As part of its commitment to improving employment outcomes for homeless job seekers in Washington State, Building Changes is proud to release
Strategies to Eliminate Poverty (STEP): Collaborations Report, a research project funded by the STEP Program of the Seattle Foundation.
Focusing on collaborative initiatives that integrate workforce development and human services systems, this report examines best thinking and effective practices for improving economic opportunity for low-income workers. The three initiatives profiled are Montana's Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness, Oregon's Career Pathways Program, and Minnesota's M-Powered Program. These collaborations have been especially informative in developing our own Community Employment Pathways (CEP) initiative, an overview of which is
Last month, I gave a presentation to the Steering Committee of Snohomish County Tomorrow, which includes elected officials and other representatives from the 19 cities and towns in Snohomish County. As part of our work to research and promote collaboration between jurisdictions on housing issues, I worked with our clients at the County and the City of Lake Stevens to develop a short presentation on (1) what is affordable housing, (2) who needs affordable housing, (3) where is it located in Snohomish County, and (4) how is affordable housing created?
It can be difficult to communicate just how great the need is for housing in our region, and how the benefits of affordable housing spread beyond individual families to the entire community. A key takeaway from this presentation is that all kinds of working families need to balance housing costs with other essentials, such as health care, food, and transportation. When the people who work in our cities - from food service or retail workers to teachers and police officers - cannot afford to live there, the whole community suffers. In Snohomish County alone, more than 55,000 families that earn less than the median income are paying more for housing than they can afford, and that number is growing.
We also wanted to send the message that there is no single solution for meeting these affordable housing needs, but it really does require combined efforts from the private sector, dedicated nonprofit agencies, and local, state, and federal governments. Our goal was to give elected officials a solid grounding in the fundamentals of affordable housing in their communities, and get them to think about new ways they could work together. In late February, we will return to the SCT Steering Committee to continue this conversation on what cities and the County can do together to promote healthy, viable communities that have affordable options for all families.
Note: Our presentation was specifically focused on Snohomish County, but part of our inspiration was the Affordable Housing 101 educational curriculum developed by ARCH, the affordable housing collaboration between 15 Eastside cities and King County. This is a great resource with even more detail on the needs and strategies for affordable housing.
Some may wonder, what impact does affordable housing have on the economy? If so, read on... A
new study by economist Bruce Blakey done with the help of the
Connecticut Economic Resource Center indicates that Connecticut would create thousands of new jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars of new revenues if it created workforce housing in the form of condominiums, starter homes and other options for workers, families and young professionals. Connecticut's housing market is remarkably similar to Washington's.* The
Washington Low Income Housing Alliance has asserted that there are 250,000 families in Washington who are in need of affordable housing. To create that many residences will require a total statewide investment on the order of $50 billion. Of course only a fraction of that
A few days ago, I co-hosted a national conference call with providers of employment services that work with people who are homeless. John Rio of Advocates for Human Potential co-hosted the meeting. We heard that these providers are struggling to find jobs for their clients in the current economic paradigm. In Seattle, the YWCA has cancelled job fairs because there weren't enough employers. In Bridgeport, CT, they are seeing the most activity in years at their career center, and seeing far more people than usual who have lost their jobs recently and become homeless. In Portland, they have hit a 25-year high in unemployment (10%). Many providers said they are noticing that employers that previously hired people with criminal histories and people with significant gaps have become much more
The Second Chance Act (SCA) is federal legislation designed to improve outcomes for people returning to the community from prisons and jails. This is Part IV of a four-part blog series. (
Read Part I,
Read Part II,
Read Part III)
At the end of 2006, I left my position at the Justice Center of the Council of State Governments and moved across the country, where I came to work at Building Changes (then AIDS Housing of Washington), in part because I had admired the agency's publication, From Locked Up to Locked Out: Creating and Implementing Post-release Housing for Ex-prisoners. My work branched out into general homelessness and HIV housing primarily, but I continued to monitor the Second Chance Act (SCA), which finally passed and was signed into law in April 2008. A major battle had been
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