If you haven’t tried to find a place to rent recently in East Jefferson County, then ask anyone who has:  it’s not impossible, but just about.  And there is general agreement that the dearth of affordable housing is turning away the young people who want to live here.  This week on the Compass we look at the County’s housing crisis.

This week on the Compass we bring you updates on several of our stories from recent weeks, including a review of the status of Port Townsend’s water situation with the ongoing drought; we attend the release after rehabilitation of several of the birds we met at the Discovery Bay Wild Bird Rescue; and the scion of the nation’s oldest carousel-building family talks to us about his plans to install fun into the lives of some of the world’s most traumatized children.

This week on the Compass we talk with the developers of a newly unveiled plan for the future of Fort Worden’s Lifelong Learning Center.

This week on the Compass we meet some refugees who have recently moved to Port Townsend – climate refugees Matt and Susan Harder, Dillon Ibsen, realtor Teri Nomura, and award-winning journalist Dahr Jamail – and learn why we might soon expect many more.

This week on the Compass we visit Discovery Bay Wild Bird Rescue, where we find that Port Townsend’s recently-retired police chief has taken up a new career as his wife’s sidekick on a mission to save injured birds of every feather.

Final preparations are in full swing for this weekend’s Wooden Boat Festival, so we bring you two related stories – one about the joys and pains of wooden boat maintenance, and the other about a Port Townsend resident who is once again providing the festival with the benefit of his family’s generations of experience in building carousels.