Chapter 4: What's the Story with Housing - From Rock Bottom to the Top Floor
What’s the Story with Housing?
Chapter 4 November 2021
By the Tillamook County Housing Commission Outreach Committee
From Rock Bottom to the Top Floor
If you are lucky, you have someone like Terry Phillips in your neighborhood. Most people know him as the local business owner of North Coast Lawn Care, a storage unit facility and the Dutch Mill restaurant, employing 32 people with a sizable payroll.
Behind the scenes, Terry has also been slowly revitalizing a depressed section of downtown Tillamook, one house, and one block at a time. Now on his fifth home rehabilitation project, he is proud to be part of the solution to the county’s housing crisis. “These homes are all going to firsttime homebuyers, who live and work here. It’s fun. I love doing this. I love taking something old and rundown and creating something special with it.” In a way, this is a metaphor for his own life.
When asked what has motivated him to make these investments, he gives a quick and candid response. “I’m motivated by many things. I’m motivated by where I came from and by people who say that I can’t do it. My kids are another motivation for me.”
Terry believes that people get what they give. “A good part of me has always felt like I owed something back to the community. I spent 15 years taking from my community and I knew I had to give back. It’s easy to run from your problems. Everybody does it. You get in trouble. You get arrested. And you run away and you blame your problems on your community. Well, it wasn’t Tillamook. It was me. I felt like I owed it to Tillamook to stay in Tillamook. To change myself here and change my surroundings to help other people.”
Terry explains that he did have help along the way and he wants to be that person for others now. “There were people around me who I could tell wanted me to succeed.” He notes that there are nonjudgmental people within the system who do care, specifically calling out Judge Hantke and Nick Troxel for the roles they played in his own transformation.
As part of that transformation, Terry began working in lawn care service in 1999. He notes there were customers who took the time to talk to him and treat him with kindness and respect, despite knowing about his history. “That meant a lot to me. The hospital was our first commercial account early on. Those were important times. It’s been a lot of fun.”
With the success of his business, he slowly began acquiring, rehabilitating, and selling homes, mostly along first street in downtown Tillamook. The success of those ventures provided the funding to purchase and restore the iconic Dutch Mill restaurant contributing to Tillamook’s downtown revitalization.
When asked if he realizes the impacts he is having on his community, in terms of economic development, civic pride and community livability, Terry gets emotional, “It’s interesting to consider how other people see me. I’m just a guy who gets up every morning and goes to work. But when you really think about it, in those terms, it is almost overwhelming.”
Terry goes on to explain that he feels we are all expected to contribute in some way to making our communities better. “I don’t have the time to volunteer on committees or boards, but I can invest in other ways. It takes all of us, working together to accomplish it all.”
Terry, and many local developers like him, have been quietly chipping away at our housing crisis. According to Housing Commission member Michelle Jenck, “We could use a lot more people like Terry. Sure, we can build apartment complexes, but it will take this type of investment, homeowners willing to subdivide property, or build Accessory Dwelling Units, and other creative solutions to fill the pent-up demand for workforce housing in Tillamook County.”
Do you have property that can be developed? Are you willing to get involved and be part of the solution? Contact TillamookCoHousingCommission@gmail.com.to see how you can be a workforce housing champion.
This story is brought to you by the Tillamook County Housing Commission's outreach effort to increase workforce housing in Tillamook County. For more housing stories and information, visit www.co.tillamook.or.us/bc-hc.
This story published in the November 2021 issue of Tillamook PUD’s Ruralite Magazine.
