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At a meeting in May, several Vancouver residents told the city council that more needs to be done to address affordable housing.

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Peggy Carlson, the homeless liaison for the Evergreen School District, told the city council that when the winter overflow shelters closed in March, it left many families without shelter.



"I was meeting with families and providing them with camping equipment — tents and tarps and sleeping bags — because they had no where to go," she said.

Vancouver and Evergreen school districts reported 2,105 homeless students who lacked stable housing this school year. That includes being homeless, living in motels or cars or doubling up with other families. It doesn’t include parents or younger siblings not yet enrolled in the districts.

Carlson told city councilors that many families were forced to move in with relatives or friends. In some cases, kids slept on the couch or the floor, which forces families to bounce from place to place, she said.

“You can image how chaotic and disruptive that is for families. They live out of suitcases because they put all of their belongings in a storage unit," Carlson said. "Again, you can image how hard that is for children trying to go to school.”

Vancouver is indeed experiencing an affordable housing crisis.

Related: Vancouver Declares Affordable Housing Emergency

On Monday, the Vancouver City Council will begin the process of deciding whether or not to put an affordable housing fund on the November ballot. Most seem to agree there’s a housing crisis, but not everyone is in agreement about whether a new tax is the best way to solve it.

There are nearly 18,000 very low income households in Vancouver, according to the city. That puts the annual income for a family of four at about $36,000.

About one-third use more than half of their incomes to pay for housing. A single adult earning minimum wage needs work 89 hours per week in order to be able to afford a two-bedroom apartment in Vancouver, according to the city.

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“That’s more than two adults working full time," said Vancouver City Council member Ty Stober, who supports a proposed affordable housing fund.

It would generate $42 million over seven years and help at least 2,300 households, though city staff have said that’s a conservative estimate.

Stober said it would give the city a pool of money to offer developers and landlords things like low interest loans and access to other capital in exchange for creating and preserving apartments that are affordable to the city’s lowest income earners.

“These are dollars that we’re going to be looking at how can we leverage them as far as they can possibly go," he said. "Can we get $6 for every dollar we spend? Can we get $10 for every dollar we spend?"

The city would pay for the housing by increasing property taxes. According to city staff, a house in Vancouver assessed at $250,000 would pay an additional $90 in property taxes per year.

Related: Vancouver Officials: Vacancy Rate For Rentals Below 2 Percent

“During the recession we did very little multi-family development. And now we’re doing more multi-family development, but we have a lot of catching up to do," said Peggy Sheehan, a community planner for the city of Vancouver.

Over the past year, Sheehan has led an affordable housing task force that decided the city should consider creating the fund.

“If you live here, the rental market is compared to Portland," she said. "We don’t have the wages to support it.”

Still, not everyone agrees a housing fund and more taxes are a good idea.

“We have a problem and it’s a very big problem and this is not going to solve it," said Lyn Ayers, president of the Clark County Rental Association. "No one thing is going to solve it.

Ayers, who owns 14 rental properties, said he’s not convinced the money will make a difference.

“Instead of spending all this effort on trying to develop this housing fund, which may go nowhere, the community may vote it down, I would rather see them go after trying to attract more industry with higher paying jobs," he said, following a community meeting about the fund that was sponsored by the city.

The city council is scheduled to discuss the fund at its meeting Monday evening. Council members will decide at their meeting on June 20 whether to put the affordable housing measure on the November ballot.