The Lewis County Planning Commission seems determined to apply big-city housing regulations to Packwood — a town with a fragile, rural, tourism-centered economy and a totally different set of challenges.
The new short-term rental restrictions attempt to limit the use of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) as short-term rentals, restricting property owners to renting either their primary home or the ADU, but not both.
This isn’t Santa Monica, Seattle or New York. Those cities have dense housing stock, complex transit networks and large-scale development funding. Packwood does not. To add housing supply we rely on incremental, local development — often one house or one ADU at a time. The proposed rules don’t just ignore that reality; they actively discourage the very kind of smart growth we need.
I’ve built five homes in Packwood since 2019. I know firsthand how difficult and expensive it is to bring new housing online. With construction costs at $250-plus per square foot, even before you factor in land and utilities, the math is often razor thin. There’s no financial case to build without the ability to offset those costs — often through short-term rental income.
ADUs are a smart way to expand housing. They’re modest, they fit into existing neighborhoods, and they allow property owners — often county residents — to incrementally grow housing supply. But if you strip away the option to rent them flexibly, especially in a market where long-term rental rates can’t sustain the cost of construction, you remove any incentive to build them at all.
The commission claims this is about affordability. But you can’t regulate your way into a more affordable market by capping use and restricting what can be built. That’s how you freeze supply — and freeze out future residents and small builders in the process.
If the Commission truly wants to promote affordability, they should look at who’s buying the homes — not just how they’re being used. Focus on limiting large-scale corporate ownership, not micromanaging families trying to add an ADU or build a future here. Copying big-government rules from New York or Palm Springs won’t fix Packwood. It will just stall the fragile momentum we’ve fought hard to build.
Joe Loeffler
Packwood
