The Power of Effective Advocacy – Winter Shelter Extended through June 15 for 215 people

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Kathryn Murdock - UCC Social Justice Intern

Something unprecedented and special happened in our community this spring. Winter shelters, which usually close on March 31, were extended, first through April 15, and then all the way through June 15th. While we are all basking in the sunshine at the moment, it’s worth remembering how unpredictable our northwest weather is. In the last few weeks we have had cold rain, wind, and temperatures near freezing. The weekend before shelters were scheduled to close on April 15, a hail storm in Seattle highlighted the urgent need for year-round shelter in our city.

The red doors at Seattle City Hall that open to one winter shelter that will now run through June 15

Winter shelter was extended at three locations in Seattle: King County Administration Building (100 men), Seattle City Hall (75 men & women), and at the YWCA’s Angeline’s Center (40 women). There are many people and organizations who collaborated to accomplish this broadening of shelter. Thanks to strong collaboration, persistence, leadership and effective advocacy, 215 men and women will not be left to fend for themselves through rain, hail, cold and darkness. Instead, they will be inside: safe, dry and warm.

Thank You Note to Seattle City Council in front of the Red Doors

Hand delivering a thank you note to the Seattle City Council that symbolized the opening of the red doors that they opened to extend winter shelter.

Today we hand delivered thank you cards signed by Coalition members to the leadership in Seattle and King County who helped make winter shelter a reality in our community: Seattle City Council; King County Council; Executive Constantine; Mayor McGinn; Director of King County Community & Human Services Department, Ms. Jackie MacLean; Director of Seattle Human Services Department, Ms. Dannette Smith. Please also send your own note of thanks to any and all people listed above – without their leadership, we would not have been able to extend winter shelter.

End of Regular Session down in Olympia – Two Weeks until the Beginning of Special Session!

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Kathryn Murdock - UCC Social Justice Intern

Sunday marked the end of the 105 day regular session down in Olympia with no budget agreement in sight. Governor Inslee has called all the legislators back down to Olympia for a special session to work out the budget beginning on May 13. While it may seem frustrating that the legislators couldn’t work out a budget in 105 days, it’s actually really great for housing and homelessness advocates to have an extended session. A special session means that we are more likely to end up with a final budget that reflects what we want: adequate investment in affordable housing (at least $65 million for the Housing Trust Fund + $28.5 million allotted to affordable housing projects by the House) and investment in the services that the people we serve need most, including Disability Lifeline (Housing and Essential Needs and Aged, Blind and Disabled) and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).

Your legislators will be back home in their district for the next two weeks, so now it is MORE important than ever before to stay in touch with your legislators. Email them or better yet invite them to your programs and show them how your programs – especially programs that are funded by the Housing Trust Fund or Housing and Essential Needs programs – work! If we don’t keep in touch with our elected officials, we will not end up with the budget that we want in the end – one that protects affordable housing and services for our homeless and low-income neighbors.

Jay Inslee signing the Fair Tenant Screening Act (SB 5568)

Governor Inslee signing the Fair Tenant Screening Act (SB 5568)

The end of regular session also marks a time to celebrate our advocacy as a community this session and what it helped us to win. Our collective advocacy helped us pass part 2 of the Fair Tenant Screening Act, Foster Care to 21, and 72-hour notification for youth shelters. These wins are truly something to be proud of so let’s build on them and ask our legislators to pass a budget that Washingtonians can be proud of!

Some Good News From Olympia last week as the budget process continues

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Kathryn Murdock - UCC Social Justice Intern

Last week was a busy week for housing and homelessness advocates. First, the House passed its proposed budget, a huge improvement over the Senate’s version.

On Wednesday at noon, the House Appropriations Committee released their proposed budget and then passed it through the House of Representatives late Friday night. The House’s proposed budget protects important parts of our state’s safety net and includes revenue. It preserves funding for:

Housing and Essential Needs (HEN)
Aged, Blind and Disabled (ABD)
Working Connections Child Care
Consolidated Homeless Grants (CHG) which funds homeless housing programs across the state, including domestic violence shelters, transitional housing for families, and short-term rent assistance.
Temporary Assistance to Needy Families

The House also allocated $71 million for the Housing Trust Fund, more than double what the Senate allocated. This is very important, however, it is still well below the $175 million that we need in our state to create housing that is affordable to low income and working families.

On April 10, the same day that the House released their budget, our friends at Poverty Action issued a call to action to “Save our Safety Net.” We joined them in urging our members to call Olympia to tell their legislators to protect Washington’s safety net. We had some surprising evidence (in addition to people e-mailing us and posting on our facebook page) that lots of people took action: last Wednesday evening, members of the Coalition’s Board of Directors made their calls to the free Legislative Hotline. Board president Emily Meyer called, and began to deliver our short message. After her first few words, “Please vote for full funding for vital programs,” the hotline operator recited the rest of our message back to her, “that really help families and people with disabilities in our community: HEN, ABD, TANF. Please include new revenue and end tax giveaways in the final budget. Thank you.” Now that is what we call effective advocacy!!

Take Action Today!

Now that both houses are in the process of negotiating our final budget, please use Poverty Action’s handy email template to keep this message in front of your legislators: our safety net must be protected in the final budget, and our state needs revenue.

The Fair Tenant Screening Act has passed the House and is headed for the Governor’s desk!

We had a piece of GREAT NEWS: on Friday, Part II of the Fair Tenant Screening Act passed the House unanimously and moved on to the Governor’s desk for signature. Thanks for the tireless advocacy of the Tenants Union, the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance, and all of you for helping this bill become law!

Section 8 Wait List Open in Seattle

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Katharine Revello - MSW Student Intern

Thousands of entries have already been received for the lottery to be placed on the waiting list for Housing Choice Vouchers in Seattle which opened on February 4th and will close on February 22nd. Housing Choice Vouchers, also known as Section 8 vouchers, provide a rental subsidy to low-income individuals and families that can be applied to private market-rate housing. Recipients of these vouchers can choose a rental anywhere in the city limits of Seattle within a predetermined price range. Renters then pay 30% of their income in rent, and the voucher pays the difference directly to the landlord.

The demand for vouchers is incredibly high and Seattle Housing Authority will randomly select at least 2,000 households to be entered onto the waiting list. This is the first time since 2008 that the waiting list has been opened, and the housing authority is still contacting people from that original list.

For more information about the lottery for the Section 8 waiting list visit the Seattle Housing Authority website or call their waiting list hotline at 206-239-1674. Applications are only accepted by the housing authority, don’t be fooled by scam sites which require credit card information!

Made in America: Homeless veterans on our streets during the One Night Count

Posted on December 27, 2012 by Alison Eisinger

This photograph by local business owner, citizen activist, and photographer David Entrekin always takes my breath away. Click on the image to see the larger photo, and you will see the words on the cardboard carefully laid out to make a sleeping surface: Made in America. That is how I think about homelessness, and it is especially, painfully apt as we think about homelessness among veterans of our armed forces.

At least 62,619 veterans were homeless overnight during the January 2012 one night counts across the nation. This shocking number includes veterans in shelters and transitional housing programs, as well as those who lack even basic overnight shelter. Last year, the Coalition developed a new part of the One Night Count designed to improve our knowledge about how many veterans are without basic overnight shelter.

Homelessness among veterans rivets people’s attention. People who are quick to think about homelessness as a complex combination of individual shortcomings, societal failures, and economic hard times, come easily to a simple conclusion: no person who risked his or her life in service to this nation should be shivering under a bridge.

In the last two years, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (the VA) has begun working more deliberately and closely with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to address homelessness among veterans. The good news is that this effort has meant that new, additional resources, including money, are being directed to reach out to, shelter, support, and house veterans. When the national 2012 One Night Count results were released a few weeks ago, Secretary Donovan at HUD and Secretary Shinseki at the VA proudly noted a 7% decrease in homelessness among veterans since the January 2011 count.

For our Veterans Interview Project (VIP), we train volunteers to ask short survey questions the morning after the One Night Count, placing them at public meal sites, day centers, employment and hygiene programs, and other locations where a high proportion of people are likely to have spent the previous night outdoors. Last year we partnered with 16 Coalition member agencies and other organizations, and spoke with nearly a thousand individuals. Our volunteers asked three simple questions:

Where did you stay last night?
Have you ever served in the U.S. Armed Forces?
Were you ever called into active duty as a member of the National Guard or as a Reservist?

Through this survey, and through our survey of key service providers who work with homeless people and veterans, we showed that at least 163 King County veterans lacked basic overnight shelter on this one cold, winter night. This information strengthened and informed our local, regional, and national work.

The Veterans Interview Project improved our local count of veterans, but the sad truth is that we know that actual numbers of unsheltered veterans are higher. Our careful counts are conservative, and not comprehensive. They allow us to state with confidence that at least 163 veterans in our community need immediate and long-term help, among the many hundreds of people who are outside overnight.

On January 25, 2013, we will be conducting our Veterans Interview Project again. If you are interested in helping the Coalition with this special project, we are looking for people who are available for a three hour shift on Friday, January 25, 2013, and who have experience working with veterans or people who are homeless. Please click here to fill out a volunteer application. Thank you.

Why we need revenue on the table in the 2013 State Legislative Session

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Ally Seidel

Early this week, Governor Gregoire released a 2013-2015 biennial budget, outlining how she plans to close the state’s $970 million deficit. The good news is that the Governor included new revenue in her proposal. The bad news is that even with this revenue, she proposed to eliminate cash assistance to 18,000 blind and disabled adults and to completely eliminate the State Food Assistance Program (along with additional cuts to Working Connections Child Care and TANF).

Since 2009, Washington has made $11 billion in cuts to state services that protect the health and safety of our communities – we cannot afford any more. Governor-elect Jay Inslee has thus far not indicated any willingness to consider the need to raise revenue in order to balance the state’s budge. It is clear that including new revenue will be crucial to avoid further devastation to our state’s infrastructure and safety net programs.

See the Coalition’s postcard campaign for our message to Governor-elect Jay Inslee about why revenue needs to be on the table this session. (Download, print, and send your own!)

At our December General Membership meeting, we covered some of the key issues and positive legislation we’ll be speaking up about in the 2013 Legislative Session. Thanks to the more than 50 people who attended, and to our friends from Columbia Legal Services and the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance who dove into policy details and opportunities for our members to help educate legislators about these issues and proposals:

Invest in the Housing Trust Fund to built more affordable housing across Washington State
Pass Part 2 of the Fair Tenant Screening Act
Enact REVENUE to Avoid Cuts to Services and Programs
Protect and strengthen life-saving programs:
- Disability Lifeline Programs: Housing and Essential Needs (HEN) and Aged, Blind, and Disabled (ABD) Assistance
  - Increase the Aged, Blind & Disabled cash grant
  - Restore a modest cash grant for Housing and Essential Needs recipients to buy their own essential needs: Everyone needs a little cash
  - Include ADATSA clients in eligibility for Housing and Essential Needs program (2013 Briefing Paper from King County)
- Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
  - Restore cash grant to pre-2011 levels, before 15% reduction
  - Carve out more exceptions to the 5 year life-time limit
  - Increase time allowed for participants to pursue education and vocational training from 12 to 24 months
  - See the TANF priorities of the Welfare Advocate Group here: fact sheet
Pass Legislation that Addresses Youth Homelessness
- Reinstate the 72-hour notification rule for youth shelters (fact sheet)
- Expand the Extended Foster Care Program to allow ALL youth aging
  out of foster care to have access to safe housing until age 21
- Remove barriers for rehabilitated youth by making youth juvenile offense records private (fact sheet)
- Provide legal representation to vulnerable foster children and youth (fact sheet)
- Contact our partners at The Mockingbird Society or Columbia Legal Services for more information on these bills.

The Coalition also strongly supports the whole Washington Low Income Housing Alliance’s legislative agenda for the 2013 Session.

Fair Tenant Screening Act – What’s At Stake in the 2013 Legislative Session?

Posted on December 14, 2012 by Kathryn Murdock - UCC Social Justice Intern

In 2009, advocates proposed a bill in our state legislature that would become the Fair Tenant Screening Act. Intended to solve the unjust and unfair tenant screening system in Washington state, the bill’s overarching goals were to:

Prevent & address homelessness
Maintain housing access for survivors of domestic violence
Reduce burden on nonprofit housing providers by increasing tenants’ access to the private rental housing market
Ensure access to justice, and fair & accurate tenant screening
Address affordability of tenant screening reports

This was a community effort with many organizations, including the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, endorsing the bill.

In the 2012 Legislative Session, part of the bill successfully passed through the legislature. The Fair Tenant Screening Act, passed in 2012, guarantees increased transparency for tenants when applying for housing. Landlords are required to disclose the criteria they use to screen tenants and the screening company they hire to run the reports. Landlords must also give tenants “adverse action notices” explaining why prospective tenants are rejected for tenancy. What does this mean for tenants? When a company screens a tenant and there is a mistake on that individual’s record, the tenant will know what the mistake is and who to contact to fix it. Before this was passed, tenants had no idea what was on the screening reports and why they were constantly being rejected by landlords. They would spend hundreds of dollars in screening fees at each rental property they applied to without ever securing a place to live and not being told why.

This was a huge win for tenant rights in Washington, but as only part of the proposed bill passed, there is still more to be done in 2013 to create a just and fair screening system. Advocates for tenant rights are proposing a robust agenda for the 2013 Legislative Session on fair tenant screening, here are some highlights:

Prevent tenant screening companies from showing eviction cases on records where the tenant prevailed or was not found guilty. Currently when a tenant prevails in an eviction charge or settles with their landlord, it still shows up on their record as an eviction – preventing them from getting housing from another landlord.
Work on portable screening reports. In order to reduce costs, advocates are proposing implementing a system where a prospective tenant could pay for one screening report that would be accepted by multiple landlords. This would help low-income tenants avoid the hundreds of dollars they are forced to spend on screening fees each time they apply for a place. This idea is still not very popular in the legislature, but advocates will continue to work on this idea and research into how it might be possible to implement in Washington.
Make sure that victims of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalkers are not further victimized by the system. Right now, law forbids landlords to discriminate against prospective tenants based on their history of sexual assault. However, related incidence reports show up on screening reports, influencing landlords and contributing to the refusal of housing even though it’s against the law. Advocates will push for this information to be removed from screening materials so that landlords do not include it in the criteria they consider.

What can you do to help make sure that fair tenant screening legislation passes this session? You can take the following actions to make sure your voice is heard:

Come to Housing and Homelessness Advocacy Day and tell your legislators how important this act is to you.
Write letters, call, or email your legislators and remind them of the importance of this act. Not sure who your legislators are? Click here to find out.
If you are a service provider and have clients who have stories to share about their experiences as tenants, you can help connect them with the Tenants Union or Washington Low Income Housing Alliance. Their stories can help educate legislators on the importance of this bill.

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