May 2026 Message from David J. Faber

May 6, 2026
 

Building a Port Townsend for Our Children

Port Townsend is my hometown. My wife grew up here too. We are raising our daughter on the same streets and shores that shaped us, and there is nowhere else we would rather do it.

But we are among the lucky few.

Over the years, many of our closest friends—people with roots in this community just as deep as ours, people who love Port Townsend just as fiercely—have had to leave. Not because they wanted to, but because they simply could not afford to stay. Every time that happens, our community loses something irreplaceable. And I find myself thinking about my daughter, who has yet to turn three years old, and wondering: will she have the choice to make her life here when the time comes? Will Port Townsend be a place she can afford to call home?

That question drives much of the work I do on our City Council.

This past year, the Council took a significant step forward by updating our zoning and land-use code to allow greater housing flexibility, particularly in the heart of the city. This change is designed to make it easier to build the kinds of homes our workforce and families actually need. It is not a silver bullet, but it is an important piece of a larger puzzle. The City has also been investing directly in affordable housing through projects like Evans Vista, which is on track to bring over 300 units of affordable and workforce housing to our community. Plus we continue to partner with and support partner organizations like Habitat for Humanity, Bayside Housing, and the Olympic Housing Trust, who are doing vital work every day to add to our affordable housing stock, and who are all also the beneficiaries of the 2026 Comprehensive Plan update. Lastly, through the groundwork laid in 2023 with the City’s whitepaper “Exploration of Strategies for Supporting Infill and Affordable Housing Related to Infrastructure Development”, we are working on financing tools toward the goal of producing additional direct subsidy for affordable housing.

There are challenges ahead. Our work to address our affordable housing challenges faces a legal appeal that could slow our momentum, and under the State's Growth Management Act, Port Townsend needs to add nearly 2,000 housing units and emergency shelter beds over the next 20 years. We have our work cut out for us to close the $17.5 million per year affordable housing funding gap to meet that goal. That is an enormous undertaking for a small city, but it is one we are committed to meeting.

Port Townsend's character has always come from the people—the characters—who live here, who love it, and who put down roots. To protect that community character, we have to make sure our community characters have a chance to stay.

David J. Faber
Council Member, City of Port Townsend