If you haven’t already given up on your New Year’s resolutions yet, here is another to add to your pile: Get rid of some of your stuff.
Collecting mounds of possessions is a favorite American pastime — for some, a dark obsession — yet it has economic and social consequences right here in Clark County.
As in, have you tried to rent a self-storage unit lately, or find a place to park your RV in the off-season? The storage market is tight, and getting tighter. But at the same time, local governments are loathe to permit construction of vast acres of quiet metal cubes where we can accumulate and store more stuff.
No one is suggesting that we sell all of the furniture and live a life of privation, or that we give up the RV or the Christmas dishes.
But without having the government come out to inspect your closets, consider these statistics that suggest we have too many possessions: New houses are getting ever bigger, with the National Association of Home Builders reporting that the median new house in the first quarter of last year was 2,436 square feet, about 400 square feet bigger than in 1999. That’s about two generous sized bedrooms per house, but birth records show people aren’t filling them with more children.
How many houses in your neighborhood have two- or three-car garages, and also two or three cars parked in the driveway or on the street? In fact, according to state agencies Clark County has a population estimated at 479,500. And it also had 515,845 registered vehicles (including trailers.) That’s 1.075 vehicles for every man, woman and child. If you use Census estimates for population and divide again that’s about 1.4 vehicles for every Clark County resident 18 and older.
Like we said, we have too much stuff.
And that brings us to the social and political consequences. The Vancouver City Council last month slapped a six-month moratorium on permitting new self-storage facilities in all of the city’s commercial and industrial zones. Vancouver already has 48 permitted self-storage businesses and has received applications for 11 more in the last five years.
As your real estate buddy is fond of saying, they aren’t making any more land. As we build more and more of those large houses and retail centers to sell us more stuff, the land available for commercial and industrial use is being consumed. The city’s guidelines call for developing 25 jobs per ace of commercial land, and 11 jobs per acre of industrial land. The self-storage industry averages less than three employees per acre.
So do we take land that could be used for labor-intensive activities and devote it to storage? It’s worth having the conversation.
It’s not just Vancouver that is seeing this trend. The real estate research firm Yardi Matrix ranked Portland No. 1 in the nation in both October and November for self-storage units planned or under construction. Ridgefield and Battle Ground have also been looking at self-storage regulations in their communities, with Ridgefield instituting a moratorium in June 2017.
Whatever the city decides — the council appears to believe that it will eventually allow more self-storage facilities — the need will not be met by merely overhauling the policy.
What we need to do is have a giant garage sale, and a neighborhood yard sale, and an estate sale — but only if we can all agree to not buy anything from each other!
