Housing

Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services Levy Renewal and Expansion: Advocacy Needed!

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For over a decade, the Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services Levy (formerly known as the Vets and Human Services Levy) has funded critical healthcare, supports, and housing for our neighbors who need them most, along with domestic violence, public health, and other services. Executive Constantine recently transmitted a strong proposal to King County Council, expanding the levy to be 12 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value. Now we need to urge King County Council members to BUILD ON and INCREASE that proposal, and place it on the November 7, 2017 ballot. People like YOU can help make this happen! Take Liz Werley-Prieto as an example. Liz is the Project Manager of shelter programs at DESC who spoke at the conference on June 1st. Liz eloquently addressed how the importance of funding the levy is born out through the interactions between service providers and those they serve. Read Liz’s testimony then take action using this link and information below!  Read Liz’s testimony here from May 31, 2017 at King County Council: My name is Liz and I work as the Project Manager of DESC’s shelter program, located right across the street. Since January first, the shelter program registered more than 800 homeless clients seeking shelter who had not interacted with DESC’s services before. Almost without exception, the primary need expressed by these individuals was a place to live, and as service providers we have had to set the expectation again and again that getting a home will almost certainly be a long and difficult process, or that it might not happen at all. Being homeless has an impact on the mental and physical health of a population already disproportionately affected by disabling conditions. For those of us working in social services, the urgency of having funding at or above the level proposed by Dow Constantine for …

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Move-In Cost Assistance for Homeless individuals and families through CCS Hunthausen Fund

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Our friends at Catholic Community Services want to make sure that case managers across our region know about this funding opportunity! Click here for a flyer and read on for details. Catholic Community Services has funding available for King County, Snohomish County, and Pierce County residents for move-in cost assistance through The Hunthausen Fund. This funding is referral-based; Case Managers will complete the application with potential recipients and send it to us for review. If the individual meets all of the outlined requirements and the application is complete, payment will be made directly to the landlord for First Month/Last Month/Deposit (as funding permits). This source is specifically for individuals and families moving from homelessness into public or private permanent housing. Unfortunately, we cannot assist with move-in for transitional housing at this time. If you’d like to get more information, please review the Program Overview or contact Victoria Anderson (425) 679-0340 or James Tolbert (253) 850-2505 with any additional questions you may have. Please also feel free to tell members of other agencies, as this funding is available to all service providers’ clients, so long as the individual meets the program requirements. Thank you, and we look forward to working with you to get your clients housed!

Work to Ban Source of Income Discrimination!

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Right now House Bill (HB) 1633 and Senate Bill (SB) 5407 are making their way through committees in the House & Senate, if passed, these bills will ban source of income discrimination in the state of Washington! These bills will prohibit landlords from refusing to rent to an applicant and from evicting tenants based on the source of income of an otherwise eligible applicant or tenant. This will protect people who use social security, child support, SSI, Section 8, & HEN to pay their rent. Hear from Section 8 Tenants who faced discrimination based on their source of income in the video below and click here to read more about this victory in Renton. HB 1633 had public hearing in the House Committee on February 7th and it is scheduled for executive session in the House Committee on February 16th! Your legislators need to hear from you TODAY and every day until we pass these bills! Here’s how to take action: Use this form to send a message to your representatives in support of these bills, or; Call the legislative hotline: 1-800-562-6000 Monday – Friday 8am – 8pm, or; Call your elected official’s office directly. p.s. share this with someone you know from another area of Washington State so they can contact their representatives too! Click here to use the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance bill tracker to track the progress of bills that affect housing & homelessness!  

January 2017 General Membership Meeting: Accountable WA, Legislative Advocacy

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Thanks to those who joined us on Thursday, January 17 for our first General membership meeting of 2017! We had an action packed agenda complete with a call in to Olympia to start off our 2017 legislative advocacy. We were joined by community members from Catholic Community Services & Catholic Housing Services, Crisis Clinic, Friends of Youth, Housing Development Consortium, Jewish Family Services, Low Income Housing Institute, Plymouth Housing Group, REACH, Real Change, Recovery Cafe, All Home, Youth Care, and more! We heard a great presentation, called in to Olympia about legislative priorities, and signed famous Coalition Advocacy Postcards. Please read on for a summary of our meeting & important actions YOU can take before our next General Membership Meeting on Thursday, February 16th. Accountable WA, Kelli Smith, WA Budget & Policy Center As we know, Washington State had one of the most inequitable tax structures in the country, we do not have an income tax and therefore rely on sales tax and property tax to fund vital programs our communities need and to raise revenue. This structure causes people with lower incomes to pay disproportionately more of their income to taxes than people in the highest income bracket. The WA Budget and Policy Center, working with many organizations, has developed a package of legislation that would fix some of our tax problems, and make it so that people who are earning the least are not contributing the most in taxes (currently people who are in the lowest 20% income group contribute 16.8% of their income as WA state and local taxes, compared to those in the top 1% who contribute just 2.4% of their income to WA state and local taxes). There are two main goals of Accountable WA, we encourage you to learn more at the links below and click …

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Housing & Homelessness Advocacy Express Bus for Feb. 2!

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Housing & Homelessness Advocacy Day 2017 is Thursday February 2nd! Ride down to Olympia in style on the Coalition’s Advocacy Express! We’ll have 70 seats total on two buses and priority registration for the bus is offered to Coalition members, staff, and clients/guests/members. Our voices are needed in Olympia now like never before! This is a “long” session year – the session officially started on Monday, January 9, and is scheduled to run through April (though very likely there will be at least one special session after). We want to have as many Coalition members and participants as possible sharing their real experiences with lawmakers in Olympia at HHAD. To sign up for a spot on the bus for you and others, email your contact info and group size to denise@homelessinfo.org or call (206)-204-8350 by Wednesday, January 25th! Seats fill up fast! Priority is given to staff of Coalition member organizations and individuals with personal experiences of homelessness. Click here for a PDF poster to share. Attending HHAD is a great opportunity for folks who have never been to Olympia before to join. We’ll share advocacy tips and what to expect on the bus, and the beginning of the day is full of workshops that can help people prepare. This will be a powerful experience whether it is your first advocacy day or if you’ve been too many times to count. Coalition staff, and friendly folks at HHAD will help make everyone’s experience as fantastic as possible! Make sure to also register for Housing & Homelessness Advocacy Day at www.wliha.org/HHAD  

Continue Support of the White Center Shelter

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As we head into a holiday that for many people is synonymous with home and family, let’s turn our attention to White Center. The former public health clinic stands empty, and King County, which owns the building, had hoped to open a shelter in that space on November 1st for 70 people. Three weeks later the shelter has not been opened. That means that 70 people have been outside when they could have been inside for 21 days. In the language of shelter providers, that means 1,470 empty bed-nights. Community members have every right to be notified, to have their questions answered, and to be assured that the shelter will be well run. But not opening the doors to an empty building when there are not only thousands of people homeless does not seem to fit our community’s ideals. We wrote a letter to our community partners in White Center, and we invite you to write your own, using our postcard template, or your own words. Thanks to King County elected officials and staff, as well as community volunteers and our member organizations for your determination to see the people behind the numbers, and to respond with urgency. We strongly support efforts to increase safe shelter and affordable housing across this region. This is a very good time for all of us to think about how we can help answer the question: how can we bring more people inside, and help them secure a home?

Take Action! Support the Proposed Bellevue Shelter!

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The City of Bellevue and King County are working in partnership with Congregations for the Homeless and Imagine Housing to create a permanent men’s shelter which would include 100 emergency beds, a day center and cafeteria, as well as 50 units of permanent housing. We fully support the proposed shelter, but not all community members do. Read this Seattle Times article for more information about the proposed shelter and discussions it has sparked. We encourage you to express your support to the City of Bellevue and King County! Monday, Nov. 28th at 6pm at Bellevue City Hall (450 110th Ave NE, Bellevue): The Bellevue City Council will receive an update on the proposed shelter and permanent supportive housing project at an extended study session. The meeting will begin with a 30-minute period for oral comments to the council. We encourage you to show up to this meeting and publicly express your support! If you can’t show up on the 28th, send advocacy postcards to the Bellevue City Council and King County Council (note that you need to put it in an envelope to send, it’s too big to be mailed on it’s own)! (Click here for a pdf of the postcard). Or email your comments directly to the Bellevue City Council at eastsidemensshelter@bellevuewa.gov or to key King County Councilmembers Claudia Balducci (claudia.balducci@kingcounty.gov) and Reagan Dunn (reagan.dunn@kingcounty.gov). For more information on the shelter including facts on homelessness in Bellevue, community outreach efforts and FAQs, visit the city’s webpage here.

Recap: General Meeting on the Heroin and Prescription Opiate Task Force Recommendations – October 20th, 2016

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The Coalition’s October general meeting occurred on Thursday, October 20th. In attendance were folks from the Transit Riders Union, Washington State Department of Health, King County Public Health Department Health Care for the Homeless, the Low Income Housing Institute, First Place, City of Seattle, Plymouth Housing Group, REACH, King County Metro, Crisis Clinic, The Salvation Army, Jewish Family Services, Seattle Public Library, Child Care Resources, the Housing Development Consortium, Seattle Department of Transportation, El Centro de la Raza, St. James Cathedral, and the Church of Harm Reduction.  Thanks to everyone who attended!  Here is a brief recap of the meeting: I: Voting Updates and Resources: The Coalition helped 365 homeless voters register this year, one for every day! Thanks for helping at your member organization. 83% of eligible voters are registered in the state of Washington. Lets get them all to vote!  Take action: put out voters guides and lists of the drop box locations in your organization. Click here for the map of the locations of the 43 ballot drop boxes in King County. Get more information by reading our voting tips. II: Heroin and Prescription Opiate Task Force Recommendations: [Link to the full report on the Heroin and Prescription Opiate Addiction Task Force recommendations.]  We were joined by Patricia Sully of the Public Defender Association/ Vocal-WA and Chloe Gale of REACH, for a discussion of the Heroin and Prescription Opiate Task Force recommendations. The recommendations by the task force fall into three categories: Primary Prevention, Treatment Expansion & Enhancement, and User Health & Overdose Prevention. Patricia and Chloe focused primarily on the User Health & Overdose Prevention recommendations and the Treatment Expansion recommendations. The two recommendations in the Health and Overdose Prevention section were to expand the distribution of naloxone and to establish at least two Community Health Engagement Locations/Supervised …

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Sound Transit Proposition 1: Mass Transit Now!

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The November 8th election is rapidly approaching and we at the Coalition are excited about one measure that you’ll find at the end of your ballot. Sound Transit (A Regional Transit Authority) Proposition No. 1 will be the very last thing on the ballot and we encourage you to vote yes!  In the past the Coalition has worked on other transit issues, including the ORCA LIFT fare and the Move Seattle transit measure. We care about affordable transit because it allows low-income individuals to access opportunities that they otherwise wouldn’t, it helps people survive and increases their ability to thrive in our community.  Here are reasons why the Coalition is excited about Proposition 1: Proposition 1 invests more than $20 million in affordable housing, and requires 80% of surplus land to be prioritized for building affordable housing. Mass transit built as part of this proposition will serve more than 36,000 current units of subsidized housing.  As more affordable housing is built along the line, more people will be served by transit. It will increase access to jobs and education for low-income, working and middle class families by providing an affordable transportation option with shorter commute times. It will provide reliable public transportation for seniors and people with disabilities which will allow for more independence. Mass transit will reduce air and carbon pollution, which disproportionately impacts people of color. Voting yes on Sound Transit Proposition 1 will increase equity in our community by increasing opportunities for low-income and middle class individuals. This is the most cost effective way to expand transit and help people get where they need to go! For more information on Proposition 1 visit masstransitnow.com and for updates on the campaign find them on facebook. If you’re passionate about this issue and would like to volunteer with the Mass Transit …

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