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The Class of 2023......................................... PAGE 12 Endangered sea stars found. . .......................... PAGE 9

June 13, 2023

Lincoln City’s Largest and Most Trusted News Source Since 1927

$1.50

Oregon’s Housing Shortage

Lincoln City sees $36.1M in housing construction JEREMY C. RUARK Country Media, Inc.

City officials say Lincoln City is experiencing a massing, $36.1 million housing boom. Ten projects are underway that represent a mix of affordable and other housing options.

“This is very unusual, it had not happened like this in a very long time,” Lincoln City Planning and Community Development Director Anne Marie Skinner said. The changing of the city’s building codes to remove impediments to the develop of housing and changes in state law removement impediments

JEREMY C. RUARK Country Media, Inc.

B

Oregon

140,000

is

short

housing

units and needs to build more than a

500,000 homes over

the next 20 years in order to keep up with

demand, according to Hacienda CEO

Ernesto Fonseca.

arbara Scott Benedict of Otis family lost their home in the 2020 Echo Mountain Fire. Since then, they have been living in a 29foot travel trailer. On June 7, all that changed. The Benedicts are now preparing to move into one of Oregon’s first mass-timber modular homes. A large crane carefully moved the Benedicts new modular house into place Wednesday morning, June 7, as part of housing project called Mass Casitas. Mass is for mass timber, a highly engineered wood product, and Casitas is Spanish for small home or cottage. Led by Hacienda CDC, Mass Casitas is described by developers as an innovative pilot project using Oregon-grown mass timber to develop prototype modular homes to help address the state’s housing shortage. Five of the homes are being delivered to communities this summer, including the new home in Otis. The crane lifted the Otis Mass Casita in two large modules from flatbed trucks onto a

to affordable housing have led to the building boom in Lincoln City, according to Skinner. “Also, the city is working to have private-public partnerships with nonprofits in doing what the city can do as far as contributing city-owned land, deferring system development charges, and doing no proper-

ty tax exceptions, to meet the housing demand,” she said. Skinner said Lincoln City needs the affordable housing for the middle-income workers and for the overall workforce and more market-rate housing is expected. She adds that the housing boom is impacting the entire city. “It is making it more liv-

able,” she said. “Because in order to live here you need a dwelling. So, if there are no dwellings available it is not livable at all. By providing more dwelling units, whether they are houses or apartments, or duplexes, we are making it more livable by providing places for people to live.” Below are the current Lin-

coln City building projects and the value of each. 1. The Lofts (conversion of movie theater to 38 apartment units) $3,500,000 Market-rate housing 2. Taft Bldg D (3 apartment units and one office See BOOM, Page 10

Building

BOOM Courtesy photo

See HOUSING, Page 10 A large crane lifts one of the first “Mass Casitas” into place at the Otis site.

5,000 grass carp introduced to Devils Lake JEREMY C. RUARK Country Media, Inc.

Five thousand carp have been introduced to Devils Lake as an effort by the Devils Lake Water Improvement District (DLWID) to rid the Lincoln City lake of elodea, an invasive weed. “It is our biggest battle against elodea,” DLWID Board member Tina French said as she watched a crew release the carp through a white plastic shoot connected to a large truck.

The project took place June 7, on the side of the lake at the Blue Heron Landing. The carp will be used as part of DLWID’s vegetation management plan by eating up as much elodea as possible. Elodea canadensis, an invasive aquatic plant that grows in fresh water, has sprung up all throughout Devils Lake over the past year, according to French in an earlier published interview in The News Guard. “We knew we were going to have a vegetation issue, that’s why we came up with a vegetation management plan,” French said. “We did not know it was going to go from zero to one hundred like it did. On May 1st last year, we were like what is this stuff and where did it come

from. By Mid-August it was in every corner of the lake. It started at the Devils Lake Park and Boat Launch, so we’re assuming it came in on a boat from out of the area. Elodea is an issue all over the West Coast, not just a Devils Lake issue.” French said the introduction of the carp to improve the lake health is in conjunction with a mechanical harvester has an effort to keep the lake open for recreational uses. “The harvester basically cuts the weeds and makes it so that people can access the lake, but it is not the long-term solution,” French said. “We figure we need about 17,000 of the carp to control the level of vegetation in Devils Lake. We want some vegetation for the healthy

ecology of the water.” French said the DLWID battle is getting more fish to continue the lake health project. “That means we will have to have an annual maintenance management plan, with what we believe will be about 1,500 fish, but we don’t know yet,” French said. The DLWID is working with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) after the agency allowed a rule exception to have the introduction of the carp at Devils Lake. “But the ODFW is very concern about the grass carp, which is not a native fish,” she said. “So, they are being very strict about the use of the carp. We are hopeful that we can shorten the amount of time to reevalu-

Police Blotter ............ 3 Opinion ...................... 5

Classifieds.................. 7 Comics ...................... 11

VOL. 96 NO. 22

Background Grass carp are a species of fish that are commonly found in large rivers in China and Russia. See CARP, Page 10

TheNewsGuard.com

WEATHER

INDEX

ate this project so that we won’t lost the battle.” French said Devils Lake represents $1.4 billion economic impact to Lincoln City. Lincoln City Mayor Susan Wahlke also attended the June 7 project and said she is encouraged with the DLWIUD efforts. We have lots of weeds for the fish to eat and hopefully that will reduce the problems with the weeds and make the lake more useable,” Wahlke said.

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