Clark County Housing

Two years after the 2015 update to the comp plan, Clark County population growth is almost two years ahead of schedule and growing 1.7 times faster than planned.   At this rate the County will reach the 2035 population target of 577,431 more than eight years ahead of schedule. The County’s population growth has exceeded the County planner’s projections by 10,700 (or 93%) after only two years. The County is on track to completely run out of land for housing within 10 years. Other than that, the Growth Management Act appears to be working quite well in Clark County.

The OFM just released their April 1, 2017 population and housing stock estimate.  They do this once a year.  Given the apparent shortage of housing in Clark County, I was particularly interested in the ratios between the population and numbers of different types of houses in Vancouver and Clark County. As most people in the industry would have guessed, there are far fewer homes-per-person in Clark County and Vancouver than there have been in many years.  Once again, the builders did not build enough homes of any kind to keep up with the demand driven by population growth. Below is a summary of some of the information I pulled from the report: Clark County: Population Up 2.17% ·                      Population in 2017:  471,000 ·                      Increase of 9,990 people Housing Units Up 2.13% ·                      Housing Units in 2017: 181,287 ·                      Increase of 3,792 housing units (most since 2006) Clark County Housing Shortage