By Scott Unger • Of the News-Register • 

City planners grapple with the question: Grow up, grow out or both?

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Comments

Bleepbloop

Question about the average income versus housing cost: Is the $55,400 income level for household or individual?

McMinnville Planning Department

Bleepbloop, great question. $55,400 is median household income. However, it is last year's numbers. Most recent data collected is $58,692 for McMinnville's median household income. Also the number differs amongst data sets. We use census data since it collects information within the city limits. Many data sets use the McMinnville zip code area which is much larger than the city limits, and household income in the county is higher than the city. According to Redfin for the city limits, the median sale price of a home in the McMinnville city limits last month was $487,000, down 2.7% from this month last year. Average length of time on the market is 20 days (it was 9 days last year), and 99% of homes sell at list price. it is easy to get caught up in the data, but data is tricky as parameters for the data are different across the board. We tend to look for trendlines. Clearly the trendline in McMinnville is that current housing available is more expensive than most local households can afford. And it is more expensive than most of our local employees can afford. We want to work to reduce that differential by raising wages and reducing housing costs. It's not easy, but that would be the goal.

Bleepbloop

Those are rather shocking statistics to me. Just a quick calculations and two people in a household making $15/hour at 40 hours a week and 50 weeks a year, would bring in $60,000. From what I’ve seen, the lowest paying jobs in town are paying $15/hour.

I know these are all averages, but most people I would think are bringing in more than $15/hour. Not to mention all the professionals out there making much much more. I just don’t really get it. I must be missing something. Maybe related to retired people or something. I knew housing prices were high for most households, but I didn’t realize it was this bad. I just must be in a social group that is the exception.

Rds

I sure wish Macminville would hire an engineer that knows and understands traffic flow. Our current engineers have no idea on keeping traffic moving, for example the city rebuilt the west 2nd and 99w intersection and widened 99w(adams st) but they apparently aren't experienced enough to know that they should have put in a right turn lane on 99w/adams for people to turn right onto 2nd. so everyone gets to back up behind people that turn. we have 1 street,99w, that cuts thru town north/south and kind of 1, west 2nd, that goes east west. Until we get a decent traffic engineer traffic will just keep getting worse and worse.

Rds

bleepbloop- you seem to be forgetting that the take home after txes for that 2 earner family would probably be less than $40,000 a year, not your 60k.

Bleepbloop

Rds, I am not sure what your comment has to do with my comments. I might be mistaken, but the 58,692 figure is probably a gross amount. But either way, nothing to do with my comments.

You just seem to be a really negative person. All finding things to complain about. Never brining anything positive to a conversation. I hope life is good for you and that you see the bight side of things.

Lulu

Could these people find work in the private sector?

abbeyroad

Does anyone know what the current status is on the 8 unit collage cluster project that has seemingly halted on Michelbook (adjacent to the golf course parking lot)? There was plenty of activity for a few months but it seems to have come to a grinding halt since they discovered a buried metal tank with attached galvanized piping (probably heating oil or diesel). It looks like someone (DEQ ?) took core samples and removed a lot of what appeared to be contaminated dark soil. Anyway, work seems to have completely stopped on the project. Anyone know why?

abbeyroad

whoops - 8 unit COTTAGE cluster project

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