Local communities have a range of tools they can use to promote affordable housing in a way that meets local needs. At Building Changes, we see our role as helping cities and counties to find examples from across the state and the country, and evaluate what strategies will fit their needs and create the most bang for the buck.

A big focus of our recent planning work has involved working with stakeholders in Snohomish County to identify ways of creating and preserving more affordable housing across the county. We worked closely with the Housing Consortium of Everett and Snohomish County to develop an action plan for increasing the number of households receiving housing assistance over the next ten years. The result of our work is titled Housing within Reach: A Call to Action for Snohomish

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As described in this press release, HUD recently put out new figures describing the level of homelessness in the U.S. based on Point in Time (One Night) Counts and data collected from users of homeless shelters. They touted a second year of double-digit percentage decrease, with the number of homeless people declining by 20 percent between 2006 and 2007, following a drop of 11 percent between 2005 and 2006. What should we make of these numbers? Are we truly winning the war on homelessness?

People who provide services or work on housing and homelessness issues for the most part already knew that One Night Counts had dropped dramatically in some jurisdictions, though here in King County we appeared to lose ground: between 2007 and 2008, the number of unsheltered people increased by 15

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