LONGVIEW — Despite tentative plans to end a Longview program to help the city directly receive certain housing funds, the City Council has OK’d a five-year plan to address the local housing crisis.
The City Council unanimously adopted the plan at last week’s meeting, allowing the city to spend revenue collected since separating from a county housing program last year when commissioners refused to fund Longview’s tiny home site for the homeless called HOPE Village.
As of January, the city had collected about $167,000 worth of that revenue on city-filed document recording fees, which are charges on certain local documents like real estate transactions which go toward housing.
But a vote in the spring could make the newly adopted plan obsolete, and revert control of document recording fee revenue for housing back to the county, leaving fewer options to fund HOPE Village.
Last month the council voted 4-3 to move toward disbanding Longview’s homeless housing response program. If councilmembers vote in April to disband the city program, Longview’s new housing plan would be moot and they will have given up authority to apply for certain homeless housing grants, said Longview City Manager Kris Swanson.
What is the plan for?
In the past, the county has been the only local municipality with a homeless housing response program and the state requirement to make a five-year housing plan.
However, last year, Longview created its own homeless housing response program to receive document recording fee revenue directly, rather than go through the county, after commissioners decided not to fund HOPE Village.
Councilmembers Spencer Boudreau, Keith Young, Erik Halvorson and Kalie LaFave voted in January to move forward with dissolving that program and return to the county’s program, with a tentative vote set for April to complete the process. LaFave and Halvorson have said rejoining the county’s program would help the council “rebuild relationships” between the municipalities.
LaFave told The Daily News this week she plans to talk to county commissioners to better understand their unwillingness to fund HOPE Village.
During the Feb. 8 meeting, Swanson said it took between $80,000 to $100,000 a month to fund the tiny home site in 2023, fluctuating depending on need.
About $470,000 in Emergency Housing Funds was appropriated to use at HOPE Village last year. Swanson said the city is already in the process of applying for this fund again, but if the council disbands the homeless housing response program in the spring the city would no longer be able to apply for the money. Instead, it would be up to the county to apply.
In total, the city spent just under $1 million on HOPE Village in 2023, with the other portions of funding coming from the city’s general fund and an un-renewable federal grant intended to help communities recover from COVID.
The city is also requesting $1.5 million per year from Washington’s operational budget, which could fund the project outright if it is approved. Last year, a similar funding request for HOPE Village was denied, with the Ways and Means Committee instead providing $2.5 million to the Lewis County Homeless Shelter in Chehalis.
What are the plan’s goals?
Currently the five goals in the county plan are:
- Increase access to affordable housing units, such as workforce housing, low-income tax credit housing, subsidized housing and other options that create housing affordability.
- Maintain a coordinated entry system for housing and housing related services in the community.
- Increase prevention and education opportunities by supporting prevention and education projects.
- Maintain and consistently evaluate a crisis response system in Cowlitz County, evaluate the current system’s capacity, and review characteristics of the homeless population and the resources available to meet its need.
- Increase the use of data and coordinate with local and state partners to collect and review data to drive strategies and decision making.
What is Longview’s plan?
The housing plan Longview adopted last week is nearly identical to the county’s plan.
“We felt like (the county’s plan) was solid, and it would be easier to build upon it than drafting our own,” Swanson said.
Collecting accurate data about the city’s homeless population is a state requirement already implemented in the county’s plan, added Kendall, who is on both the Longview and Cowlitz County homeless housing task forces. That data is already collected at the county level, she said, so it would be redundant to collect the same data at the city level.
“When we looked at the city priorities that we identified at our task force they fit very nicely into those county goals,” Kendall said.
Longview’s plan also includes options to create future addendums to target city-specific projects. Kendall said addendums are scheduled to be discussed and voted on at the next Longview Homeless Housing Task Force meeting on Feb. 26.
The Washington State Department of Commerce is updating guidelines for housing plans in July, and Kendall said, regardless of whether the city has rejoined the county’s program or not, the city should coordinate with the county task force to update the plan with those new guidelines.
