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Opinion Editor Scott Ayers' Aug. 16 column about housing affordability invited responses to several issues, including raising impact fees, affordable housing programs, and others.
Washington State law allows local governments to assess impact fees for specific purposes. The fees must have nexus to the purpose for which they are being raised, and must be proportional. They cannot be set at whatever amount local government decides to charge, and they cannot be used as an incentive or punishment for a development.
Moreover, impact fees cannot be used for general revenues, nor can they be used to make up for existing system deficiencies. Most relevant to this column, impact fees cannot be used specifically for affordable housing.
The uses for which they can be assessed are: schools, parks, fire (outside of fire districts), and transportation. See RCW 82.02. In fact, impact fees are presently assessed on affordable housing projects as well. These projects can apply for a waiver, but if that happens, the funds have to be made up from other public revenue sources.
The notion of governments raising the amount they charge builders for impact fees as a means to create affordable housing (even if it was legal), or anything else, is misguided. In fact the entire notion of making builders or developers pay higher impact fees is a myth, albeit a very popular one with people who like to believe in it.
The reality is that builders and developers don't pay impact fees any more than they pay for lumber, paint, or roof shingles. All fees, typically about 25 percent of the cost of new residential construction, are tabbed right along with material and labor costs into the price of the finished home that the home buyer pays.
Increasing the cost of building a house by imposing higher fees simply increases the final cost of the house for the buyer.
It is also reality that builders or developers do not set the price for building materials, establish zoning and other restrictions that apply to land development, nor do they set the level of the fees government adds to housing costs. They don't set interest rates on the money lenders provide to make it possible for people to buy homes.
Further, builders or developers don't set the average level of wages in the community that people might use to buy homes, although they typically compensate their own employees at a rate much higher than most local occupations.
Builders and developers do try to serve the product needs of their customers and their communities, despite the bewildering and often counter-veiling mountains of rules they face. However, blaming builders or developers for the cost of housing - something else people like to do - is about as valid as blaming your neighborhood filling station owner for the pump price of gasoline.
There are plenty of studies suggesting that new development more than pays for itself within the first few years by dramatically increasing the tax base and fee generations it creates. Ironically, that is a reality in the housing market that folks around here typically choose not to believe.
The Countywide Housing Affordability Task Force (CHAT) spent some 17 months, nearly 2,000 hours, and more than $150,000 of a well-respected consultant's time to study the entire range of affordable housing issues. They looked at everything from fees, to land supply, to education, to innovative building techniques. Among them was a countywide affordable housing levy to help fund projects and agencies who provide housing.
None of the ideas the members considered was easy to accomplish, most required a lot of someone else's money to implement, and there was no single idea that could generate instant success.
We suggest The Bellingham Herald give the CHAT report a chance when it is available to the public, rather than advocating dialogue ahead of time for ideas that sound research will, or has already proven, are little more than other things people around here like to believe.
The local building community has had excellent representation on CHAT, includes world class talent in building or remodeling technology and design, and stands ready to be part of whatever responsible housing solutions the community decides to pursue.
Bill Quehrn is executive officer of the Building Industry Association of Whatcom County.
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