Posting toward the end of the 2013 outage. Long term prospects for finding housing is good, finding short term furnished housing other than a motel not so good. The local newsrag, Tri City Herald has very few if any ads for furnished housing. Apartments go for about $600-800 mo unfurnished with most wanting 3 month minimum. They are new, look nice, have exercise rooms which you won't use if you're working an outage, but a hot tub can be a blessing. There were a couple of places in Benton City that were posted on Craigslist, but they went pretty fast, plan on looking 6 weeks to 2 months in advance, and if it shows on CL jump on it. Benton City is about 45 minutes from the parking lot at Columbia, Downtown Richland about 1/2 hour as is the west side of Kenniwick, and Pasco about 45 minutes also. Traffic isn't bad from any of them. There are a lot of RV Spaces available in the area. Paragon is still operating, and I can recommend Days Inn in Richland, Red Lyon, "M" Hotel <used to be a Clarion> and Shilo Inn. There are also some upscale places like the Hampton Inn. Ask for the Northwest Energy Rate. You may have to talk to a manager for it. "M" Hotel was $45 day, Red Lyon @ $60. Both rates for over 30 days occupancy, no tax. Like Texas, you have to say more than 30 days up front to get that tax break. There is also a place called Haney's Inn, supposed to be all furnished apartments, no frills looking from the outside, don't know their rates since they had no vacancies when I called. There are some motels in Pasco but I don't know much about them, they range from another Red Lyon which looks nice to something more suited to hookers and drug dealers.
