Browse > Home / Local News / Many who work for the city can’t live in it

Many who work for the city can’t live in it

July 22, 2009

By J.B. Wogan

This is the third installment of a three-part series that examines affordable housing in the proposed Town Center
By J.B. Wogan
Marina Kearney is the kind of woman who benefits from affordable housing.
Kearney works as a vendor at local farmers markets including the one in Sammamish, and she is a new homeowner at the Koinonia Ridge development in Snoqualmie.
A single mother with a 4-year-old son, Kearney is one of 50 Habitat for Humanity homeowners at Koinonia Ridge.
“Here my son can come out and feel his feet on the grass,” she said. “He can scream. He can jump. He can live in his own room.” Kearney, who moved to the state five years ago from the Ivory Coast in west Africa, also works as an interpreter. She currently rents an apartment in Issaquah.
Kearney is part of Sammamish’s workforce, yet she can’t afford to live on the plateau. That’s something the city is trying to change while drafting its development code for the Town Center. The Planning Commission is finalizing requirements that 10 percent of Town Center’s 2,000 residential units be affordable to a household making 80 percent of the median income in King County. Through building incentives, the city hopes developers will build another 10 percent of the units as affordable housing, rounding out the total amount of affordable units to up to 400.
The commission is scheduled to deliver a recommendation for Town Center by December, which would then come before the City Council for discussion in 2010.
Tim Koch, owner of Ace Hardware in the Sammamish Highlands, said it’s nearly impossible to find people from Sammamish willing to work in retail.
“The wages in retail are relatively low compared to some of the other professional companies like Microsoft,” Koch said.
Koch has owned Ace Hardware in the Sammamish Highlands since 2000 and his staff of 21 people include mostly Sammamish residents who are retired and can afford to live off a smaller salary. The rest are high school and college students looking for a summer job, or employees that commute from places like Renton and Redmond.
Kearney and Koch provide anecdotal information on how people in Sammamish’s private sector can’t afford to live here, but many employees in the public sector have the same problem.
Aside from teachers, the percentage of people who work in the city’s public sector and also live in the city is about 6.8 percent.
Three of 52 employees at the Sammamish Plateau Water and Sewer District live in the city, something General Manager Ron Little said isn’t by choice.
Little, who has worked with the district for more than 20 years, said he recalls when the district had as a policy that its field operations employees live within 20 minutes of the Sammamish Plateau.
The district had to double that time because the price of living near the plateau was beyond a district employee’s income level.
City planners consider a home of up to $200,000 to be affordable. As of July 2, there weren’t any Sammamish houses for sale priced at $200,000 or less, according to Northwest Multiple Listing Service.
Among active listings, the city had 324 single-family homes, with a median price of $648,000. The price range was between $295,000 and $4.9 million.
The number of employees who live in Sammamish is similarly slim with other public agencies in the city: About 12 of 65 city employees, one of nine Northeast Sammamish Sewer & Water District employees, two of 19 officers in the Sammamish Police Department and two of 147 firefighters from Eastside Fire and Rescue.
There is one niche of public sector employees that does have a significant number of Sammamish residents: the school districts.
The Issaquah School District employs 227 full-time teachers in Sammamish schools and 145 live here, while the Lake Washington School District employs 280 full-time teachers in Sammamish and 81 of them live here.
Some of those employees could be married to another employed person and the two of them make a combined salary that allows them to afford a Sammamish home. However, based purely on a single employee’s salary, school teachers are far less capable of buying a home in Sammamish than employees in the city’s other public agencies.
Between the two water and sewer districts, the public library, the city and the fire protection agency, 272 employees, or about 92.5 percent, make at least $47,000 per year (80 percent of the county’s median income for a single-person household). As a result, they would not qualify for affordable housing.
But public school teachers represent the bulk of public sector employees in the city and many do not make $47,000 per year.
Of the 997 teachers in the Issaquah School District, about 40 percent make less than $47,000 per year. Of the 1,439 teachers in the Lake Washington School District, about 38 percent, make less than $50,000 per year.
Chris Bede, associate principal at Eastlake High School, said the current high cost of housing in Sammamish takes its biggest toll in teacher retention.
“There are some excellent teachers that we sometimes lose to other schools or school districts because they can’t live near Eastlake High School,” Bede said, adding that a number of Eastlake’s faculty commute from Seattle and at least one hails from Bothell.
Bede said that Eastlake’s reputation attracts young teachers initially, but the challenge is in keeping those teachers.
“Young teachers, when they get married and have kids, they want a house with a backyard,” Bede said. “I just think that with all suburban high schools where housing prices are high, it’s really difficult to retain teachers.”
Reporter J.B. Wogan can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 247, or jbwogan@isspress.com. To comment on this story, visit www.SammamishReview.com.

This is the third installment of a three-part series that examines affordable housing in the proposed Town Center.

Marina Kearney is the kind of woman who benefits from affordable housing.

Kearney works as a vendor at local farmers markets including the one in Sammamish, and she is a new homeowner at the Koinonia Ridge development in Snoqualmie.

A single mother with a 4-year-old son, Kearney is one of 50 Habitat for Humanity homeowners at Koinonia Ridge.

“Here my son can come out and feel his feet on the grass,” she said. “He can scream. He can jump. He can live in his own room.” Kearney, who moved to the state five years ago from the Ivory Coast in west Africa, also works as an interpreter. She currently rents an apartment in Issaquah.

Marina Kearney works on nailing together pieces of wood at one of the Habitat for Humanity housing projects in Snoqualmie. Kearney has been selected to have a home built through the organization. Photo by Adam Eschbach

Marina Kearney works on nailing together pieces of wood at one of the Habitat for Humanity housing projects in Snoqualmie. Kearney has been selected to have a home built through the organization. Photo by Adam Eschbach

Kearney is part of Sammamish’s workforce, yet she can’t afford to live on the plateau. That’s something the city is trying to change while drafting its development code for the Town Center. The Planning Commission is finalizing requirements that 10 percent of Town Center’s 2,000 residential units be affordable to a household making 80 percent of the median income in King County. Through building incentives, the city hopes developers will build another 10 percent of the units as affordable housing, rounding out the total amount of affordable units to up to 400.

The commission is scheduled to deliver a recommendation for Town Center by December, which would then come before the City Council for discussion in 2010.

Tim Koch, owner of Ace Hardware in the Sammamish Highlands, said it’s nearly impossible to find people from Sammamish willing to work in retail.

“The wages in retail are relatively low compared to some of the other professional companies like Microsoft,” Koch said.

Koch has owned Ace Hardware in the Sammamish Highlands since 2000 and his staff of 21 people include mostly Sammamish residents who are retired and can afford to live off a smaller salary. The rest are high school and college students looking for a summer job, or employees that commute from places like Renton and Redmond.

Kearney and Koch provide anecdotal information on how people in Sammamish’s private sector can’t afford to live here, but many employees in the public sector have the same problem.

Aside from teachers, the percentage of people who work in the city’s public sector and also live in the city is about 6.8 percent.

Three of 52 employees at the Sammamish Plateau Water and Sewer District live in the city, something General Manager Ron Little said isn’t by choice.

Little, who has worked with the district for more than 20 years, said he recalls when the district had as a policy that its field operations employees live within 20 minutes of the Sammamish Plateau.

The district had to double that time because the price of living near the plateau was beyond a district employee’s income level.

City planners consider a home of up to $200,000 to be affordable. As of July 2, there weren’t any Sammamish houses for sale priced at $200,000 or less, according to Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

Among active listings, the city had 324 single-family homes, with a median price of $648,000. The price range was between $295,000 and $4.9 million.

The number of employees who live in Sammamish is similarly slim with other public agencies in the city: About 12 of 65 city employees, one of nine Northeast Sammamish Sewer & Water District employees, two of 19 officers in the Sammamish Police Department and two of 147 firefighters from Eastside Fire and Rescue.

There is one niche of public sector employees that does have a significant number of Sammamish residents: the school districts.

The Issaquah School District employs 227 full-time teachers in Sammamish schools and 145 live here, while the Lake Washington School District employs 280 full-time teachers in Sammamish and 81 of them live here.

Some of those employees could be married to another employed person and the two of them make a combined salary that allows them to afford a Sammamish home. However, based purely on a single employee’s salary, school teachers are far less capable of buying a home in Sammamish than employees in the city’s other public agencies.

Between the two water and sewer districts, the public library, the city and the fire protection agency, 272 employees, or about 92.5 percent, make at least $47,000 per year (80 percent of the county’s median income for a single-person household). As a result, they would not qualify for affordable housing.

But public school teachers represent the bulk of public sector employees in the city and many do not make $47,000 per year.

Of the 997 teachers in the Issaquah School District, about 40 percent make less than $47,000 per year. Of the 1,439 teachers in the Lake Washington School District, about 38 percent, make less than $50,000 per year.

Chris Bede, associate principal at Eastlake High School, said the current high cost of housing in Sammamish takes its biggest toll in teacher retention.

“There are some excellent teachers that we sometimes lose to other schools or school districts because they can’t live near Eastlake High School,” Bede said, adding that a number of Eastlake’s faculty commute from Seattle and at least one hails from Bothell.

Bede said that Eastlake’s reputation attracts young teachers initially, but the challenge is in keeping those teachers.

“Young teachers, when they get married and have kids, they want a house with a backyard,” Bede said. “I just think that with all suburban high schools where housing prices are high, it’s really difficult to retain teachers.”

Reporter J.B. Wogan can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 247, or jbwogan@isspress.com.

To read the other stories in the series, see Part I and Part II

Bookmark and Share
Other Stories of Interest: ,

Written by J.B. Wogan · Filed Under Local News 

Copyright 2010 by Issaquah Press Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, rewritten or redistributed without permission. E-mail editor@isspress.com

Comments

Got something to say?

Before you comment, please note:

  • These comments are moderated.
  • Comments should be relevant to the topic at hand and contribute to its discussion.
  • Personal attacks and/or excessive profanity will not be tolerated and such comments will not be approved.
  • This is not your personal chat room or forum, so please stay on topic.