Susan Parrish waters freshly planted flowers at her home in Woodland. Parrish moved into the home last November after a decade of navigating the rental market. (Photos by Taylor Balkom/The Columbian)Photo Gallery
Susan Parrish positions a cluster of violet petunias in a planter, before placing them next to a sunbed she found on Facebook Marketplace. Her new house is finally starting to feel like home.
For more than a decade, Parrish, 64, navigated various temporary housing options, from a recreational vehicle in Eastern Oregon to a shed without electricity or running water. But she persevered, saving her money until she bought her manufactured home in Woodland last fall.
It’s not her dream home, but her dream was to be a homeowner.
Homeownership has long been revered as the cornerstone of the “American dream.” A 2022 survey revealed that nearly three-quarters of Americans believe homeownership is a greater measure of success than having a family, a prosperous career or a college degree. However, a recent study suggests many Americans believe this dream is unattainable in the current economy.
The Columbian spoke with more than 40 Clark County residents, from first-time homeowners to aspiring homebuyers to real estate experts. The consensus: Clark County residents are still holding onto the idea of homeownership despite its challenges.
But with the average home sales price at $531,000, only 19 percent of Clark County residents can afford to buy a home, according to the Building Industry Association of Washington, a trade group for homebuilders.
“This isn’t where I thought I would be. But I’m happy here in this house. I think people just need to think out of the box on what their American dream looks like,” Parrish said.
Catching the dream
Jasmine Yamamoto, 30, has to pinch herself to make sure she is not dreaming that she’s a homeowner. Yamamoto and her fiance moved from Honolulu to Vancouver about five years ago in hope of being able to afford a home. Last June, they closed on their first home in the Parkside neighborhood in east Vancouver. But it was a journey to get there.
Both of Yamamoto’s parents died while she was in her early 20s, leaving her no generational wealth.
“I’m coming from poverty. I don’t really have a college education. I knew I was going to need to adjust my lifestyle back, and I just worked,” Yamamoto said. Both she and her fiance work in the service industry.
It took discipline and a lot of penny-pinching in order to save for a down payment and closing costs, Yamamoto said.
Yamamoto is part of a boom of millennials entering the housing market in the last few years. In 2023, millennials surpassed baby boomers for the largest group of homebuyers.
Today, first-time homebuyers account for the smallest share of the market in the 41 years that the National Association of Realtors has tracked such data.
Homeowners, specifically millennial first-time homebuyers, shared with The Columbian that saving money only went so far for them. Mortgage rates are now hovering around 7 percent due to the Federal Reserve board raising rates to their highest level in 22 years in an effort to contain inflation.
With lofty mortgage rates, some homeowners said they had to get creative. Some borrowed money from family for the down payment, or rented out a bedroom or two to help offset their housing costs.
“Living alone is a luxury a vast majority of people in my generation cannot afford,” Justin Allen, 38, said.
Allen, a veteran, purchased his first home in 2019 and used a handful of benefits he received as a veteran, on top of a small loan from his parents and renting out three of the four bedrooms in his purchased home.
“If not for those, I would not be a homeowner right now,” Allen said. “The amount of flaming hoops that the average person has to jump through is the reason so many people feel burned. … I barely squeaked in with all these advantages.”
Michaela Meyer, who works at a Vancouver travel agency, and her fiance, who works at a Longview paper mill, found a nice, single-family home in Washougal with a yard they could envision their future dog playing in.
The couple didn’t start off the year thinking they’d purchase a home. They used a down payment assistance program, seller credit and money from their retirement fund to help secure the home.
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“We went about this whole process in a way that financial advisers may not want you to, but that being said, we were shocked to see that buying a home wasn’t as out of reach as it sometimes is made to seem,” Meyer said.
The couple has considered taking on additional part-time jobs and curtailing unnecessary purchases. But the stability of homeownership is worth it, Meyer said, who was motivated to purchase a home after a $400 rent hike.
“Homeownership is definitely still possible — it just looks a little different than it might have in the past,” Meyer said.
A few residents said they had to wait a long time to find their permanent home. Carol Siegel bought her first home at age 70.
Siegel, a retired professor at Washington State University Vancouver, said a large barrier to finding a permanent home was public transportation. Siegel said she searched in various neighborhoods around Clark County, but buying anything in her price range would mean hours and multiple routes of busing.
Eventually, Siegel and her husband bought a townhouse in Northeast Portland last fall, with a mortgage that is about one-third of their combined income. She said they scored a deal with their home as one of Siegel’s former students — who is now a real estate agent — reached out and helped them find a place.
“The American dream where working people can own their own homes and have financial stability, that’s dead in my view,” Siegel said.
Chasing the dream
For others, the American dream feels out of reach, despite efforts.
For more than a decade, Heather Agidius has checked Zillow, an online listing hub, every day. She dreams of purchasing a home for herself and her two children.
She dreams of someplace where they can paint the walls to their liking and build future wealth for her children. Eleven years ago, after her divorce, Agidius and her two children moved into an apartment in Vancouver.
“This is where I have literally been stuck since,” she said. “I cannot get out. There’s nowhere to go.”
When she first started looking at houses, Agidius thought it wouldn’t be hard to find a new home; she has a good job at a hospital and great credit. Her only hiccup was some student loan debt. But as she began her search, she encountered homes that were either too expensive or, if they were in her price range, they needed a lot of expensive repairs.
Until she purchases a home, Agidius will live constantly on the edge. Whenever the family returns home and Agidius sees a slip of paper taped to her front door, she worries it will be a rent increase notice.
“You wonder what it is, and it ends up being a notice that they are painting the parking lot but renting always has this sense of doom that something is going to happen,” Agidius said. “I’m already being priced out.”
Almost all of the renters The Columbian spoke to listed building wealth and escaping the uncertainty of rent hikes as their main motivations to purchasing a home. The average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Clark County is about $1,500. About a quarter of families making between 80 and 100 percent of area median income (about $97,500 to $122,000 for a family of five in Clark County) are cost-burdened by their rent, according to a 2022 National Low Income Housing Coalition report.
The increasing rents make it more challenging for tenants — especially low income or members of marginalized groups. Owning a home is one of the foundational ways Americans build generational wealth through home value appreciation, building equity and providing tax benefits.
“I want to be able to leave something for my children one day,” Agidius said.
Over the past 30 years, the average wealth gap between renters and homeowners has increased more than 250 percent, according to the Urban Institute. Over the course of the three decades, homeowners’ average wealth increased by $900,000, while renters increased by $56,000.
A 2024 Redfin survey found that more than a third of young homebuyers plan to use a cash gift from family to fund down payments, indicating intergenerational wealth may contribute to the next cohort of homeowners.
With the average home sales price at $531,000 only 19% of Clark County residents can afford to buy a home.
‑‑ Building Industry Association of Washington
Alex Fischer, 27, said he looked for years in Clark County for a home, but everything was either out-of-budget or he would be outbid.
First-time homebuyers often are forced to bid 100 percent of the asking price for a home. They can easily be outbid by a competitor who has earned equity from a previous home, on top of any savings.
“You can envision your family living in the house,” said Fischer. “You think, ‘I’ll put the swing set here, I’ll do this to this bedroom, and that bedroom this way.’ But then, you get outbid and all of a sudden it’s all gone. It really was heartbreaking.”
After several failed attempts to purchase a home, coupled with rising rents and stagnant wages, Fischer, his fiancee and their three children moved to Lewis County, where the median home price is $400,000.
In 2019, Jessica McCombs, her husband and their five children moved from Oklahoma to Vancouver for a better-paying teaching job.
Despite a decade of teaching, McCombs’ salary in Oklahoma was so low her family relied on food stamps and free school lunches, and they couldn’t afford to purchase a home.
Searching for a home to purchase, the family toured a home in a Vancouver model community but faced numerous challenges. They raised nearly $30,000 by cashing in retirement funds and receiving help from family, only to have to move into a smaller, 1,500-square-foot house. Their mortgage cost nearly $3,000 a month.
After moving in, problems arose. McCombs’ husband was hospitalized. He lost his job.
On one income, McCombs sought assistance, but she was laid off in 2022. She applied for more than 700 jobs, she said, but after temporary assistance from family and local organizations ran out, the family’s home was foreclosed. The family is now moving to Indiana, where the cost of living is cheaper.
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Renters of color are specifically impacted by the renter and homeownership wealth gap. In 2023, 73 percent of white Americans owned homes, compared with 45 percent of Black Americans. Because a homeowner’s property value constitutes an average of 45 percent of their net worth, the lack of homeownership has left many people of color financially impacted.
“I honestly believe in this current economy, (homeownership) is unrealistic. I feel like the cost to purchase a home would put people in a much worse financial situation than it would be to rent,” McCombs said.
Dream looks different
Andrea Smith, policy and research manager at the Building Industry Association of Washington, said that in order to create more housing options that fit the bill for Clark County residents, neighborhoods must change.
“To tackle this issue, our neighborhoods are going to look different, and that’s OK,” Smith said, who purchased a townhouse two years ago. “In order to have more housing equity, we need to be able to have more opportunities and different solutions for different areas.”
Some home-seekers told The Columbian they believe there should be more housing opportunities and more diverse inventory that would allow options like townhouses, duplexes and cottage clusters.
“The biggest challenge facing our first-time homebuyers in Clark County is lack of inventory,” Heather Renner, president of Clark County Association of Realtors, said. “For example, our county has a housing shortage —that has been exacerbated since 2020 — which puts first-time homebuyers in competition with buyers of all types, at all price points that are looking to move within Clark County. More housing opportunities will create relief on a lot of the challenges facing first time homebuyers.”
Other home-seekers advocated for rent control across Washington, saying rent predictability would help them save for the future.
Still, many homeowners and seekers will continue their quest for their future home.
Parrish, who owns the manufactured home in Woodland, points at her designated writing room. She reflects back on the years of searching for her house.
“There were points when I really lost hope,” Parrish said. “This home may not be my dream home, but I’ll make it one. I’m living a different type of American dream — but that’s just reality. The world has changed.”
This story was made possible by Community Funded Journalism, a project from The Columbian and the Local Media Foundation. Top donors include the Ed and Dollie Lynch Fund, Patricia, David and Jacob Nierenberg, Connie and Lee Kearney, Steve and Jan Oliva, The Cowlitz Tribal Foundation and the Mason E. Nolan Charitable Fund. The Columbian controls all content. For more information, visit columbian.com/cfj.
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