Out for a stroll on a gorgeous evening, as I walked past LP Brown Elementary School on Olympia’s west side, I was sad to see that our school district hasn’t learned something that every school official and city official must understand in their bones: the never-ending budget woes plaguing our schools and the City of Olympia stem in very large measure from our misguided anti-housing policies and practices, despite all the empty rhetoric heard about our “housing crisis.”
Worse, the school district seems to not get the difference between talking the talk and walking the walk on teaching environmental awareness. Talking the talk means taking a lot formerly used for a residence destroyed by fire, leveling it and planting some trees, and then calling the resulting ornamental emptiness an environmental learning center.
Walking the walk on the environmental awareness would mean using this beautifully sited plot, already well-provisioned with urban services like roads, power, water and sewer, as a home for three or four new family-sized units of energy-efficient, mid-market and affordable housing.
That is, instead of taking property formerly used for a private residence off the tax rolls and creating more empty greenspace next to a school — a school that is already having to bus children in from far away just to remain open — we should use it for housing again, only this time make full use of the parcel so that the houses can be much more affordable than the average west side home.
No doubt the backers of this project — Olympia School District, the LP Brown Parent-Teacher Organization (PTO), the West Olympia Rotary and the Olympia Education Foundation — have the best of intentions for this environmental learning place. But as all teachers know, you measure progress by results, not good intentions.
And the result of this project, if it proceeds on this plan, will be bad for the schools, the city and the overall environment, because every time we lose an opportunity to build housing in Olympia, we simply push housing outside to Lacey, to Tumwater and beyond, and into the rural areas that we need to be preserving as rural farm and forest land.
If we want to teach kids in Olympia schools to value the environment, we need to make our walk match our talk.
And that would mean a sustained effort to identify and seize on opportunities to build mid-market and affordable housing throughout our existing developed urban areas.
Not building more mini-parks that sabotage the tax base for our schools and other public budgets and force families further and further away just to find a place they can afford to live.
John Gear is a resident of Olympia.
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KatAshe
A better use for this property might be an urban farm with allotments for the neighborhood and the schoolchildren given an area to grow food for their school lunches and to take home to share.
Monday, May 26 Report this
Snevets
Agreed with you & @KatAshe
Monday, May 26 Report this
JohnGear
KatAshe: If you take a look at the map from above, you can see that LP Brown has an enormous expanse of land available under control of the school for any in-school gardening projects already: https://mapq.st/3SmCfmn
Monday, May 26 Report this
WillStuivenga
Believe me, there are plenty of other empty lots in Olympia, Tumwater, and Lacey, for people to build on. Loss of one lot to alternative use is hardly a disaster in the making. More trees? That's a GOOD thing. I say, leave the poor school alone, and look elsewhere for more housing opportunities, and you'll find plenty of them.
Tuesday, May 27 Report this
mmzodrow
Question: Did OSD purchase the parcel of land? Given the budget shortage I would hope not. Money needs to be directed towards keeping schools functioning so they can remain open.
Tuesday, May 27 Report this
DudeInOlympia
Absolutely @WillStuivenga, there are plenty of other lots that have nothing to do with furthering our little kiddos education in environmental awareness. John, have you driven around the west side and up Division before? I can only imagine you have many times and that you've seen the dozens of plots all over the place that have 'well provisioned urban services' that have no housing. This dilapidation has been like this since at least 2008 (street view earliest timeline), seems like if someone wanted to build a house they might have in the last 15 years rather than letting it rot to nothing
Tuesday, May 27 Report this
cvandaalen
As a long time environmental and equitable housing activist, I love the idea of an environmental learning center. However, I have to agree with the author here that a multi-unit green, energy efficient housing development would serve both our housing shortage and environmental learning by schoolkids and everyone else! The housing could incorporate a learning element on the exterior and offer school tours during and after construction to educate folks about sustainable building features like energy efficient heating/cooling systems, solar, low-impact development, etc. Thanks for the editorial John!
Tuesday, May 27 Report this
OvercastDays
I understand where John is coming from with this, but this opinion seems to overlook some things. If this space were to be converted to housing, it might modestly support the school’s enrollment stability. Very modestly. It would not, however, be ‘walking the walk’ in the sense of increasing the students’ environmental awareness. It doesn’t quite pencil out that if students see sustainable practices, but ones that only indirectly help the environment and sustainability, it will encourage the instillment of environmental values. In a world of pure housing interspersed with roads and the occasional heavily used park, how is one to find appreciation for the natural environment? Now of course that is a bit of a straw man misrepresentation, I’m sure not every single situation like this would need to be developed, as per the mindset of this article, but it seems to me this outdoor classroom and environmental learning space would be very valuable. The possibility of ornamental emptiness is concerning, but there are native plants all over the plans, and one has to assume it will be a well-loved space. A debate worth having anyway, for sure, as these comments above show.
Tuesday, May 27 Report this
JohnGear
Some more background — this comment is NOT about whether to convert an empty lot to housing. The issue is that this lot WAS housing, until it was destroyed by fire in Feb. 2020. And, apparently, assuming it was insured, the owners took the insurance money and ran, leaving an eyesore for a long time. Somehow it has fallen into the hands of the taxpayers, who should be eager to see it rebuilt and restored to the tax rolls, while providing desperately needed housing. It’s a big enough lot that it could handle multiple starter houses of modest size.
Several have commented that there are lots of undeveloped lots in NW Olympia — yes, that’s so, which is why it’s crucial that we not lose housing land. We have no control over what a private owner does — but we do have a say in what a public agency does, and public agencies are supposed to think holistically and for the long term, not just short term.
And public agencies that keep having financial shortfalls especially need to think about the consequences of reducing housing in their jurisdictions. By selling the land cheaply to Habitat or other affordable housing providers, we can make a small dent in our housing shortfall, which putting the property back into productive use, generating tax revenue — a huge part of which is for the school fund — year after year after year.
Wednesday, May 28 Report this
MrCommonSense
Olympia School District has enough budget problems w/o adding to them. This article doesn't go into how the school district ended up with the property, but in private hands today, the property would generate about $1,650/year in property tax revenue at the current levy rate which would go to OSD for school funding.
Now imagine this site developed into three reasonably affordable housing units at, say, $300,000 each with school age students attending OSD schools living in them. I believe the current allocation from the state to OSD is about $13,000 per student. If there were 3 school age students this would result in a contribution to the district of almost $40,000 per year. If there were 2 school age children in each unit, it would generate an additional $80,000. I'm hoping someone else will check my math here, but if it is close to being correct, building 3 units that house school age kids could result in OSD's ability to hire another well paid teacher. And we haven't even considered the $150,000 OSD could get from selling the land. Folks should really look at the long term implications of investing in our kids. It's not always more land, fancier schools or electric busses. It's the quality of our educators and ensuring education dollars are used the best way possible.
Thanks John for your thoughtful article!
Thursday, May 29 Report this
JohnGear
Just going to drop this here
https://www.thejoltnews.com/stories/olympia-school-district-uncovers-underlying-funding-gap,20093
Saturday, May 31 Report this