soon. Rental prices also are increasing, and many worry that Ashland will soon become an enclave for the rich.

The city's affordable housing advocates are working toward solutions such as a land trust, loans, and the affordable housing program that helped the Ryans. But some advocates feel they are drowning in the rising tide of Ashland property values.

This past week, there were only three houses on the Ashland market priced below $100,000: three condos and a 1940's fixer-upper. But anyone with half a million to spend has their choice of seven beautiful homes, not including a handful of spiffy bed-and-breakfast inns.

"It's the desirability of Ashland that drives the prices up," said Realtor David Sprague of Patricia Sprague Real Estate in Ashland. "You aren't talking people who make minimum wage, or even double that, being able to afford it."

Some social service agencies have given up on working in Ashland, choosing instead to build in less expensive areas.

"We are (working on) rehabilitation housing with students doing the work in Medford," said Rich Rohde of Oregon Action, an advocacy group. "We are not working in Ashland ... the price of land was the key issue."

After the transportation increases, the average new home buyer in Ashland will pay $8,681 in development charges vs. $4,608 in Medford.

"We really looked at trying to capture what the cost of new growth is," explained city planning director John McLaughlin about the charge. "My guess is where new home prices are about $180,000, that's not a significant cost."

Ashland developer Larry Medinger said, though, the development charges are getting too high -- and suggests the city should base them on house size.

"I think it's a blow to affordable housing," he said. "This is getting to be a rich people's town."

Another factor impacting affordability is availability. There are 146 houses available for sale in the community of 18,500 people -- about 30 percent fewer homes than this time last year. People who were determined to live in Ashland are looking elsewhere.

Honolulu is considered more affordable.

"My aspiration at this point is a double-wide (mobile home) someplace."

She said everyone she knows who has been able to afford a home in Ashland has either been part of a two-income household or received money from family.

"On one paycheck there's no way I can buy traditional housing in Ashland," she said. "So I may be renting for the rest of my life."

Fields, though, considers herself lucky compared to the large number of service workers in Ashland who make $6 to $7 an hour and have children to support.

And the fact that Ashland is becoming stratified by wealth concerns her greatly. She said she sees a society developing where the wealthy enjoy the service industry and return to their expensive Ashland homes, while those people who waited on them leave town at night.

"The word that keeps popping into my head is monoculture," she said. "They are bad in forests and bad in towns."

She said the worst impacts can be seen in children who grow up in atmospheres of affluence.

"It creates a certain illusion about what the world is like," she said. "They can get a certain type of arrogance and callousness ... and eventually they will take that with them into the workplace."

But Molnar stresses that when he says affordable, he really means median income. The median income for Jackson County of a family of four is $38,800. A family of four could earn up to $50,000 and still qualify for the city's affordable housing.

Over the past six years or so that the affordable housing program has helped about 55 people -- like the Ryans -- through encouragement of lower priced housing and development charge deferral.

For many people, though, the city's attempts at making housing affordable aren't cutting it. Only about half of the city's employees even live in the city, city officials estimate.

Some people said that if they make enough to qualify for a loan for an Ashland home, they made too much to qualify for the city's affordable housing program.

"It's the ultimate catch-22," said Greg Jones, a university employee who found himself in that bind for a while."You have to give the city credit for trying something like this, but it doesn't necessarily work."

Russell Dale, who is building the Chautauqua Trace subdivision where the Ryans live, agrees. Twenty-two units in the 86-home subdivision have or will be sold under the city's affordable housing program. The least expensive is $121,322. Market rate homes go up to $149,900.

Paul Robinson, minister at the Medford Congregational Church, says that a regional solution is needed.

"No one player in today's world can answer the need," said Robinson, who has helped find housing for displaced people. "We've got to come together -- public and private entities -- and put together some creative deals to make home ownership possible."

Tom and Pat Ryan, though, are glad Ashland is reaching out to renters who want to be homeowners. After being in Ashland, they never wanted to live anywhere else.