Entrapped by the dreaded ‘island shuffle’: plight of the renter | Guest Column

Published 1:25 pm Tuesday, January 6, 2015

By Susan Feldmiller

Special to the Journal

Securing affordable, clean, long-term housing on San Juan Island is a serious problem.

Many decent and hard-working people are faced with it—people who are assets to this community and who want to stay here and build a life. I happen to be one of them.

Most recently, the house I was renting sold, so now I’ve moved into a 25-foot travel trailer that generous friends offered to me. I’m on the waiting list for a Home Trust home, hoping that one will become available, or waiting for the next phase of construction to be completed.

It’s my only option for fulfilling my dream of owning a home of my own.

When I moved here 20 years ago, I assumed I would be able to buy my own little house. I built my own business and have work and clients that I love. When the recession hit, my dreams of owning a home faded away and I have been renting all these years.

My professional life has always involved nurturing and helping people. At 23, I began a career in social services and for the last 22 years, I’ve practiced therapeutic massage.

I’m a good tenant. I’ve always left my apartment, cottage, or home cleaner or prettier than I found it. My references glow.

The first 10 years I lived here I was blessed with decent housing and kind people to rent from. But over the past 10 years, the rental housing situation has changed dramatically. During the recession, rents went up but wages did not.

Since then I’ve had to move six times, for one reason or another. What I keep hearing is that it’s always been this way—a housing shortage because of finite space and the limited resources of an island.

When the economy began to improve, more properties were turned into vacation rentals, which further exacerbated the problem. Local residents could rent only during the fall/winter off-season and were obliged to leave in the spring.

What happens to these people? I know some were forced to live in their cars.

We renters are faced with few options and have few rights—high rents for sometimes less-than-desirable living conditions, owners not willing to make repairs, vague rental agreements, and so on.

Because we’ve so few options, and are sometimes given short notice to move, we have to take what we can get. I’ve experienced water running down crumbling inside walls, rodent infestation, places too dirty to live in, and a complete lack of respect for my privacy.

Many of us who moved here for work, or who’ve built small businesses, or who have retired here, are suffering. It’s expensive, emotionally upsetting, and physically difficult to keep moving around.

Does San Juan Island want a stable working class—a reliable group of people to serve in stores, restaurants, schools, small businesses, and private homes and who are invested in the community? Do we want to keep retirees who have knowledge and skills and a desire to help?

Or is a transient group of residents who leave and take their dreams and skills with them good enough? A vibrant, diverse, multi-generational, multi-cultural population is of benefit to all of us.

I’m grateful to the San Juan Community Home Trust, which recognizes the problem and is working to solve it. It is moving forward with plans to build another phase of homes and offers hope to me and others who are facing a real dilemma.

Thanks to all those who are helping the Home Trust create more permanently affordable homes.

— Editor’s note: for more information about local housing visit the Community Development & Planning Department homepage at the San Juan County website, www.co.san-juan.wa.us