Lisa Balsiger-Vargas, 54, still lives in her childhood home, a white bungalow in White Salmon, Washington, a town of 2,500 people about an hour east of Portland, Oregon. Her large front yard has a rusty gate and cherry trees, but no mailbox.
Even though Balsiger-Vargas lives less than a mile from the post office, the U.S. Postal Service does not offer home delivery within White Salmon’s city limits. This is relatively common in rural areas, which can be more expensive to service than cities are. What’s less common is that the residents have not been offered free P.O. boxes — meaning they must pay if they want to receive their mail or even exercise their civic duty, as Washington is a vote-by-mail state.
Balsiger-Vargas, who is disabled due to long COVID, is on a fixed income and doesn’t think it’s fair that she has to pay for a service that most other Americans — including friends just a few miles away — receive for free.
To make matters worse, the cost of Balsiger-Vargas’ P.O. box has more than doubled since 2018, to $230 annually. Even though she shares the box with her sister and children, she must scramble to pay the bill every time it’s up for renewal.
“People have multigenerational households,” she joked. “We have to have a multigenerational post office box, so we can afford it.”
In general, the Postal Service is supposed to provide free P.O. boxes in places where it doesn’t offer home delivery. But in White Salmon and some other small towns across the West, locals say that the agency isn’t living up to its mandate. Buena Vista, Colorado, only prevailed after its residents protested, while Ketchum, Idaho, had to enlist the help of state legislators.
It’s hard to know how widespread the issue is. (The Postal Service did not answer High Country News’ questions about it.) But HCN found at least 10 other towns across Washington, Oregon and Idaho where some residents lack both home delivery and free P.O. boxes.
According to a federal report from 2018, the U.S. has more than 21 million P.O. boxes. Only about 1.3 million of them, or 6%, are free; of those, roughly 60% are in the West. The free boxes cost the agency an estimated $39 million a year.
Marla Keethler, the mayor of White Salmon, has made free mail a priority since taking office in 2020. She’s gone round and round with the Postal Service in what she describes as a “hair-pulling” experience.
“I think it is really just a result of out of sight, out of mind,” Keethler said. “If you’re a smaller community and you don’t have loud enough of a voice, you don’t rate as high in the eyes of what is a very large agency.”
THE U.S. POSTAL SYSTEM WAS established in 1775. Since the beginning, it’s had a “universal service obligation,” meaning that it guarantees residents access to affordable mail products and services, no matter where they live.
“It matters a lot in a country like the United States, that’s as big as it is,” said Elena Patel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has studied the mail system. “If we said to the Postal Service: ‘Only deliver where it’s profitable,’ they’re going to stop delivering in rural areas because it’s expensive.”
The Postal Service, a self-funded government agency that receives no taxpayer dollars, is experiencing a fiscal crisis due to a decline in the number of letters being sent. This spring, the agency’s director warned that it could run out of cash within a year, noting that more than half of the nation’s post offices fail to cover their operating costs. The agency later announced it would pause payments into its retirement fund while it determines a long-term solution.
Much of Patel’s research has centered around the economics of the Postal Service and its importance to rural areas. “I think of the Postal Service as public infrastructure, just like roads and bridges,” she said.
“If we said to the Postal Service: ‘Only deliver where it’s profitable,’ they’re going to stop delivering in rural areas because it’s expensive.”
Patel pointed out that the Postal Service is not only important for local businesses that need to send and receive packages or documents, and for mail-in voting, but also for rural health. Her research has shown that mail-order drugs are disproportionately used by people in rural areas. The Department of Veterans Affairs also defaults to mail delivery for its patients’ prescriptions.
In addition to “universal,” the Postal Service’s stated obligation includes the word “uniform.” According to Patel, that means rural residents shouldn’t have to pay more for mail than urbanites. She was surprised to hear that towns like White Salmon have had difficulty obtaining free P.O. boxes.
“It’s a lot of money that people who live in other areas are not asked to pay to access the same services,” Patel said. “It is an equity issue to me, 100%, and that is directly in conflict with what the (universal service obligation) is supposed to be about.”
AT LEAST TWO TOWNS WITHIN 30 MILES of White Salmon — Dallesport and North Bonneville, Washington — both offer free P.O. boxes. Some local postal workers speculated that’s because those offices don’t have any mail carriers, even for rural routes.
When HCN asked the Postal Service to explain that disparity and to answer several other detailed questions, a spokesperson suggested filing a public records request for more information, a process that can take several months to a year or more.
Shelly Skiles, who’s lived in White Salmon for more than 20 years, said she sent a letter to the agency asking why she had to pay for a P.O. box “while the rest of the country gets free mail service.” The agency responded that it was aware of the problem and was “working on it,” according to Skiles’ recollection. But that was several years ago, and nothing has changed.
Ken Block served as the postmaster in White Salmon from 1982 to 2004. Every month, he said, a handful of people would ask him why they had to pay for their P.O. boxes. He didn’t have a good explanation.
“It’s difficult to work for the post office, especially in management, because you’re responsible, but you have no authority,” Block said. “I had no authority to fix things for White Salmon.”
He told residents that they could get their mail via general delivery, which would mean waiting in line for every piece of mail, or put up a mailbox somewhere along an established rural carrier route, which could raise concerns about mail security or accessibility.
“The post office, they’re not going to do financially what they don’t have to do,” Block said.
Today, the city of White Salmon estimates that its residents are spending nearly $300,000 a year on P.O. boxes. Keethler said it’s one of the issues she’s heard about most as mayor.
During her first term in office, Keethler worked with city officials to design a new delivery route, and the city spent $85,000 of federal COVID-relief money on large group mailboxes with individual compartments to place around town. But that vision never came to fruition because the Postal Service wasn’t interested in creating any new routes. The city decided to switch tactics and focus on free P.O. boxes instead.
Keethler is frustrated by the amount of time she and other city officials have spent mired in the agency’s bureaucratic web, trying to solve what seems like a simple problem.
She and the current postmaster have emailed back-and-forth with the Postal Service for years. But every time they think they’re making progress, Keethler said, the agency puts up a new roadblock. In the most recent example, a Postal Service higher-up asked the city to run a cost-benefit analysis for a new delivery route — the same idea the city had previously abandoned, due to resistance from the agency. (HCN emailed the postmaster, but he declined to comment.)
Keethler is determined to find a resolution before her term is over at the end of 2027. She’s met with state legislators, noting that the issue affects more communities than just White Salmon. In the Columbia Gorge region alone, a range of towns — including Bingen, Carson, Lyle, Stevenson and Underwood in Washington, and Cascade Locks, in Oregon — are in the same boat.
“The only thing we can be doing at this point is trying to elevate our voice,” Keethler said. “And if we need to start making that voice a little bit louder and a little bit angrier, I think it’s justified six years into this pursuit of something that’s been decades-long entrenched.”
If Keethler doesn’t succeed before the end of her term, all of the knowledge she’s gained during her tenure will disappear with her, leaving White Salmon residents back at square one.
“It would just be very nice to finally close this door, make sure that there’s equitable mail delivery,” Keethler said. “Because at the core, that’s what it really boils down to.”
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