By Emily Alhadefe

In 2015, Outside magazine named Port Angeles the second-best place to live in America, lauding the city’s proximity to Olympic National Park, its small-town charm, and affordable single-family homes, with a median price of $201,000. Fast-forward seven years, and the median price of a home in Port Angeles, according to Zillow, has more than doubled, to $422,990. Translation: Port Angeles is grappling with a full-blown housing emergency.

“For no less than five years now, we’ve had a considerable housing crisis,” says Port Angeles City Manager Nathan West. Prior to the pandemic, the seaside town’s newfound livability reputation boosted its population by nearly 5 percent (to 20,120), while the supply of homes available for year-round residents dwindled as property owners converted family homes to short- term rentals. Covid-19 brought an influx of pandemic refugees liberated from urban offices as telecommuting became the norm; many made Port Angeles their permanent address, further reducing home inventory and steeply raising prices. Add housing instability due to the economic impact of Covid as well as homelessness related to limited rental options, market affordability, drug addiction, and mental illness, and Port Angeles has quite a conundrum on its hands.

So last year, city leaders decided to collect feedback from local agencies and divert its share of American Rescue Plan Act funding to programs and partnerships providing targeted solutions to Port Angeles’s housing crisis. One key partner in that goal has been Habitat for Humanity, which received a $100,000 grant to help the city’s senior population (roughly 21 percent of the total) age in place.

“As we did our housing needs assessment, the number one thing we need to be doing is protecting our existing housing stock,” explains West, who notes that Habitat’s Aging in Place program helps eligible low-income seniors in the city stay in their homes longer by adding ADA-compliant features and tackling expensive long-term repairs, like roofing.

“It could be as simple as doing pull bars, proper knobs on drawers and cabinets because they have arthritis,” says Habitat for Humanity of Clallam County CEO Colleen Robinson. Or widening the doorway of a bathroom in a home where one elderly resident has lived for over 40 years. “She had become wheelchair- bound and could not bathe in her own bathroom,” Robinson explains. “That came out of a partnership with a therapist at our local hospital.”

“The number one thing we need to be doing is protecting our existing housing stock.”

In the spirit of Habitat’s volunteer ethos, homeowners are expected to put “sweat equity” into each project. For aging and disabled clients, Robinson notes, that might mean baking cookies for volunteers swinging the hammers or doing data entry for the nonprofit.

Habitat’s improvements—typically costing a few thousand dollars per home— might seem minimal, but they’re not trivial; the city expects its investment to yield long-term dividends for its senior population in the form of housing stability, which impacts the entire community.

“I think we’ll see Habitat as a leader in housing needs throughout Clallam County,” says West. “They continue to demonstrate creativity in improving neighborhoods and the community.”

For more information: cityofpa.us