More than a third of Oly households pay more than 30% of income for housing, city says

Community Planning and Development program analyst Max DeJarnatt said 37.3% of households are cost-burdened and more than 15% of those are severely cost-burdened.

According to DeJarnatt during the city’s Land Use and Environment Committee meeting Thursday, May 19, households that pay more than 30% of their income on housing are cost-burdened, and those that pay more than 50% of their income on housing are severely cost-burdened.

DeJarnatt briefed the committee members on the metrics they developed with the Home Fund and Homeless Response team since 2021.

He said the purpose of the housing and homelessness performance metrics is “to help regularly track the progress of plans, make evidence-based decisions, tell the story with data, practice continuous learning and advance community vision.”

DeJarnatt said the Thurston Regional Planning Council corrected its earlier report, in which it indicated two numbers, cost-burdened and severely cost-burdened, were combined for a total of more than 45%.

“In fact, severely cost-burdened is really a subset of cost-burdened,” explained DeJarnatt. “So the accurate number, according to their methodology, should have just under 40%.”

Although the wages in Thurston County have increased over the last decade – about 2.8% per year, it cannot keep up with the rate of housing costs increase, which is about 5% for rents, DeJarnatt said, citing the TPRC assessment in 2021.

Low-income affordability

In a report presented to the committee, Home Fund Manager Darian Lightfoot said one of Olympia’s strategies to combat homelessness is to increase the supply of affordable housing for households that make less than 80% of area median income (AMI).

Lightfoot noted that households that make at or below 80% AMI are considered low income adding that Olympia has about 9,500 households fitting the definition

Community Planning and Development director Leonard Bauer said Olympia needs to permit 714 new housing units each year to keep pace with the city’s population growth, which is projected to increase from 68,085 to 87,670 between 2020 and 2045.

Bauer said the city needs 13,880 additional housing units, with construction permits issued for 316 housing units in 2021.

Bauer said TRPC makes the projections for population and housing units for 20 years in Olympia. “What we have done is break that down into five-year increments and we need about 700 housing units to equal each year.”

“We are falling behind every year further in terms of housing units compared to the population growth,” said Bauer.