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The Washington Families Fund (WFF) is an incredible success story.
Established by the Washington State Legislature in 2004, WFF is a
critical financial commitment by the state dedicated to helping
homeless families get the services they need to break the cycle
of homelessness. In just two short years we have seen funding
that has grown from $2 to $9 million, creating a phenomenal
partnership between the public sector and private philanthropic
organizations. We have also seen the extremely successful launch
of the Fund’s third-party grant-making, administration and
technical assistance functions through the capable hands of AIDS
Housing of Washington. To get WFF off the ground so
quickly was extraordinary. How did all this come about? This is
the story I’ll be telling in this newsletter.
       
The Gates Foundation thinks big
You can’t understand the genesis of WFF without reviewing the
development of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s efforts to
make a big difference for homeless families in our region. The Gates
Foundation launched its Sound Families Initiative in 2000 with a $40
million commitment to build 1,500 units to provide homeless families
in three counties in the Puget Sound region with service-enriched
transitional housing.
Service-enriched housing gives homeless families a home for long
enough to stabilize their lives and get their bearings, in
conjunction with the services they need to address the causes that
brought them to that juncture. These services may include needs like
substance abuse treatment, mental health treatment, vocational
counseling and training, and parenting classes.
Sound Families has always been envisioned by the Gates Foundation as
a partnership. $40 million is a generous commitment, but it isn’t
going to solve family homelessness by itself. It was devised from
the start to bring in and leverage the contributions and efforts of
housing and service providers, property managers and public
agencies.
One of the most essential elements of Sound Families’ success was
the formation of partnerships with housing authorities in King,
Pierce and Snohomish Counties. The housing authorities secured
waivers that allowed for the flexible use of Section 8 project
vouchers, which in turn helped nonprofit grantees cover their
operating costs. As such, Sound Families has been the catalyst for
setting in motion long-term solutions that bring everyone to the
table.
As of April of this year, Sound Families had funded more than 1,100
units of housing and served more than 2,500 adults and children.
More than 30 new partnerships have been formed through the
initiative. And Sound Families allocated the necessary resources to
fund a longitudinal evaluation of the work being accomplished. This
evaluation has been performed through the University of Washington’s
School of Social Work, and positive results have been coming in for
some time now.
The idea for WFF is born
I‘ve been lucky to have a front row seat for observing Sound
Families’ success, having served on Sound Families’ Steering
Committee, which sets policies and makes funding decisions. About
three years ago it was becoming increasing clear to us that, as
Sound Families was seeing its goals of producing service-enriched
housing met, the funding to ensure the sustainability of those
services was in peril. For the work of the Initiative to continue,
we needed to find a way to fund those critical services for homeless
families.
And that’s where the idea for WFF was born. The Steering Committee
came up with the idea of a fund combined of both public and private
money that would make multi-year service grants. The point was not
only to continue the great work that Sound Families had launched; it
was also to make these kinds of intensive, turn-your-lives-around
services available to homeless families across the state—beyond the
three counties that already had the opportunity through the
Initiative.
Leveraging Sound Families
Since its initial planning phase, Sound Families has subcontracted
with the City of Seattle Office of Housing to tap into the expertise
and leadership of its staff in administering the program. In 2003
Katie Hong, Maureen Kostyack, Bill Rumpf and other staff members at
the Office of Housing brainstormed about putting together the WFF
concept and adding the details to make it work.
"We thought that this
money could help nonprofits use that and leverage that to
seek other money. And they did." Katie Hong, Acting Director, Pacific Northwest Giving, Gates Foundation
Katie Hong has served both the public sector and private funder
worlds with Sound Families, formerly as Director of the City of
Seattle Office of Housing, and now as Acting Director, Pacific
Northwest Giving for The Gates Foundation. From the start, Katie
says, Sound Families insisted on local public funder support for
every project. “We don’t put money in unless they decide to put
money in. Sound Families’ funding model was that we helped fund part
of capital, we helped fund part of the service model, but it was for
a five-year commitment. And it wasn’t at 100%—it was one-third of
the service budget. We thought that this money could help nonprofits
use that and leverage that to seek other money. And they did.
“But we also knew that operating dollars were critical,” Katie
continues. “We wanted to make sure we could work with the housing
authorities throughout the state of Washington if we set up this
fund: If grantees got WFF awards, would they also be able to access
Section 8 dollars? Project-based Section 8 is a critical source of
operating dollars.”
Taking it to the Legislature
After some initial conversations with the governor’s office, it
became clear that a mandate like WFF would need to go to the
legislature for funding. That’s where Maureen Kostyack really
rolled up her sleeves. Maureen is Housing Program and Development
Manager
with the City of Seattle Office of Housing. Maureen was asked
to work with statewide advocacy organizations on advancing the
proposal to the legislature.
"The
fact that the three largest statewide housing associations were
behind the idea made it a big issue for everyone.” Maureen Kostyack, Housing Program
and Development Manager, City of Seattle Office of Housing
“Tom Byers, a consultant working with Sound Families, made the
contact to Representative Ruth Kagi,” says Maureen, “and I went
along with him to describe the proposal.” This was in mid-2003. Ruth Kagi, who represents the 32nd District, is Chair of the House
Children & Family Services Committee, under which Housing was
subsumed at that time. “I thought it was a great idea,” Ruth Kagi says. “To have a group
come to a legislator, and say, ‘We have private money we’re willing
to put into this if the state will just pony up one-time money.’
This was at a time when we were facing severe deficits. We did not
want to put money into ongoing funding streams.”
Rep. Ruth Kagi, 32nd District
Chair of the House Children & Family Services Committee
For Ruth, there were two other compelling reasons for getting behind
WFF so strongly. “The evaluations from Sound Families so clearly
showed the impact on children, families, employment—just a whole
range of issues that the state is very concerned about. It was the
combination of that evaluation, which was outstanding, and the
stepping up with the private partnership, which was a commitment.
Along with the one-time funding: those three factors drove the issue
from the very beginning.”
Housing groups lend support
The other part of the effort was to get statewide housing-related
organizations on board. The Washington Low Income Housing Alliance (WLIHA),
the Washington State Coalition for the Homeless (WSCH) and the
Association of Washington Housing Authorities (AWHA) were all
preparing their legislative agendas for 2004. Maureen pitched the
idea of WFF to all three organizations to ask them to make it a
legislative priority. They all signed on.
“The fact that the three largest statewide housing associations were
behind the idea made it a big issue for everyone,” Maureen adds.
“From there, it was still pretty much a concept but the goal was to
get everyone together, understand it better, and develop it into a
proposal.”
With the assistance of WLIHA, Maureen and others established a work
group that worked through the fall of 2003 to refine the proposal.
“There was a lot of enthusiasm,” says Maureen. “Those organizations
outside of the three counties where the Sound Families program was
in place wanted to have the same opportunity to combine public and
private money and Section 8 funding. We had housing authorities from
all parts of the state and a lot of service providers come together
in several statewide meetings. People flew in to SeaTac to work on
this. It was a fast but focused and thorough effort. In the end,
WSCH took the lead in terms of advocacy, but the others were very
much involved.”
WFF legislation moves quickly
Ruth worked extensively with Greg Shaw, then-Director of Pacific
Northwest Giving for the Gates Foundation, to fashion a bill that he
thought the philanthropic community could support. “The Gates
Foundation was very present in the legislature in terms of stating
the need,” Ruth reports. “Of course a foundation can’t lobby, but
they did an extraordinary job of educating legislators about the
need for ongoing services, and the potential benefits. Greg Shaw was
one of the leaders in moving WFF forward. I met with a number of
editorial boards with him, to talk about this partnership, and we
had a lot of conversations about how this partnership could and
should work.”
The WFF legislation moved quickly. “I think everyone was surprised.
It was a brand new concept—these often take a couple of years. Helen
Sommers, the Appropriations Committee Chair, was excited about it.
And with Speaker Frank Chopp on board as well, we had strong
leadership support in the House.”
Although the bill did not pass, WFF had strong bipartisan support as
a project that could be funded from the state’s operating budget. “I
love legislative strategy,” Ruth says. “Even though it did not pass,
the fact that we had introduced that bill and we had hearings on it,
and people came down and testified—we got a lot of people educated
and excited about this whole concept. And we were able to move it
forward.”
Negotiations in the Senate presented a struggle. “We actually almost
lost it at the 11th hour,” Ruth recalls. A series of intense
conversations that took place with Senator Darlene Fairley on Ways
and Means and Helen Sommers resulted in Helen calling Senator Joe
Zarelli, ranking minority member of the Senate Ways and Means. “And
we worked it out,” Ruth says. “Clearly the intent was to fund WFF,
and there was language in the budget that provided the policies that
we needed.”
So in 2004 WFF was put into the state’s operating budget. The
initial state contribution to WFF was $2 million, which was met by
$1 million from the Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation offered
an additional $1 million as an incentive match: if other private
funders would step forward to collectively add $1 million, the WFF
total could come to $5 million.
One of the challenges to work out at the beginning was how to
administer WFF. “This was an unusual state role,” Ruth points out.
The money was allocated to the Washington State Department of
Community, Trade and Economic Development (CTED) to put in the Fund,
and to determine how it would be spent. “We were well aware that
when there is state funding involved, there’s a strong need for
accountability. All of those issues have to be worked through. CTED
was very responsive at getting to a solution. They did a great job
in making sure state rules were followed and accountability issues
were addressed, but that it was flexible enough that it would work.”
Bridging disciplines
CTED was charged with establishing the administration of WFF. “The
concept was already embedded that we would have a third-party
administrator to broker between philanthropies and the state,” says
Stephen Buxbaum. Stephen is CTED’s Assistant Director, Housing
Division.
"We were intent on
expanding the number of projects that directly combined
services with housing." Stephen Buxbaum, Assistant Director, Housing Division, Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development
Stephen believes that the most unique feature of WFF is the direct
connection it creates between public funding and philanthropic
funding. “In advance,” he says, “we were making commitments of state
resources, with the direct intent to leverage philanthropic
resources. What was special in this arrangement was that we needed
an intermediary that was active and operating in both worlds. Having
that intermediary was a critical part of this whole approach.”
Stephen and CTED set up an advisory committee that included all
parties involved in getting WFF funded, including housing
authorities, service providers, and several private funders. A
request for qualifications was circulated. They sought an
organization that had a good track record in program administration,
program evaluation, and ongoing technical assistance—as well as
fundraising.
“We were intent on expanding the number of projects that directly
combined services with housing,” Stephen says. “AIDS Housing of
Washington (AHW) has a distinguished record in performing
service-enriched housing; first in working with individuals living
with HIV. But their orientation has gradually expanded, and they
have broad experience working with homeless populations. They were
perfect in many ways to fill this new niche of a provider that was
bridging disciplines.”
Within six months of WFF’s creation, AHW was selected as the
administrator. In record time, AHW had created structures and
procedures for WFF, circulated RFPs to agencies across the state,
created an evaluation process and announced the first 10 grantees.
Not to mention garnering the additional $1 million from private
funders across the state to match the Gates Foundation’s $1
million—and raise the total WFF pot from three to five million
dollars. “So much of why we were able to pull this off so quickly
was because of the amazing capacity and wonderful leadership of AHW,”
says Katie Hong.
Adds Stephen, “Philanthropies have been able to come together in a
very powerful way to pool their resources. But at the same time,
they’re not losing their own special identities. The way AHW is
managing this resource, they’re being very thoughtful to the needs
of all the different funders.”
AHW: Breaking new ground with WFF
The way
Betsy Lieberman tells it, AIDS Housing of Washington was the
only intermediary agency in the state that had the interest, and
perhaps the capacity at the time, to apply for this role with WFF—which
she affably calls ‘Woof.’ Betsy is the founding Executive Director
of AHW, which has been a national technical assistance provider for
some 15 years. Betsy and AHW got their start back in 1988, when
their original mission was to develop and build a 35-bed skilled
nursing facility in Seattle for people with AIDS called the Bailey-Boushay
House.
Betsy Lieberman, Founding Executive Director
AIDS Housing of Washington
Since that time, AHW organized the first national housing conference
for AIDS, out of which emerged the National AIDS Housing Coalition.
They also lobbied to get a dedicated HUD funding stream that funds
AIDS housing across the country, now known as Housing Opportunities
for People with AIDS (HOPWA). They’ve created a total of 141 units
of housing for people living with HIV/AIDS and their families in
King County. And AHW’s National Technical Assistance Program (NTAP)
advises organizations all over the country on planning and
implementing AIDS housing and support service policies and programs
at both state and local levels.
AHW’s staff has grown from four to 18, but Betsy laughs that it
feels like it should be 700. They have a lot of irons in the fire.
What people working with them value is their effectiveness. “I
always felt like we needed to run ourselves like a business,” she
says. “We really pride ourselves by having the back office side of
our agency working. People knew we had all the structures in place.”
AHW subcontracted with the Corporation for Supportive Housing, who
helped them develop the underwriting for the services side of WFF—“because
no one around the country had ever developed a multiple-use service
funding underwriting tool,” Betsy says.
“The timing was incredibly important,” she believes. “The tipping
point has happened on supportive housing.” Here’s what Betsy and AHW
are seeing and doing in their work with WFF:
Agencies within the same region are partnering together to apply for
WFF grants. In the first funding round announced last year, five
Spokane organizations banded together to win a WFF 10-year grant,
something each probably couldn’t have accomplished on their own [see
the accompanying article on Spokane Families Futures]. This year,
three organizations in Yakima accomplished the same feat.
There’s a significant amount of demand for these services.
“It’s a
fantastic opportunity,” Betsy says. WFF funds up to $3500 per year
per unit of services; projects encompass between 10 and 20 WFF
units. AHW received some 55 applications in the first round in 2005,
and about 35 in 2006.
The funding is being used creatively. One of the 2006 grantees,
Clallam County’s Serenity House, is applying its grant to
service-enriched multi-site homeless family projects in Port Angeles
and Forks—in both their own housing, as well as leased homes. 2005
grantee Community Psychiatric Clinic in Seattle [see the
accompanying article on The Willows] is targeting treatment for
homeless pregnant and brand-new mothers who are both chemically
addicted and in need of mental health services.
AHW wants to use WFF more judiciously. Some families require a lot
more funding than others. “We’re working right now to restructure
the fund,” says Betsy. “We want to fund, probably multiple levels,
but at least two service levels for homeless families.” This
includes developing “a more robust funding stream that can serve the
15 or 20% of what are called chronically homeless families—those
that have continued to cycle.”
AHW is committed to finding additional local and national resources
for evaluation. “There’s a lot of interest around the country in the
data,” she affirms. “We’re trying to work thoughtfully with some
national foundations around funding a more robust evaluation for WFF.
There is real interest, and very little data nationally, on homeless
families around the country. This is the first time there’s going to
be a statewide data set.”
WFF’s appeal to philanthropies
As I mentioned earlier, a large part of AHW’s role with WFF has been
fund-raising on the private funding side, initially, to raise that
first $1 million to match the Gates Foundation’s challenge grant—and
to continue raising awareness of and support for WFF among private
foundations. This is a remarkable piece of what Betsy and AHW have
helped to achieve. Private foundations from all over the state have
stepped up to the plate. Initial funders included The Seattle
Foundation, Spokane’s Foundation Northwest, Tacoma-based Ben B.
Cheney Foundation, the Community Foundation of North-Central
Washington, the Boeing Foundation and the Paul G. Allen Family
Foundation.
Tricia McKay, Executive Director, Medina Foundation One strong partner from the start has been the
Medina Foundation,
headed by Executive Director Tricia McKay. Homelessness, including
support services for the homeless, is an important focus for this
foundation. “We fund from shelter to transitional to permanent
housing,” she says.
Tricia and the Medina Foundation got involved with WFF early on. “I
approached the Gates Foundation in 2003,” Tricia says. “I thought
Sound Families was doing such great work—we could go and do
something on our own, as a small foundation and a small staff, or we
could build on what Gates had already done.” When discussions about
WFF first began to emerge, “they approached me about this as a
concrete possibility. And I thought it was a great thing to explore
with my board.” While WFF was still in the planning phase, Tricia was able to
provide the perspective of a private philanthropic organization in
terms of how WFF might be structured to accommodate their giving
objectives: “What it would look like and how it would function as
far as selecting projects, providing technical assistance, and
measuring the success of the program,” says Tricia. Tricia and Katie Hong accompanied Betsy Lieberman on several road
trips to meet with both eastern and western Washington foundations
to enlist their support for WFF. Betsy Lieberman remembers this
well. “As a nonprofit leader who has raised a lot of private money
over the years, it’s really profound when you have a partnership
with your philanthropic partners. It gives you total credibility,”
Betsy recalls.
What was the appeal of WFF to the Medina Foundation? “Speaking from
our own perspective,” says Tricia, “there’s so much need in the
homelessness arena. We fund organizations that provide services and
it’s just a slog every year for them to raise money to provide these
services. As an individual foundation we can be out there investing
our money in a variety of organizations and hope that it can really
make a difference. But this is such a wonderful opportunity to
actually pool our funding, for all of us who want to see the same
outcomes: we want to see people move out of homelessness into
self-sustaining lives and permanent housing.”
For Tricia and Medina, with WFF, not only is the impact magnified,
but the process is more efficient. “As an individual foundation, we
can’t fund all the technical assistance. There’s the whole process
of selecting the grantees. We can’t fund sophisticated evaluation:
we don’t have the staff capacity or expertise. These are the things
we should be working on together. And then we all get the benefits
of best practice, great research, great pilot projects like Sound
Families that truly laid the groundwork for WFF. Homelessness is an
almost overwhelming problem. If we’re truly going to tackle it, we
have to do it working together. We realize that as investors in
social change, this was one of the best ways that we can do it.
“AHW is one of the key reasons for the success of this effort,”
Tricia says. “They’re a non-government organization everyone is
comfortable with, they bill on the quarter hour, have a really
talented staff, and are quite nimble. Ensuring that the funding is
going to be used well has ensured the success of this program. Our
foundation would not have been as inclined to send our money to a
government agency.”
15 projects funded and $9 million in funding—and counting
By any measure, WFF has notched a remarkable string of successes in
two short years.
With the additional $4 million allocated from the 2006 legislative
session, funding for WFF has gone in two years from $2 to $5 to $9
million. Last month, WFF received a private funding commitment of
$200,000 from Oregon-based Meyer Memorial Trust. Also last month,
AHW announced the second round of grants, to bring the total of
10-year service-enriched housing projects for homeless families from
10 to 15. These projects span 11 Washington counties.
WFF is expected to double its grant award payout during the next
three years. As part of WFF’s technical assistance mandate, AHW
visits many applicant agencies, and advises many of those who don’t
get funded on how to retool their application for the next year’s
round.
Another aspect of WFF’s success is the new model it has provided for
funding other worthy projects. Ruth Kagi thinks so highly of the WFF
model that she’s since applied it to other legislation, particularly
early learning, which is an abiding legislative issue for her.
“Working with the Gates Foundation showed us how effective this
private/public partnership and collaboration can be,” she says. In
addition, using an outside administrator for the funding “is also a
model I believe we’ll follow with early learning.”
A fantastic job—but we can’t claim victory yet
“WFF was a wonderful project,” Ruth sums up. “I just continue to be
impressed. The role of strong evaluation is clear. It was very
defined, you could really see what success would be, and it has been
implemented pretty much just exactly the way I envisioned it. Except
there’s been more of a private match in dollars than was even
promised. Everyone has done a fantastic job.” Despite WFF’s milestones thus far, the fact remains that although 15
projects have gotten funding, more than four times that many have
been turned away. As Katie Hong says, “we can’t claim victory yet.”
In my view, the story of the Washington Families Fund provides a
lesson in how to fund important projects on a long-term basis so
they can achieve results. It’s a story about people coming together
from across the state—from within the legislature, from city and
county jurisdictions and all of our state’s public housing
authorities, from private foundations and homeless coalitions and
affordable housing advocates and nonprofits that serve homeless
families—who all realized that if we can pool our resources and
expertise we can accomplish great things.
Spokane agencies collaborate to win WFF grant
In late 2004, Northeast Washington Housing Solutions (NWHS),
Spokane’s regional housing authority, brought together a diverse
group of housing organizations to apply for a grant from WFF to
support a portion of the services each provides to homeless
families. “We became the core group of what we call Spokane
Families Futures (SFF),” says Julie Dhatt-Honekamp. Julie is Executive Director of Mission and Service for
Transitions,
the agency tapped as lead in the WFF application process.
Julie Dhatt-HoneKamp, Executive Director
Mission and Service Transitions
“There’s a great spirit of collaboration in this town,” Julie says.
She counts seven partners in this effort, which includes WFF as the
funding partner and NWHS as the Section 8 operating fund provider.
Two of the SFF partners run transitional housing programs, St.
Margaret’s and the Transitional Living Center. Two agencies, Spokane
Neighborhood Action Program and Summit View, are permanent housing
providers. Additionally, The Arc of Spokane, which provides services
to disabled individuals, contributes to SFF in a homeownership
capacity: they work with clients served by the partnership who are
working towards homeownership.
SFF won a grant from WFF in the first application round, in 2005.
“One of the things that’s so fantastic about this funding is the
10-year commitment,” says Julie. “It helps providers get off the
treadmill of having to be constantly applying for funds. With the
time that’s freed up, we can focus on best practices, outcome
evaluation, or other high priorities. Ten years is just unheard of
in our world. It’s not a huge amount of money but we’re grateful to
have it.”
Altogether, SFF serves 20 families every year with the WFF grant.
The funds come through Transitions, and each of the participating
agencies get a portion. “Some may use it to fund a caseworker,”
Julie says, “some use it to provide parenting services or vocational
counseling.” The one commonality is that all families have a case
management plan. “Families work with their case manager to develop a
plan based on their goals. Their services are customized to their
needs.”
“Spokane Family Futures is about wrapping services around these
families,” Julie sums up. “Housing is key, but what these families
need also are services that address parenting, job training,
substance abuse, mental health—and that’s what finally stabilizes
that family. For the kids, too: not only to prevent further harm,
but to remedy through these services any harm that may have been
done. For us, it’s about housing and services linked together with
the goal of long-term stability.”
The Willows breaks new ground in
providing service-enriched housing for pregnant and postpartum
homeless women
WFF grant recipient
The Willows, in unincorporated King
County, is a dream transitional housing project. Launched in April
2005, The Willows helps a homeless population that many family
housing programs have found too tough to take on. The 15 units of
service-enriched housing owned and run by Seattle’s Community
Psychiatric Clinic (CPC) provide support and specialized
treatment for homeless mothers who are either pregnant or up to six
months postpartum. These mothers also have both persistent mental
illnesses and drug or alcohol addictions.
Mike Nielsen, Residential Services Director at CPC, is
delighted with how The Willows has come together, and how they’re
already starting to see families graduate from the program into more
independence and greater stability. The Willows is the product of
multiple service providers, a host of funders who have provided
capital, services and operating dollar support for this brand-new
facility—and enormous vision. A portion of The Willows’ original
capital and services budget came from the Sound Families Initiative.
Michael Nielsen, Residential Services Director
Community Psychiatric Clinic
The Willows began as a collaboration between CPC and the
Parent-Child Assistance Program (PCAP), a project developed by
Dr. Therese Grant, an epidemiologist with University of Washington
Department of Psychiatry. PCAP is a both a research project and a
direct service program that works with high-risk homeless women for
three years. PCAP projects, says Mike, have been highly
successful—they’re located all over the state, and are now being
replicated nationally. One of biggest PCAP’s challenges has been
securing homes for the women in the program.
“We knew how to do all three,” Mike says, referring to CPC’s
expertise in housing, mental health treatment and support services,
and substance abuse treatment. Mike and his Willows partners,
including PCAP, worked for over a year on project and program design
to “make this a one-stop shop for women and their kids—to wrap as
rich an array of services around the project as we possibly could.”
At The Willows, substance abuse and mental health treatment are just
the beginning. PCAP has staff on site. A nurse from the Public
Health department addresses pre- and post-natal health concerns.
Staff from the Parent Trust for Washington Children work with moms
to help them build their parenting skills. Child and family
specialists on staff work with resident children who have emotional
difficulties or have experienced abuse. Many of the children have
had fetal exposure to alcohol and drugs. “The kids we’re working
with are all very much at risk,” Mike says. Part of The Willows’
goal is family reunification. Many of the residents have been
involved with the courts and CPS, and have had children removed from
their custody.
In speaking with Mike, it’s clear that The Willows has truly been a
labor of love for many of its partners. “Sound Families has been
great, but we still had a service dollar gap. The WFF was just a
godsend,” he reflects. “We applied in the first round and got it—we
were overjoyed. I can’t say enough about what that grant award has
meant to us, including on the credibility side with other funders.
When WFF came along, we had a big hole in our service budget, and we
still haven’t completely closed that gap. But we think this project
is important enough that we’re continuing to search for other
funding.”
NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE
About Us
The Washington State Housing Finance Commission is a self-supporting
agency that provides below-market financing to buy, build or
preserve affordable housing and nonprofit capital facilities. The
Commission builds partnerships with the private sector to raise
capital needed to further these social and economic objectives at no
cost to the taxpayers of Washington State. For more
information about the Commission and its work, visit
www.wshfc.org or call
206-464-7139 or 1-800-767-HOME (4663) toll free in Washington State.
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