‘A culture of disinvestment in housing’: Spokanites speak out on Latah Valley moratorium

(The Center Square) – The Spokane City Council held a public hearing on Monday over the recently approved one-year building moratorium in Latah Valley, allowing residents to voice their concerns.

The elected officials approved an emergency ordinance back in May, enacting the immediate moratorium in one of Spokane’s most at-risk communities for wildfires. Another moratorium in the area expired last year despite a desperate need for firefighting infrastructure.

Now, the city has an opportunity to prop up the resources and plan for further measures to ensure an appropriate response in the event of an emergency. The moratorium applies to new subdivision applications within the Latah/Hangman and Grandview/Thorpe Neighborhoods.

Last year, several wildfires burned adjacent to the Latah Valley communities, including the Gray Fire , which destroyed more than 250 structures and resulted in at least one death. Still, the recent moratorium only applies to new applications. Meanwhile, countless homes are already slated for development.

“Over the last several years, my community has learned that we are the most vulnerable portion of the city when it comes to wildfires,” Latah Valley resident Becky Dickerhoof said. “We have seen that firsthand with the major fire at Medical Lake when our roads and streets were designated as escape routes for those residents.”

Dickerhoof also addressed the needed updates to the communities’ water and sewer systems and ingress and egress points. She worried that if the fires get any closer, residents won’t be able to escape, as the few routes available are constantly clogged with construction equipment.

“You saw how dozens of homes are built on dead-end streets that empty onto other dead-end streets,” she said, “forcing residents to exit through bottleneck after bottleneck.”

Many residents are concerned that if unchecked development continues to exacerbate the issues in Latah Valley, the needed infrastructure will never catch up.

“If the current thinking, ‘build now, worry later,’ is continued, we will only make our community more at risk for an environmental disaster,” Dickerhoof said. “This is what has been done for the last 40 years: more building, no fire station; more building, no roads; more building, no water tower; more building, no library, no community center, no community park, no school. We need the city to be responsible now, not another 40 years from now.”

Ryan Jennings, who lives in the northern part of Latah Valley, much closer to the city, also testified but explained how the area, or at least his, is not in danger. He noted the proximity to essential infrastructure, a lack of traffic, and other factors that butt heads with prior testimonies.

“By all accounts, what I’ve just described is a 15-minute city, and that’s where we live currently,” Jennings said. “The goals in the ordinance that was passed … there’s really limited, if any, impact where we’re located.”

He asked the council to remove his neighborhood from the boundary map, allowing residents and developers to build more homes despite the issues further south.

Jim Frank, founder of Greenstone Corporation, a residential and commercial developer in the area, also testified against the new moratorium on Monday despite presenting how the city could pay for the needed infrastructure in a recent meeting.

He said all of Spokane’s surrounding areas are subject to fire risk, calling the moratorium a further attempt to suppress housing in Latah Valley.

“The conditions that you have in Latah Valley and Glenrose and the lack of infrastructure isn’t a developer problem; it’s a city management problem,” Frank said. “... You’ve created in Spokane now a culture of disinvestment in housing, and most major investors in housing are looking elsewhere because you provided an unstable environment in which to make those investments.”

The council has yet to publicize any plans to further address the subdivision moving forward.