What to do with Seventh Street Station
Tonight at 7 p.m. at LaSells Stewart Center, there will be a Corvallis Planning Commission meeting regarding the disposition of the old railroad yard at SW 7th Street and Western Blvd.
The development company that owns the property would like to build 86 apartment units and 13 single-family homes that would fall into the "affordable housing" category. Their development plan includes open space, pedestrian-friendly sidewalks and some improvements to the existing narrow roads in that area.
Normally, this would be the best type of development possible in a town like Corvallis. The existing land is a blight, full of dead grass, debris and old rail lines. Developing vacant lots within the city limits is certainly preferable to annexing and developing the surrounding forests and woodland meadows that make this town such a lovely little bubble. But the property in question borders the Avery Helms historic district, with its Victorian and Craftsman homes.
If the development will look anything like the new apartments being crammed around campus along Jefferson Avenue, I understand the concern of the neighboring residents. However, this land should not be left empty while housing prices soar and McDonald Forest is increasingly boxed in by half-million-dollar McMansions. The town's Historic Preservation Advisory Board is merely asking developers to minimize the impact on the surrounding neighborhoods, which seems a reasonable request. But we desperately need more affordable housing within the city limits.
If you want to read the development plan, you can download it from the City of Corvallis Planning website, but be warned: it's more than 100 pages.
posted by Corvallist at
2:14 AM
3 Comments:
I wish there was an answer to affordable housing. Nobody wants to live permanently in an apartment complex. Noise. Lack of privacy with people stacked one atop the other, no yards, that sort of thing. Places like Portland have limited the urban growth boundary. The result is more stacking for people of lower means while those with money can still purchase their plot of land. I know liberals love to limit growth. When they do so, housing prices soar and the poor get stacked into complexes full of crime, noise and discontent because those are the only places where they can afford to live. I have lived in plenty of those places. How to balance livability for all with the limited growth policies popular in some cities, such as Corvallis. Or should we poor not have such aspirations as others, to privacy and decent living space? Well, like it or not, we do. We are just like everyone else in this regard. I lived for 14 years in low income apartment complexes in Corvallis. Those were horrendous years and there wasn't much I can think of pleasant to living in those noisy drama filled rumor mongering crime ridden Corvallis slums. I don't think the planning commission or people of means know how awful being thrown together like a bad salad mix is. They couldn't. Not if they haven't lived in one of those complexes. Building more of those I think is just stupid planning. Sure it looks nice on paper. Some nonprofits dedicated to building low income complexes and many developers are building like plastic houses and apartments with the cheapest crap materials out there, and if they last ten years, that'd be a surprise. I think it would be nice somehow, if tenants could somehow rent to own or something. Permanent tenants (poor folk) live without hope of ever owning their own place, knowing they are basically a gypsy without the power over the most basic human need---a sense of home. This adds a tentativeness and insecurity to life. A person never knows when they might be evicted for any reason. In Oregon, a tenant can be evicted without cause. When you have to move, and I've had to over and over, due to housing issues, you are completely uprooted from "home" and now must search out a new niche, even if one does find another place one can afford. It is very stressful and does not contribute to a sense of community. A person feels more like an outsider and a nomad. Maybe this is getting harder for me because I'm getting older with more pain issues. I have never felt rooted to this community even though I've lived here for decades. Bike trails and parks are nice, but the rents here are sky high and rental insecurity for the lower income in Corvallis is high.
Nice communities cost money and make everything more expensive. So how does such a community invite the poor to leave? The nicer a community becomes, the poorer the poor become in such a place.
By
Anonymous, at 3:53 AM
It’s all supply and demand. If you constrain supply, as much of Oregon has done through restrictive land use, the cost of all the housing goes up. We all pay for the green space and limited urban sprawl in higher costs. The poor eventually get priced right out of the market, and the rich don’t particularly notice.
We naively try to compensate by raising the local minimum wage, but then the cost of a sandwich or gallon of gas goes up to make up those extra costs.
And as much as I advocate free markets, I recognize that most of the people in positions of political power are those who don’t really suffer from these issues.
So what’s the solution? I don’t think there really is one except for the political process of compromise that finds solutions that fit in the nebulous equilibrium of interests. I think the land use laws are a bit too restrictive, but they generally reflect the values of the community. Within those regulations, dense housing will inevitably creep into the available spaces – that’s what they had in mind isn’t it? So the neighbors will resist, just the way they resist every annexation and development proposal that comes along. Whether it’s John & Phil’s, Home Depot, Habitat for Humanity homes, or dense affordable housing, the same folks who support the abstract concepts of controlled development will resist the tangible development that impacts their neighborhood.
We must decide what we value; historic homes? Green space? Affordable housing? Individual property rights? Unfortunately, some of these desires are mutually exclusive so we have to hope that our politicians aren’t too dedicated to any particular ideology and can find a compromise that serves the most people.
Michael
By
Michael Smith, at 1:23 PM
I read The Human Zoo when I was young teen, by Desmond Morris, if my memory serves me. The book describes characteristic stress behaviors of animals confined in cages to human overcrowding behaviors, particularly in dense inner cities.
Perhaps the answer to the housing issue is less obvious. Perhaps population growth is more the culprit.
As one of those poor folk affected when cities limit urban growth boundaries in favor of dense housing complexes, that house the poor and working poor, while the middle and upper classes still get their own homes and yards, I really kind of tune out of the debate altogether.
I know those folks who have never had to live in the "wondrous" high density urban affordable housing apartment complexes are those who create the visionary planning of high density living for us poor mainly and think it's just great. Well, it ain't great for us. It's great for them. But the delusion is so serene, because it makes cities better for those of means.
And who cares about the poor anyhow. Money is power and votes and the poor ain't got that, so who cares. Well, I do, for one, largely because I am poor. So anyhow, guess that explains why I'd care. When poor people numbers rise, disaffection also rises. Then comes unrest, rioting, etc. So it really is in the best interest of the elites to keep us poor happy or controlled.
May I recommend another book? "Road to Wigan Pier" written by....hmmmmmm...Orwell maybe? Memory gone tonight.
By
Anonymous, at 9:34 PM
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