(Astoria, OR) — Clatsop County has been awarded a housing planning assistance grant from the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development.
The grant will provide a consultant to Clatsop County and the five cities to work on three key areas:
- Regional Buildable Lands Inventory. This will produce buildable lands inventories for cities of Astoria, Warrenton, Seaside, Gearhart and Cannon Beach plus designated unincorporated areas in Clatsop County.
- Regional Housing Supply Inventory. This will produce an understanding of the current housing stock in Clatsop County and provide a better understanding of the availability of housing to serve various populations. Key elements of the Housing Supply Inventory will include: a demographic profile, an economic profile, and a housing profile.
- Housing Readiness Infrastructure Inventory. This will evaluate local Capital Investment Programs (CIP)s in relationship to the Buildable Lands Inventories (BLI) and will produce a list of high priority infrastructure projects and investments that would help cities make land ready for housing development.
“This project will help paint a picture of the needs, issues, and opportunities for housing development throughout Clatsop County, and will help cities and the county focus attention on producing housing that will meet the needs of county residents, now and into the future” said Elissa Gertler, Clatsop County Housing Manager.
The Clatsop County Housing Task Force will serve as the project's steering committee and opportunities for public engagement will be included in the project's official scope of work. The work is expected to start in January 2024 and be completed by June 2025.
The Clatsop County Housing Task Force has been meeting since 2022, and has continued to bring partners together to address the issues of housing production and availability throughout the County.
When the state Department of Land Conservation and Development made resources available to help local governments with housing planning, the city and county partners involved in the task force agreed to collaborate on submitting a grant application to DLCD to focus further work on these key housing land and infrastructure issues.
“We are fortunate in Clatsop County to have such good cooperation and collaboration between all of our cities and the county and this project will give us all a shared understanding of how best to keep working together to provide housing for all of our residents,” Gertler said.