Chief
06-12-2008, 07:00 AM
http://columbian.com/news/localNews/2008/06/06122008_Home-ownership-effort-focuses-on-Fourth-Plain.cfm
Thursday, June 12, 2008
By SCOTT HEWITT, Columbian Staff Writer
Vancouver’s Fourth Plain corridor is a stretch of burger joints, ethnic storefronts, modest little homes and acre upon acre of apartments.
“There can’t have been much planning,” remarked Teri Duffy. “Only 30 percent of the people who live in those neighborhoods are homeowners. That’s the lowest home ownership rate I have seen in a long time. The national average of home ownership is in the high 60s.” (According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2007 the percentage of owner-occupied households was 68.1.)
Duffy, who has worked in community development in Portland and Vancouver for decades, now heads the Community Housing Resource Center, which trains people to manage their money and helps them buy, or keep, their own homes.
With consumer prices and the jobless rate rising, the western stretch of Fourth Plain — from Fort Vancouver Way to 72nd Avenue — is a focal point of the center’s work. That work will be on display this Saturday as the CHRC hosts a home-buyer and community fair aimed at bringing all kinds of help to the folks who need it most.
There will be presentations on buying and keeping a home in today’s shaky market and establishing, maintaining and repairing credit. More than two dozen exhibitors will provide information on everything from child care and educational opportunities to employment assistance and setting up bank accounts.
“We see people who don’t even have bank accounts,” Duffy said. “We see people who don’t understand basic financial services. And then, we see people with good salaries, $60,000 or $80,000, and their financial situations are dire because they have $20,000 of debt and bad credit.
“Getting your finances in order — managing your money — takes encouragement and support. We thought this would be a good opportunity to bring together all the community resources available to people.”
Partners for progress
The Community Resource Housing Center is one partner in the Fourth Plain Revitalization Program, a grant-funded coalition of more than 30 local agencies including law enforcement, city planning, neighborhood associations, affordable housing providers, banks, apartment managers and local businesses.
Duffy gives the city of Vancouver high marks for planning an improved Fourth Plain corridor that’s more hospitable to homeowners and businesses — focusing on transportation and pedestrian infrastructure, code updates and design standards, and encouragement of quality redevelopment.
But she thinks the effort has been talked about for years without much progress.
“It’s great to see the city step up and recognize that these neighborhoods are worth improving,” she said. “They’ve made a good first step. But my concern is, you can plan all you want to but unless you’re also going to provide resources, what’s the point?”
Meanwhile, CRHC’s Fourth Plain Revitalization Program is approaching its task through three
areas:
* Business collaboration. Local merchants are teaming up to take on vandalism and other challenges.
* Park improvements. Summer day camps and youth services will improve safety and discourage
* crime.
* Single-block focus. The CRHC group wants to select a single block in the area and give it a total makeover, just to show what a concentrated collaborative effort can accomplish. Sometime this summer, Duffy predicted, a public process will begin inviting residents to nominate their own areas.
“It takes a lot of people and a long time to revitalize a neighborhood,” she said.
**SCHNIPP**
A few thoughts...
** Just how do you increase home ownership in a neighborhood that is primarily made up of Apartments?? If the people who live there move out of the apartments and into homes, that likely means they left for a better neighborhood...
** How can there be so many people in that area that are so ignorant that they cannot even manage their own finances?? Are these recent graduates of the local Public Education system, or could they perhaps be illegal immigrants who barely speak English, if at all??
** Could it be that this has more to do with building up the local tax base in order to prepare it for the next "Revenue Development Area" that is worthy of extending more development driven transit "solutions" into that area?? (Think about where the City wants that area to be in ten years, under the "Pollard Plan"...)
** How will the City of Vancouver's vision change for the Fourth Plain corridor, post Mayor Royce Pollard?? Will any of this survive Hizzonor's 20+ year career on City Council, if Tim Leavitt wins the next election??
** Since this area is the next logical place to extend development-driven light rail, especially if it ends at Clark College, what does the future of the Fourth Plain corridor look like if Loot Rail is soundly defeated once again?? If the Columbia Crossing Project's transit features get the whole thing shot down in flames, what does that mean for Fourth Plain??
** Ditto the above, only substitute "Lincoln Neighborhood" or "Downtown Merchant's Association" or "Uptown Village" or "Arnada and Shumway Neighborhoods" everywhere you see "Fourth Plain Corridor".
** Given the City of Vancouver's stubborn insistance upon spending every available dollar to develop the former Boise Cascade paper mill site, where will any more money come from for the Fourth Plain corridor, if there are so few homeowners to tax?? The Good Lord knows that Identity Clark County will oppose any kind of new taxes on the businesses in that area, so that leaves Residential Property Taxes, $100 License Tab fees, Sales Taxes, and other Special Assessments on all of the residents in that area.
** Maybe a punative tax on Apartment dwellers is in order here. Let's tax the hell out of those Apartment dwellers until it is more expensive to live in an apartment than it is a house....
Food for thought...in any case, this story raised my hackles when I read it this morning...
Developing...
cewl
Thursday, June 12, 2008
By SCOTT HEWITT, Columbian Staff Writer
Vancouver’s Fourth Plain corridor is a stretch of burger joints, ethnic storefronts, modest little homes and acre upon acre of apartments.
“There can’t have been much planning,” remarked Teri Duffy. “Only 30 percent of the people who live in those neighborhoods are homeowners. That’s the lowest home ownership rate I have seen in a long time. The national average of home ownership is in the high 60s.” (According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2007 the percentage of owner-occupied households was 68.1.)
Duffy, who has worked in community development in Portland and Vancouver for decades, now heads the Community Housing Resource Center, which trains people to manage their money and helps them buy, or keep, their own homes.
With consumer prices and the jobless rate rising, the western stretch of Fourth Plain — from Fort Vancouver Way to 72nd Avenue — is a focal point of the center’s work. That work will be on display this Saturday as the CHRC hosts a home-buyer and community fair aimed at bringing all kinds of help to the folks who need it most.
There will be presentations on buying and keeping a home in today’s shaky market and establishing, maintaining and repairing credit. More than two dozen exhibitors will provide information on everything from child care and educational opportunities to employment assistance and setting up bank accounts.
“We see people who don’t even have bank accounts,” Duffy said. “We see people who don’t understand basic financial services. And then, we see people with good salaries, $60,000 or $80,000, and their financial situations are dire because they have $20,000 of debt and bad credit.
“Getting your finances in order — managing your money — takes encouragement and support. We thought this would be a good opportunity to bring together all the community resources available to people.”
Partners for progress
The Community Resource Housing Center is one partner in the Fourth Plain Revitalization Program, a grant-funded coalition of more than 30 local agencies including law enforcement, city planning, neighborhood associations, affordable housing providers, banks, apartment managers and local businesses.
Duffy gives the city of Vancouver high marks for planning an improved Fourth Plain corridor that’s more hospitable to homeowners and businesses — focusing on transportation and pedestrian infrastructure, code updates and design standards, and encouragement of quality redevelopment.
But she thinks the effort has been talked about for years without much progress.
“It’s great to see the city step up and recognize that these neighborhoods are worth improving,” she said. “They’ve made a good first step. But my concern is, you can plan all you want to but unless you’re also going to provide resources, what’s the point?”
Meanwhile, CRHC’s Fourth Plain Revitalization Program is approaching its task through three
areas:
* Business collaboration. Local merchants are teaming up to take on vandalism and other challenges.
* Park improvements. Summer day camps and youth services will improve safety and discourage
* crime.
* Single-block focus. The CRHC group wants to select a single block in the area and give it a total makeover, just to show what a concentrated collaborative effort can accomplish. Sometime this summer, Duffy predicted, a public process will begin inviting residents to nominate their own areas.
“It takes a lot of people and a long time to revitalize a neighborhood,” she said.
**SCHNIPP**
A few thoughts...
** Just how do you increase home ownership in a neighborhood that is primarily made up of Apartments?? If the people who live there move out of the apartments and into homes, that likely means they left for a better neighborhood...
** How can there be so many people in that area that are so ignorant that they cannot even manage their own finances?? Are these recent graduates of the local Public Education system, or could they perhaps be illegal immigrants who barely speak English, if at all??
** Could it be that this has more to do with building up the local tax base in order to prepare it for the next "Revenue Development Area" that is worthy of extending more development driven transit "solutions" into that area?? (Think about where the City wants that area to be in ten years, under the "Pollard Plan"...)
** How will the City of Vancouver's vision change for the Fourth Plain corridor, post Mayor Royce Pollard?? Will any of this survive Hizzonor's 20+ year career on City Council, if Tim Leavitt wins the next election??
** Since this area is the next logical place to extend development-driven light rail, especially if it ends at Clark College, what does the future of the Fourth Plain corridor look like if Loot Rail is soundly defeated once again?? If the Columbia Crossing Project's transit features get the whole thing shot down in flames, what does that mean for Fourth Plain??
** Ditto the above, only substitute "Lincoln Neighborhood" or "Downtown Merchant's Association" or "Uptown Village" or "Arnada and Shumway Neighborhoods" everywhere you see "Fourth Plain Corridor".
** Given the City of Vancouver's stubborn insistance upon spending every available dollar to develop the former Boise Cascade paper mill site, where will any more money come from for the Fourth Plain corridor, if there are so few homeowners to tax?? The Good Lord knows that Identity Clark County will oppose any kind of new taxes on the businesses in that area, so that leaves Residential Property Taxes, $100 License Tab fees, Sales Taxes, and other Special Assessments on all of the residents in that area.
** Maybe a punative tax on Apartment dwellers is in order here. Let's tax the hell out of those Apartment dwellers until it is more expensive to live in an apartment than it is a house....
Food for thought...in any case, this story raised my hackles when I read it this morning...
Developing...
cewl