Welcome to the end of November! Deep thanks to everyone who joined our General Membership Meeting this month. We had productive conversations, learned some important community updates, and heard from the KRCHA’s Ombuds office about their current project to learn more about grievances policies in the homelessness response system.
News from the Coalition
We’re now on Bluesky! Follow us here.
We’re co-sponsoring King County’s Behavioral Health Forum on Wednesday, December 4 at Seattle Exhibition Hall. Come join us at this powerful community event! Doors open at 5 p.m. Registration is open here. Please put “Coalition on Homelessness” in the Cosponsor/Company/Organization field on the second page of the event registration.
Updates on City and County Budgets
We did a great job getting our community to speak up for priorities in the Seattle budget that matter to us. More than 700 people took action with us this budget season, and we sent more than 2,500 messages to Seattle City Council and the Mayor. While the outcome was not a budget we wanted, there were some wins.
Things we’re celebrating:
- We won restored funding for legal assistance provided by Legal Counsel for Youth and Children and Solid Ground that connects people to public benefits.
- We restored funding for rental assistance, which helps keep people housed.
- We retained partial funding for tenant services, which helps keep people housed.
Things that we will need to continue fighting for:
- The JumpStart spending plan was made optional rather than required, and the JumpStart Oversight Committee was eliminated.
- We were unable to secure new funding for a women’s day center that is slated to close in March 2025.
- Although we won some funding for tenant services, we did not raise spending in this area to match the cost of inflation. No increase in funding is equivalent to funding cuts. Since the cost of providing services has grown, providers will be able to serve fewer people with the same amount of funding.
- Council did not pass a city capital gains tax, which was proposed by Council Member Cathy Moore.
Although we wanted to see more gains for funding homelessness services and wages for people who provide these services, our fight is not over. We have the supplemental budget to prepare for, and we will continue advocating for priorities that support people experiencing poverty, homelessness, and housing instability.
Our King County budget remained relatively stable in terms of funding for housing and homelessness services. We are, however, expecting a large budget deficit at the state level, so as we prepare for Housing and Homelessness Advocacy Day in Olympia on March 14, we hope you and your guests will join us as we advocate and communicate with our lawmakers together.
When things get dicey, we show up together. Our role as the Coalition on Homelessness remains the same regardless of what we win and what we lose, and regardless of who is in our councils. The Coalition will always gather our community together, share good information, counter dis-information, speak out against bad policy, mobilize our community, and educate our elected officials on what works to support people experiencing poverty, homelessness, and housing instability.
To hear more details on the city and county budgets, go to 00:05:10 of the recording.
KCRHA Ombuds Office
The KCRHA Ombuds office is focused on complaints and concerns within the King County homelessness emergency response system. The office is beholden to program participants and constituents on a broad scale. They receive comments and feedback and provide recommendations on how to resolve complaints and concerns.
The Ombuds office is currently working on a Grievance Guidance Project, which is gathering feedback from providers and programs on grievances policies and best practices. The goal is to see what works and what doesn’t work, and then share those findings with our larger community.
In order to collect this information, the Ombuds office is sharing a short survey, available here, which will be open until mid-December.
All staff levels are open to fill out this survey, but it’s specifically geared toward anyone in your program or organization that works directly with grievances.
If you prefer to talk one-on-one with the Ombuds office about grievance policies, you can arrange a meeting by reaching out to ombuds@kcrha.org or 206-639-4601.
To view the slides from Ombuds presentation, click here. To hear their presentation, go to 00:29:52 in the recording.
State Election Outcomes & WA Legislative Session Preview
The Coalition opposed three state initiatives on the state ballot this year. All three failed to pass by pretty large margins!
- Initiative 2117
- Initiative 2109
- Initiative 2124
This means our state capital gains tax remains intact, as does our Climate Commitment Act and our WA Cares long-term care benefits program.
State Initiative 2066 passed, which deals with access to natural gas. This initiative may be challenged in court.
There are more changes in Washington state coming! One third of our state legislature was newly elected into office in November. In addition, Washington will also see a new governor, Bob Ferguson, a new attorney general, Nick Brown, and a new insurance commissioner, Patty Kuderer.
This means we have a lot of opportunities and a lot of work to do to educate our newly elected officials statewide about housing and homelessness. We will kick off our efforts to educate and communicate with our elected officials during our Legislative Preview Meeting on December 12 from 9-11 a.m. over Zoom. During that meeting, we will be joined by state lawmakers and hear from our partners in advocacy at the state level. This event is free, and we will send out a recording of the meeting afterwards. Register here.
To learn more detail, go to 00:50:40 of the recording.
Checking in on what our Members Need
With the federal government changing hands in January, we know there are many of us who have real fears about the next four years. Here at the Coalition, we want to check in our members, see how you’re doing, and hear what would be most helpful for us to provide as we prepare for what’s next.
We have built a short survey, available here, with the intent of helping us plan and prepare trainings, resources, and connections that would be most helpful for you.
You may fill out this survey anonymously if you wish. But please fill it out! The survey will close at 5 p.m. on Friday, December 13. The first 100 people to submit the survey will receive a $10 gift card to Starbucks.
To hear more, go to 1:00:06 in the recording.