Kit Gruver, human resources manager of island medical model producer Sawbones, recalls a conversation with an employee that captures the dysfunction of Vashon’s housing economy.

“You’re really knocking it out of the park,” Gruver told the employee. “It’s probably time for a raise.”

But the employee demurred, Gruver recalled: “Don’t give me a raise. I’m eligible for housing through Vashon HouseHold right now, and if you give me a raise, I won’t be anymore, and I won’t have anywhere to go. And I love this job.”

Vashon HouseHold promised to make every effort to keep the employee housed regardless of the raise, Gruver said. Still, it’s an illustrative story for so many on Vashon: One financial emergency, or a rent hike, or even, ironically, a raise, could force you off the island.

Those challenge and solutions were discussed at a March 18 housing forum at Vashon Center for the Arts, hosted by island housing nonprofit Vashon HouseHold. The panel also included King County councilmember Teresa Mosqueda.

Sawbones is one of the island’s largest employers, and Gruver frequently hears from employees whose future on the island is disrupted when their landlords raise the rent or decide to sell their homes.

“This month alone, I’ve had two employees exit due to somebody raising their rent,” Gruver said. “The devastation for these folks is that they’ve maybe lived or worked here all their lives … and they’ve having to look at leaving the island in their 40s, 50s and 60s with no real clarity about what’s next.”

Their workforce has gone from 5% of its employees living off-island to closer to 35%, and Sawbones pays between $36,000 and $40,000 yearly in ferry subsidies for employees alone, Gruver said. The company pays all employees $20 per hour or more, and is considering outsourcing some of its labor in order to control costs, she said.

Last Tuesday’s forum focused on solutions for “workforce housing,” which is qualified for those who make between 50% and 90% of area median income. On Vashon, that’s between $53,000 and $78,000 per year for single earners, or a household income of $75,000 to $110,000 for a family of four, Bruno said.

According to research from Vashon HouseHold, gleaned from most the island’s largest employers, more than half of Vashon employees surveyed spend more than half of their income on housing, said Vashon HouseHold Interim Executive Director Kari Dohn Decker said. 30% is often considered the most a person should spend of their gross monthly income on housing costs to be financially secure.

Around 20% of those island workers can’t find housing here and must commute on to the island, speakers said. And perhaps most disturbing is that 30% of those workers polled said they live in “squalid or undesirable” conditions, Decker said.

Delays, delays, delays

Panelist Chris Bric, who runs the nonprofit Shelter America Group, said he hopes to break ground in June on his project to build 41 units of affordable housing just off Gorsuch Road. With a 14-month construction process, the units could be in service by August 2026.

The project faced permitting delays and rising costs, the same challenges that have vexed other housing projects in Vashon and King County. For Bric, a permitting process that ordinarily takes four to six months has reached around 16 months. And Vashon’s small population and distance from the I-5 corridor lowers its priority for some housing tax credits from the State Housing Finance Commission — understandable, given the need to prioritize development where the most people can use it, but nonetheless another hurdle for building housing on Vashon.

“It’s a long game for those of us [who] want to enter into developing affordable housing here on the island,” he said.

Financing and permitting finally appear to be pulling through, he said. Policy changes at the Housing Commission have helped Bric raise the money needed to keep pushing the project along.

Design and construction alone will cost more than $20 million, a premium exacerbated by the high cost of getting labor and materials on the island. “It’s staggering how expensive all of this has gotten,” Bric said.

Costs keep ballooning while permit requests wait unfinished, and developers need more predictability, said housing strategist Kris Hermanns.

“Delay is the death of a developer,” Bric concurred.

Solving this crisis won’t happen with just one approach, Hermanns said. “We’re here because the market can’t solve it.”

“We will not build our way out of our housing crisis without private developers and private public partnerships and philanthropic partnerships,” Hermanns said.

Islander Allen de Steiguer shared his frustration in trying to permit an ADU for his daughter and son-in-law’s family on the island.

“Two and a half to three years to get a building permit for a single family home is pretty outrageous,” he said.

“We are very bullish on ADUs,” said Decker. “There are excellent models. … There is so much more we can do, and we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We need to get these policies passed.”

There has been some county progress.

For instance, at the new Island Center Homes development: “When we visited … folks told us it was taking two, three months to get reimbursement from the county for specific payments,” King County council member Teresa Mosqueda said. “We came back and concluded in the comprehensive plan that … we want those payments to be done within a four week period.”

Also in the new plan: Reduced barriers to build housing, a request to the county executive to allow more water and compost toilet options for ADUs, incentives for shared homeownership models, a call for a study of the island’s water system, and efforts to study placing limitations on short-term rentals like AirBnB and VRBO, which appeal to visitors but can take the place of roofs which could otherwise shelter renters.

The latter, Mosqueda said, will hopefully lead to legislation passed late this year or early next year. “We think that needs to happen before the World Cup.”

One example panelists pointed to: A program in the Lake Tahoe area titled “Lease to Locals” is paying homeowners to convert their vacation rentals into long-term rentals for low and moderate-income households.

Other models bandied around: Pierce County’s 0.1% sales tax to collect revenue for affordable housing. Islander Hilary Emmer’s successful fundraising during the early years of COVID to help people pay for rent and utilities to avoid losing their homes. “I would run the program again,” Emmer said.

A changing island

Kicking off the forum, Anne Atwell, president of Vashon HouseHold’s board of directors, honored Diane Emerson with the “Broad Shoulders, Big Heart” award, which honors the nonprofit’s first executive director, Jean Bosch. Emerson’s contributions to the island, Atwell said, have spanned multiple island nonprofits, including her “indefatigable” work with the Vashon-Maury Island Community Council, from which she recently stepped down as president.

Then Bruno interviewed Drayer — a Vashon-grown political organizer and strategic planner by trade who steps full-time into the executive role at Vashon HouseHold this June — about her thought on Vashon’s housing crisis.

Travelling back-and-forth to spend time with her wife, who lives in Denver, the couple got a foothold in the Vashon housing market in 2015, Drayer said. “We were lucky enough to find one of those traditional Vashon ‘fixer-uppers.’ “

The island will need to have “some difficult conversations” about residents’ collective will to solve the problem, she said. “It’s an exciting time. It’s a challenge.”

As the forum opened up to public discussion, other property owners on Vashon also used the “luck” word in describing how they got their own homes.

Islander Terry Sullivan, a Vashon HouseHold board member and chair of the Community Council’s affordable housing committee, described moving to the island in 1971 after a Peace Corps tour. Three years later he bought 10 wooded acres in Paradise Valley for $9,500 and built his home there.

“If I were to come to the island today, given my income right now, I wouldn’t be able to get my little toe on the island,” he said. “There are a lot of people that are lucky like me, that got in when it was cheap.”

Two numbers cited at the top of the panel show the contrast today:

• $925,688: The average cost of a home on Vashon, according to Zillow.

• $3,350: The average monthly rent payment on Vashon — Higher than Los Angeles, and comparable to New York City.

Based on county and island estimates, Vashon probably needs about 500 more housing units over the next 20 years, Decker said. Vashon HouseHold has pledged to double its housing units — i.e. add 150 more affordable units — by 2035 to help reach that number.

In the meantime, what else can islanders do?

Look at your own property, Hermanns said. Can you build smarter, more efficiently, a little higher, and denser?

“McMansions are not the vision and the values that I’ve heard on this island,” Mosqueda said to applause.