The Coalition takes Tacoma!

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Katharine Revello - MSW Student Intern

Last week, Coalition staff were excited to be joined by our two fantastic scholarship recipients at the 23rd Annual Statewide Conference on Ending Homelessness. The Washington Low Income Housing Alliance put on this informative and exciting conference, this year in nearby Tacoma. We were joined by Susan and Tracy (pictured below) and spent two full days learning and connecting with people from all around the state committed to ending homelessness. I had the pleasure of getting to know both recipients both before and during the conference and their enthusiasm was contagious!

For me it was great to see how many passionate people are out there fighting to end the homeless situation, and how these groups are dealing with the changing face of homelessness today. I especially enjoyed seeing the different programs and how they work … by attending I now have found some advocacy groups that I will get involved with most definitely now. -Susan

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!

Sequestration: taking us from bad to worse

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Katharine Revello - MSW Student Intern

Seattle Housing Authority recently accepted 24,000 applications for a coveted 2,000 placements on the Section 8 waiting list. Last week it announced that the 2,000 households had been chosen through a random lottery, but there’s a catch. Due to sequestration, the local housing authority also announced that it would be unable to issue vouchers to any of the selected households in the foreseeable future. This announcement comes amid news that the King County Housing Authority has suspended issuing any new vouchers to households on their waiting list as a result of sequestration. Local Section 8 wait lists are often closed for years at a time because of the overwhelming need for affordable housing in King County. In the space of a few weeks, sequestration has taken the situation from bad to worse, with 2,000 not-so-lucky households added to a wait list that for now looks indefinite.

Our partners at the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance provide a more in-depth look into the effects of sequestration on Section 8 recipients and local housing authorities here. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities provides an overview of the national impacts of Sequestration on Section 8 and other housing and homelessness funding sources.

A thrilling week for advocacy in Seattle, Bellevue, and Olympia!

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Kathryn Murdock - UCC Social Justice Intern

Hundreds of people signed these pink “I believe” postcards after the One Night Count. We delivered every single one of them to legislators in Olympia!

This week was an exciting one for housing and homelessness advocacy!

Last Saturday, 80 people took part in the Coalition’s Homelessness Advocacy 101 workshops in Seattle and Bellevue. We had an amazingly diverse group of participants, including many people who had volunteered for the One Night Count. Among those who came were social workers; two doctors from the local VA; a member of the Redmond Human Services Commission; a nurse from the Harborview Women and Children’s Clinic; a Weyerhaueser manager; retirees; teenagers; people from local churches; people who are currently homeless; and people who were once homeless. Everyone had a simple and powerful idea in common: that it is unacceptable to allow more than 2,736 people to struggle to survive outside in our community.

Our starting point for each workshop is, of course, a summary of the One Night Count. The point of the Homelessness Advocacy 101 workshops is to make sure that the 2,736 men, women and children who were counted outside on a cold, wet night a few weeks ago inspire us to take action to make things better. We have to go beyond the One Night Count, and make the results more than just a number. We have to advocate for affordable housing and vital services so that everyone can have the the opportunity to live in a safe, healthy, affordable home.

Stina and Ben find Nancy Amidei’s workshop antics funny!

Two great presenters helped explain several key legislative proposals currently being considered in the State Legislature that will help prevent and end homelessness. Ben Miksch from the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance spoke about the need to reform the state’s revenue system as the foundation for allowing positive investments in housing, services, education, and other important priorities. Ben also highlighted adding $175 million to the Housing Trust Fund, and maintaining and strengthening the Housing and Essential Needs (HEN) program. Stina Janssen, an organizer with the Tenants Union, explained why it is so important that legislators pass the Fair Tenant Screening Act (HB1529/SB5568).

Once we had a grasp on these legislative priorities, Nancy Amidei began her famous and lively presentation describing how EVERYONE can be an advocate! She gave the workshop participants several tips on being effective advocates:

Sign up for a good Advocacy Alert list.
Contact your legislators often ~ they want to hear from you! (If you don’t know who your legislators are, you can look them up on the Washington State Legislature website.)
Bring the legislative hotline phone number (1-800-562-6000) to a board meeting, a staff meeting, or a community gathering, and invite everyone to call legislators about a current issue.

Two Legislative Aides came to the workshops to help Nancy demonstrate that we shouldn’t be intimidated when contacting our legislators. Samantha Kersul works with Senator David Frockt (46th district), and Marilyn Pedersen works with Representative Ross Hunter (48th district). Both Samantha and Marilyn are very experienced and knowledgeable about policy and legislative processes. They encouraged us to communicate about the issues that matter, and helped us see how easy it is to call or visit a legislator’s office and have a real conversation with the staff people who sit at the front desk.

Our workshops ended with 80 enthusiastic and well-trained advocates ready to put their skills into practice! I believe these workshops are important because they both empower and inspire advocacy. Participants came up to me afterwards to tell me which issue they were going to call their legislator about or which issue they were going to focus on when they went to Olympia. Nancy Amidei asked us if we each knew 10 people with access to phones. She pointed out that “If each of you asked just five friends to call or e-mail their legislators, that would be over 400 calls about housing and homelessness issues!”

Sally Kinney, Coalition Board member, ready to fight the good fight at Housing & Homelessness Advocacy Day!

Our exciting week of advocacy continued last Monday, when Coalition members and allies headed to Olympia for Housing and Homelessness Advocacy Day, hosted by the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance. We were in great company, with more than 600 people from around the state. This was the biggest Housing and Homelessness Advocacy Day ever. People from 43 of the 49 legislative districts in Olympia came in person to speak with their elected officials. Fellow Coalition intern, Katharine, and I went to the offices of Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate to deliver hundreds of postcards about our legislative priorities signed by One Night Count volunteers and Coalition members. We also handed letters and examples of these postcards to the staff of every single King County legislator.

Our combined voices this week showed our legislators that many housing and homelessness advocates are active, informed, and paying attention to the votes being taken in Olympia. I hope they understand that they cannot solve our budget crisis by cutting programs that are lifelines for many of Washington’s citizens.

Some of the great signs made by women from Rose of Lima House for Advocacy Day. In case you're wondering, these were left outside the main doors to the Capitol Building because they aren't allowed inside. They "take up too much room" is the reason given. Of course, Washington state does allow people to carry AK47s and other guns into the building. http://www.columbian.com/news/2013/feb/10/capitol-friendly-to-gun-rights/

Some great signs made by women from Rose of Lima House for Advocacy Day.

A seasoned advocate from Rose of Lima House with her sign just before the “Homes for All” rally on the Capitol steps!

WLIHA director Rachael Myers, and two inspiring rally speakers led the chanting: What do we want? Homes for all!

Housing Alliance director Rachael Myers, and inspiring rally speakers, Quiana and Brittany, led chanting: “What do we want? Homes for all!”

SKCCH Board member Niki Amarantides and member Maya Opavska at Advocacy Day.

Coalition Board member Niki Amarantides and member Maya Opavska at Advocacy Day.

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.

2012 Youth and Young Adult Summit: Democracy at Work

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Kathryn Murdock - UCC Social Justice Intern

Many people begin their internships with standard orientation procedures like familiarizing yourself with your computer, the filing system, office supplies and setting up voicemail and email. Not me – I spent my first day of my United Church of Christ Social Justice Internship with SKCCH at the Coalition’s Youth and Young Adult Advocacy Summit and I could not have asked for a better introduction to this small but mighty organization.

I was extremely inspired by the 25 youth and young adults who participated in the Summit on September 10-11 and I left each day far more educated on the struggles displaced youth and young adults face because I spoke with them directly about it. It was amazing to have the opportunity to sit down with these young people and listen to the inventive solutions they came up with that could solve their daily struggles. I could not have learned all I did in those two days even if I had sat at a desk for weeks reading up on issues affecting young people who are homeless.

On day one of the Youth Summit, the participants, with support from peer leaders and service providers came up with four priorities after rounds of voting and then divided themselves into groups as to which priority they felt most passionate about. The priorities for this year were:

Housing
Transportation
Shelter
Employment

Each group then came up with key talking points and solutions that they wanted to present to the city council member who they would be talking to on the second day. A detailed outline of these points and solutions is below.

2012 Priorities: Homeless Youth and Young Adult Summit

On the first day we also had some amazing speakers present at the summit including Josh Hicks, Jim Theofolis, Steve Daschle, Kim Jones and Nancy Amidei. These experienced advocates both inspired and taught the youth and young adults about advocacy and the importance of civic engagement. We would like to thank them for taking the time to participate in our summit. The participants were constantly referring to their advice as they prepared to speak to the Councilmembers.

Jim Theofolis presenting to participants

The second day of the Youth Summit began with time for groups to prepare their topics and presentations for Councilmembers. Crystal Shaw, from the Human Services Department of the City of Seattle, was instrumental on this day. She oriented the youth and young adults to the City Council that morning and went above and beyond by lending support to participants and organizers throughout the day.

The groups then went up and presented to City of Seattle Councilmembers Mike O’Brien, Sally Bagshaw, Richard Conlin, and Sally Clark. A collective group also presented to the Human Services Department on all four priorities in the afternoon. We would like to thank all the Councilmembers involved as well as the Human Services Department for ensuring that this Summit was a very positive experience of civic engagement for the participants. Officials took the time to really listen, giving this group, who sometimes feels silenced, a voice on policy issues important to their daily life.

Employment Priority Group Meeting with Sally Clark

This Youth Summit could not have happened without the amazing time, energy, and dedication of our Youth and Young Adults Committee Co-Chairs, Melissa King from Friends of Youth and Kathleen Murphy from ROOTS Young Adult Shelter.

Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness Blog

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Category Archives: Housing