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The mission of the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance is to lead the movement to ensure that all our residents thrive in safe, healthy, affordable homes. We do this through advocacy, education, and organizing.
Our vision is that all Washington residents have the opportunity to live in safe, healthy, affordable homes in thriving communities.
Check out Kimberly's story on how the Housing Alliance has impacted her life as a advocate for affordable housing.
The following values guide our work:
Leadership
The Housing Alliance provides leadership to bring people and organizations together to have the greatest impact on policy. We also nurture and develop leaders across the state who can engage their local communities.
Justice
A just society provides everyone the opportunity to live in a safe, healthy, affordable home. As people and organizations who care about affordable housing and ending homelessness, we are part of a broader struggle for social justice.
Community
A home is the foundation that each person and family needs to succeed, but a roof overhead is just the first step. Ultimately, our vision is for everyone in Washington to have a home in a thriving community — one that is safe, healthy, affordable, and inclusive.
As the statewide champion for housing, the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance is a powerful coalition of diverse organizations and individuals working together to build and protect safe, healthy, affordable homes for everyone across Washington State.
Founded in 1988, the Housing Alliance is a trusted leader and expert on housing and homelessness. Along with a strong combination of housing and homelessness organizations, funders, services providers and individual advocates, we work closely with elected officials to turn good ideas into sound policy.
The Housing Alliance has a significant impact on state housing policy. Twenty years ago, members played a pivotal role in founding one of the nation's first state housing trust funds and today the Housing Alliance has secured the most public funding for affordable housing in state history. These funds have helped many thousands of previously homeless families, home health care aides, teachers and firefighters be able to live in an affordable home.
Tell the Housing Story
Children deserve a chance to succeed in school and in life, which all begins with their families being able to afford a safe, healthy, affordable place to live. This can be hard to understand for someone who has never had to choose between feeding his or her family or paying the rent. But when a child explains that she's doing better in school because her family hasn't had to move this year, the real impact of affordable housing and the need for action becomes clear.
Learn more about our Communication work here.
Advocate for Positive Policy Change
Every year, Housing Alliance members and partners develop policy to meet our state's housing need. We provide our members with a direct line to legislative action in Olympia, access to tools that deepen the impact of their advocacy and the latest facts and figures needed to tell a compelling story. Due to a strong and diverse coalition of organized and persistent advocates, in 2011 the legislature allocated $50 million to the Housing Trust Fund, the primary state funding source for affordable housing development.
Learn more about our State Legislative Advocacy work here.
At the federal level, we educate our members on federal policy and advocate on behalf of the entire state with our congressional delegation. The Housing Alliance works closely with the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials, and other national organizations to develop policy principles and clarify the impact of federal policy on Washington State. We take positions on federal policies that are critically important for Washington State, such as the National Housing Trust Fund.
Learn more about our Federal Legislative Advocacy work here.
Mobilize People to Make a Difference
The Housing Alliance brings advocates together as part of a single housing movement, empowering people to tell their policy makers that everyone should have the opportunity to live in a safe, healthy, affordable home. In 2011, more than 500 advocates rallied on the steps of the capitol building for the annual Housing and Homelessness Advocacy Day in Olympia. During the 2011 legislative sessions, we empowered advocates to write over 4,000 emails to legislators asking for better policy and funding for affordable housing.
It should be possible for working people to afford housing and still have enough money for the basics like groceries, gas, and childcare. But in Washington State, it’s becoming harder and harder for people to afford what they need to make their lives work.
- About 87,000 people face homelessness each year in Washington State.
- 250,000 Washington households must make desperate choices between necessities like food and healthcare, and rent.
- Families with children make up 47% of Washington’s homeless population.
- Washington’s $7.1 billion agriculture industry needs 39,000 additional units of farmworker housing, forcing thousands of workers to live in substandard, unaffordable conditions and threatening the stability of our agricultural economy.