PACIFIC COUNTY — A state-mandated deadline is still two years away, but the once-a-decade process scrutinizing how local communities are preparing for the future is well underway.

The Pacific County Planning Commission, county staff, a team of planners from consultant firm Facet, and interested community members met over Zoom earlier this month for a workshop that provided an update on the multi-year project being undertaken to update the county’s comprehensive plan.

The workshop touched mostly housing, a thorny issue that Pacific and many other counties are grappling with.

Background

Comp plans are 20-year guidelines that are “the centerpiece of local planning efforts,” according to the Municipal Research and Services Center, or MRSC, a nonprofit that provides legal and policy guidance to local governments in Washington. The aim of the plan is to outline a community vision for the future through a raft of policies, goals and actions to guide local elected officials and government staff when it comes to making everyday decisions.

“Fully planning” counties and cities under the state’s Growth Management Act (GMA) must review their comp plans and development regulations every 10 years; Pacific County must complete its next review and adopt any revisions by the end of June 2027, covering the 20-year period from 2027-46.

But counties must also coordinate their comp plans with cities within their boundaries, and are responsible for establishing “countywide planning policies” that create a framework for where population growth and infrastructure investment will be directed within the county.

Washington’s Office of Financial Management (OFM) develops population projections for the state as a whole as well as each county under the GMA, with each fully planning county required to determine — in consultation with cities — where that growth should be directed to occur. Once adopted, the growth projections are to be used by the county and cities during their comprehensive planning processes and ensure their plans can accommodate the projected level of growth.

Slowly growing

OFM provides fully planning counties with a “reasonable” series of low, medium and high population projections every five years, based on the last 10 years of a county’s population change. At a February workshop and based on recommendations made by the county planning commission, Pacific County commissioners directed Facet to proceed with the medium population projection as its population target.

Under its medium projection, OFM estimates that Pacific County’s population will increase from 23,950 — according to the agency’s most recent 2024 data — to 25,158 by 2046. That would represent a 5% increase in the county’s population over a roughly 20-year period, compared to a 19.7% increase under OFM’s high projection and a 19.9% decrease under its low projection.

Under the GMA, local governments also must “plan for and accommodate” housing that spans the economic spectrum, as well as promote a variety of residential densities and types of housing. They also are required to plan for having the sufficient land needed to meet housing needs, with an emphasis on affordable housing for the lowest income levels.

Following several meetings thus far with officials from the county’s four cities, it was determined that initial housing unit allocations will be based on a customized medium-low population projection that falls within the range of outcomes identified by OFM.

Kelly Rupp, chair of the county planning commission, asked if the cities were comfortable with and had “bought into” the projections, which estimate Long Beach’s population growing by just another 39 people and Ilwaco’s growing by only 25 people through 2046.

“There was a variety of feedback that we received [from the cities],” said Alexandra Plumb, a Facet planner, adding that some of the cities thought a medium projection was more appropriate, while others were in favor of a low projection. “We had originally prepared the housing allocations using the medium projection, but then the municipalities were uncomfortable with what the medium population projection led to in the housing allocations.”

Housing allocations

Using a tool developed by the Washington State Department of Commerce to help local governments allocate housing growth following recent legislative changes to the GMA, an estimated 1,348 additional housing units will be needed to support the projected population growth by 2046 — although that figure is subject to change.

The allocations tentatively target an additional 273 housing units in Long Beach, 175 in Ilwaco, 494 in Raymond, 273 in South Bend, and 133 in the county’s unincorporated areas. Despite having a significant unincorporated population, the bulk of the needed housing is assigned to the four cities due to GMA guidelines stating low-income housing should not be directed to rural areas where adequate services and facilities are not available.

“The general consensus [from the cities] is that no one was really thrilled about the housing allocations, and thought that the number that is required to be planned for is too high,” said Plumb, although Facet’s planners did not believe the singular topline number would affect the county’s planning policies that are being explored.

Matt Covert, a senior planner for Facet, pointed out that the net new housing supply needed is greater than the actual projected population growth over the same period, which he and other attendees said seems ridiculous on its face.

“The primary reason for that is when Commerce put this tool together, they actually built in a jurisdiction’s amount of second homes or vacation homes, and in Pacific County somewhere around one-third of the overall housing units in the county are second homes or vacation homes,” Covert said. “Those actually don’t get to count toward your overall capacity, because they’re not occupied by permanent residents — and so basically you’re starting from a deficit, and that’s the main reason why that number is so high.”

Rupp called Commerce’s logic in calculating needed new housing units “odd,” but has noticed that Pacific County is an outlier compared to the likes of Wahkiakum, Lewis and Cowlitz counties during his involvement with other ongoing, multi-county strategic planning. Those counties’ housing needs skew more toward higher-end homes, he said, in contrast to Pacific County, where a slew of spendy homes — often built to initially be used as vacation homes — are already present.

Of the 1,348 new housing units needed, the vast majority are targeted for the lowest or no-income households — 1,165 units are intended for those making 0-30% of the Area Median Income (AMI), and another 136 are for those making 30-50% of the AMI. The remaining 47 units are meant for those making 50-80% of the AMI.

Peggy Olds, who serves on the planning commission, asked what, if any, consequences there would be if the county decided to use the low end of the population projections, rather than a medium-low projection.

Even if the county was using the lowest end of the population projections — which forecasts the loss of several thousand residents by 2046 — Covert said the net housing units needed wouldn’t really budge due to the state’s determination that there is already a severe shortfall of affordable housing available for lower income residents.

Role of second homes

Olds also questioned whether the county would receive any type of credit from Commerce for the overabundance of second homes that could be used to meet emergency housing needs.

Covert said there’s several ways Pacific County can show that it’s trying to add housing capacity, with the most typical way being through making land-use and zoning changes as well as tweaking development regulations within existing zones relating to issues such as density and parking.

“The more nuanced version is policy and program stuff, where you could say ‘Hey, we have this huge surplus of this type of housing, we’ve got sea-level rise issues to worry about, we’ve got an emergency housing capacity — let’s look at a way to tie it all together,’” Covert said. “It’s a very interesting question, and I think that could be part of the county’s [attempt] to try to make a good effort to try to accommodate the allocations.”

Olds said it’s been her experience that a number of people who build second homes in the county eventually move into them full-time and retire here, and questioned whether even just 10-15% of current second homes, for example, could be counted toward the new housing needed by 2046. Rupp said that prior to the covid-19 pandemic, second homes comprised around 35-40% of the total housing supply in the county; post-pandemic, that share is down to about 29%.

“We’re not only retiring, but we’re also usually retiring on a lower income than our working careers,” said Olds about current economic realities. “So even if we can get a percentage of that in our process, that might help.”

Covert said that if even a fraction of existing second homes transitioned to full-time ownership over the length of the 20-year planning period, it would still be a fairly significant number.

“A small percentage of a big number is a big number, right?” said Covert. “Many of those may not be what you consider low-income, but it would reduce the burden substantially across the board…I don’t know the answer and whether that would pass muster yet, it’s still very early on in the process.”