Michele Thomas, Director of Policy and Advocacy

While we are still sifting through all the details, I wanted to share that overall the operating budget is very good news for affordable housing and homelessness programs. You all should be very proud of your advocacy, especially regarding the proposed cuts to the Consolidated Homeless Grants (CHG), which funds emergency shelters and domestic violence shelters and provides rent assistance. I'm very happy to share that the CHG cuts pushed by the Senate are not in the compromise budget that was released late last night. This means that the funding has been restored! Also, the Housing and Essential Needs (HEN) program is funded at current program levels and the Aged, Blind & Disabled (ABD) program is actually increased (remember the Senate wanted to eliminate it)!

No accounts that fund Operations and Maintenance (O&M) were swept. O&M supports affordable housing programs that serve extremely low-income households exiting homelessness. This means no reduction of O&M!

There is no capital budget yet, which means no news on the Housing Trust Fund. But we hear that it'll be out by this Saturday at the latest.

Here are some other important standouts from this new operating budget:

Image

HEN is funded at a level that allows the program to continue at its current capacity. No net cuts! ABD is fully funded and actually was given an increase of $2 million to account for a change in the definition of disability. Washington Families Fund (WFF) is funded at $2 million. WFF is funded from a Department of Commerce account that was also increased by $2 million. This means that there is no net impact on other homeless programs. The Governor's new rapid re-housing program received no funding from Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) dollars as expected, only funded by Home Security Fund dollars at $5 million.

Other programs we are still looking into:

SSI Facilitation Services: We still need more info.
TANF: We know there will be significant cuts. But the cuts look to be approximately what was expected.

We'll try to share more information as we process what's coming out of Olympia. But in the meantime, please celebrate that we all saved funding for affordable housing and homelessness programs from begin slashed and therefore, we saved at least 20,000 people from experiencing homelessness!