Kevin Solarte, Outreach and Mobilization Associate

Next year's Housing and Homelessness Advocacy Day has changed to Monday, February 11, 2013. Location remains the same.

A Learn At Lunch Webinar
Sequestration, Fiscal Cliff, Grand Bargain

What Does It All Mean for Affordable Housing?

Thursday, November 29, noon - 1pm (Pacific Time)

As we begin the holiday season, we at the Housing Alliance wanted to take a moment and wish you a happy and joyful Thanksgiving filled with family and friends and love. We also want to recognize that not everyone in our communities will spend the holiday in a safe, stable home. Too many people in our state continue to struggle to meet their most basic needs like food and shelter.

Next year's Housing and Homelessness Advocacy Day is on Thursday, February 14, 2013. Registration for the event will open by Sunday, Dececember 1.

If you're registered to vote, you should have received your ballot already. The Housing Alliance has taken positions on three initiatives that we believe will have an impact on our shared goal of a safe, healthy, affordable home for everyone in Washington. We also had the opportunity to ask both candidates for Governor about their positions on issues related to affordable housing and homelessness, and included links to the videos with their responses near the bottom of this post.

Our positions:

Historically, many community members experiencing homelessness, and many of those living in low-income housing do not vote.  This is in part because of systemic barriers, and in part because they are not encouraged to participate.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) wants to hear from you! On Wednesday they will be holding a field hearing looking for on-the-ground insight into debt collection practices in Washington state. Has debt collection impacted you, your members or your clients? This is a unique opportunity to let them know about the need for strong regulations around debt collection practices that helps protect hard-earned income and gives people a way out of debt, rather than creating more debt.

Earlier today, we had Brock Howell and Tim Trohimovich from Futurewise, Washington's only statewide group working to ensure that local governments manage growth responsibly, join us for a Learn at Lunch webinar to talk about the basics of the Growth Management Act and how it matters for affordable housing advocates. They covered what the act covers, how it ties to housing, the timeline for plan updates, and most importantly how to get involved.

Explaining how we can allow people--especially children--to experience poverty and homelessness is very hard. Trying to explain child poverty and homelessness to a child is even harder.

Lukcily, the Seattle University Project on Family Homelessness is partnering with Seattle Children's Theater to present several public forums about family homelessness in King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties over the next few weeks. 

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) at the White House, released a report late last week detailing the impact of the across the board cuts – referred to as sequestration – which are scheduled for January 2013. The report confirmed that affordable housing and important safety-net programs will be devastated by deep cuts when sequestration occurs.

Here are some of the cuts housing programs will be facing: