In partnership with The Housing Development Consortium and other community stakeholders, The Housing Alliance is co-sponsoring the upcoming People + Places: 2012 State Legislative Candidate Forums in your area. 

Earlier today we had Doug Rice, Senior Policy Analyst on housing with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities discussing the federal budget decisions that lie ahead of us, and what they could mean for affordable housing and homelessness.

Here is the video of the presentation:

"People are driven to homelessness by many different causes—some are personal, while others are entirely outside of their control, or “structural.” Campion Foundation believes that structural causes drive homelessness far more than individual, biographical causes. Further, structural causes require structural changes, which will only happen through public policy changes driven by effective advocacy."

Thank you to everyone who was able to sit in last Thursday for our Learn at Lunch with Lori Pfingst from the Washington State Budget & Policy Center. We can't thank Lori enough for joining us - it was a very informative and interesting presentation that really brought a lot of clarity to the debate around policy solutions for ending poverty.

This Thursday, from 12:00p to 1:00p, we have Lori Pfingst, Ph.D., from the Washington State Budget & Policy Center discussing research they've done around the causes of poverty and some analysis on the effectiveness of policy options we have for addressing and even ending poverty.

We are really excited about this webinar, and from the looks of it, many of you are as well! We've actually hit the maximum number of registrants allowed by our webinar service.

This is a guest post by Katara Jordan, Attorney at Columbia Legal Services.

Taking a cue from Seattle housing advocates, Citizens for Bellingham Home Fund have a low-income housing levy on this year’s general election ballot. And they’re also taking advantage of WLIHA’s voter registration campaign. Janet Marino, Executive director of Whatcom Peace and Justice Center in Bellingham and a core member of the levy campaign team, was trained by WLIHA staff to train local advocates in voter registration. Janet and her team are setting up local nodes of registration activity where people are seeking social and health services.

Recently, advocates from across the country gathered in Washington D.C. for the National Alliance on Ending Homelessness's National Conference on Ending Homelessness. The conference is similar to our very own Annual Conference on Ending Homelessness, offering a chance for people interested in ending homeless to get together and share stories and strategies, and to learn about the latest issues and policies that affect our work.

This is a guest post by Ashley Palar, Resident Services Coordinator at Capitol Hill Housing.

[Note: we've extended the cutoff for priority applications to Friday, July 20th.]

The exciting times continue at the Housing Alliance. We are also looking for someone who can fill the mighty big shoes Moque left behind. If you are intrested, or if you know someone who would be a great fit, please use this link for more information: 

http://wliha.org/job-announcement-outreach-and-mobilization-associate