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In this issue of My View I review the 2008 Joint
Agenda on Housing and Homelessness through the eyes of three
housing advocates and the Vice-Chair of the House Housing
Committee. I wanted to review the agenda because the low and
moderate income citizens of Washington still face several
escalating challenges to secure a decent, affordable home,
whether they want to buy or rent. These challenges - and a
desire to change the paradigm in the Legislature around
affordable housing - led advocates to develop the 2008 Joint
Agenda. By presenting this discussion, I hope to promote a
productive conversation in the upcoming legislative session.
   
Why a New Agenda Now?
Smart Investments
Working to Change the Tide
Can We Afford It?
The 2008 Agenda
Why a New Agenda Now?
The 2008 Joint Agenda was put forward in mid-October by a
broad coalition of housing, homelessness, homeownership, and
human services advocates and, says Ben Gitenstein, Executive
Director of the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance (WLIHA),
“It’s our way of saying, this is the vision.”
Despite the huge efforts made statewide on the 10 Year Plan to
End Homelessness over the past several years, state homelessness
figures rose in 2007 from 2006. One estimate tells us that close
to 4,700 families with children are homeless in Washington
State. Median home prices are out of reach for families with
median incomes. Affordable rentals in many communities are
reaching near-zero vacancy rates. Our freeways are clogged with
commuters who can’t afford to live near their work place. The
nation’s sub-prime mortgage crisis is wreaking havoc in the
mortgage markets. The list, unfortunately, goes on.
Ben has led efforts in building a consensus for the 2008
Joint Agenda, which provides a road map of suggested funding
allocations and legislative reforms, including both short- and
long-term solutions. “We realized that we needed to build a
multi-year agenda,” Ben says, “something big and audacious and
visionary that we could take to Olympia and say ‘this is what we
think needs to be done.’”
Here are several of the policy and funding requests the agenda
puts forward (a more extensive summary is included below):
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Additional resource allocations to the Housing Trust Fund
(HTF); renewing the Washington Families Fund (WFF); and
increasing the budget for the state’s Transitional Housing
Operating and Rent (THOR) program.
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Tax exemptions to increase housing production, strategic
investments to spur affordable housing near jobs, and
preserve critically needed housing.
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Suggestions for funding housing and support services for
vulnerable populations, including Department of Corrections
re-entry programs, community-based supportive housing for
people with mental illness, and affordable housing for youth
aging out of the state’s foster care system.
Efforts to change the dynamic
Ben, along with many other affordable housing and homelessness
advocates, began working on the 2008 Joint Agenda earlier
this year. One of their goals is to spur changes to the
law-making dynamic in Olympia. “For a long time,” Ben says,
“we’ve had very strong leadership support in House, particularly
from Speaker Frank Chopp.” Now advocates are looking to inspire
a similar commitment and leadership on the Senate side, as well
as support for significant funding for housing and related
support services from the Governor’s office. As such, the
2008 Joint Agenda is addressed to all three branches of
state government.
“During the last legislative session,” Ben points out, “Governor
Gregoire came out with the largest recommendation ever for the
Housing Trust Fund (HTF): $140 million. The House matched it.
And then the Senate came out with a smaller, $100 million
recommendation, which was eventually negotiated to $130 million.
We left that session saying ‘we have to change this dynamic—we
have to do something differently.’”
Key to this, for the agenda’s constituencies, has been building
new relationships in the Washington State Senate, and continuing
to foster those built in the House.
As Ben describes it, this summer just happened to be a time when
housing challenges were reaching a new level of public
consciousness. Spokane was in the news for losing many
affordable rental units downtown to commercial development and
other uses. Condo conversions in the Puget Sound area were
getting a lot of press, as was the rise of the subprime lending
crisis. In addition, he says, the growing challenge of people
being released from our prisons into homelessness “really
galvanizes several senators.” And homelessness is beginning to
take center stage as a concern for communities.
“People from all across our constituencies” requested meetings
over the summer with their Senate and House representatives, Ben
says. “On the relationship side, we’ve already seen tremendous
success.” Speaker Frank Chopp and Senate Majority Leader Lisa
Brown have responded by establishing a team of legislators in
the House and the Senate who will serve as “housing champions,”
he reports. These champions have been enlisted to help move
housing-related reforms forward. Senator Brown, Ben says, is
poised to expedite critical housing issues on the Senate side:
“a priority package of housing investments and reforms that will
move quickly in the legislative session.”
A bigger tent
In addition to encouraging new relationships with the people who
make and sign the laws in Olympia, those involved in initiating
the agenda’s framework knew that an additional key to success
would be to enlarge the tent of supporters to their cause. “The
agenda’s reforms include infrastructure funding: the money the
state hands out to local governments,” Ben explains. “Many local
governments are not stepping up on affordable housing, on
building for the future. They’re also not stepping up on
transit-oriented development.” One of the ways these framers
hope to inspire change is to change the way those funds are
distributed—to encourage local governments to plan and develop
wisely.
Ben explains, “We brought together a coalition that included the
Cascade Land Conservancy, Futurewise, Realtors, and cities, to
look at how we could change this: How could infrastructure money
be funneled to projects or local governments that are doing
smart things, that are building transit-oriented development,
and use that as a lever to drive a different kind of practice at
the local level?
“The tent we represent has grown a lot. This has been an
interesting process; we recognize that one of the prices of
success is a loss of control. As housing advocates, we have been
very successful for an issue area that hasn’t been the
centerpiece of the agenda in Olympia. Now we’re trying to move
this front and center, which brings new opportunities and
regulatory reforms we’ve wanted for a long time.”
The magnitude of the problem
“The 2008 Joint Agenda has brought the size and the
magnitude of this problem—and deserves high attention from
Olympia,” says Governor Mike Lowry.
“On anyone’s agenda, the availability of decent, affordable
housing here in Washington ought to be in the top three,” Mike
says. “When you take a look at the real needs that people are
facing, as well as the important relationship of these to our
overall well-being and overall economy, these things all go
together: Education, transportation, and affordable housing.”
Mike obviously knows how things get accomplished in Olympia, but
he’s also become an old hand at helping get affordable housing
built for our citizens, one precious home at a time. Since he
left the governorship, one of his many significant contributions
to the people of our state has been founding and serving as
executive director of the Washington Agricultural Family
Assistance (WAFA) program, a homeownership program for our
state’s agricultural workers. Since its launch about five years
ago, WAFA has built 18 homes in Ephrata and Royal City. Their
biggest undertaking yet, in Quincy, will break ground in a
couple of months: 16 to 24 houses will be built for agricultural
workers to purchase and own.
“The affordability effect has definitely grown in the last
couple of years,” Mike says. He points to Spokane’s recent
struggle with housing those who lost their homes to downtown
redevelopment. “Spokane is dealing with a near-zero vacancy
rate, both the availability of affordable housing and then what
that does to prices. That is one important example. It shows how
hard things are hitting there.”
But as he points out, the crisis is not just in Washington
State’s cities. “What are WAFA’s challenges?” he poses. “Lot
prices are going up—even in Quincy, Washington. We work very
hard to get our prices down—real hard! But for a
developed lot, the prices are now double what they were when we
built our first houses in 2002. And this is getting the best
price we can get.”
Mike describes how last February, when he was down in Olympia
for housing and homelessness advocacy day, he joined with others
who gave speeches in front of the Capitol. For Mike, the most
moving talk came from Neil McClanahan, undersheriff from the
Thurston County Sheriff's Office. McClanahan told the assembled
crowd, “we ought to be calling this a school kids’ issue—there
are 600 kids who are homeless who are trying to go to school in
Thurston County.”
“The numbers make us numb,” Mike says. “We say things and we
don’t really ask, What is it we just said here? You don’t have
to look very far to find a dire and totally unacceptable
situation that needs to be addressed.”
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Smart Investments
Mike points to how critical HTF funding has been for the
families who have purchased the homes WAFA has built. “There are
18 families now living in their homes from our program. We had a
$300,000 HTF grant for downpayment assistance. That assistance
is critical. The families have got their first mortgage and
they’re homebuyers.” These homes were also able to tap into
construction loans from the Housing Finance Commission and the
HTF. Both of these have already been paid back - on time, Mike
stresses. WAFA’s homes in Quincy will receive similar funding
support through an HTF downpayment grant plus construction
financing.
Former Washington State Governor MIKE LOWRY (left) is
the founder and executive director of the Washington
Agricultural Family Assistance (WAFA) program
Over the years, Mike, who grew up on a wheat farm in St. John in
eastern Washington, has developed a great appreciation for the
vital work that people in agriculture contribute in our state.
“Everyone who’s involved in the agricultural community here, in
central and eastern Washington, knows that having a stable
workforce is critical. In the competition worldwide, the
stability of the workforce is probably the most important factor
in our ranchers and farmers’ being able to survive and make an
economic go of it. There is definite community support for our
homeownership program. Of course there’s great value to the
community in homeownership: people are a stable part of the
community, they’re paying taxes, their kids are in the schools:
it all brings a tremendous value.
“I’m hoping that this coming legislative session, and it’s an
investment that would give great return, for a $100 million
capital infusion into the HTF. The HTF is an investment we get a
great return on. One of the things this broad coalition points
out is that we get five-and-a-half dollars back for every dollar
invested through the HTF.”
Mike brings up the state’s current reserves. “It’s very
important to have a good reserve. Of course the economics are
going to be changing, but it is also good economics and good
business that smart investments are made with the amount that is
above that sound reserve. It’s a smart move to invest them in
programs that will be saving us money. And the HTF saves us
money. We get a great return, but even more important than that,
it’s critical to our overall well-being as a state.”
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Working to Change the Tide
Since 1997, Nola Renz has been executive director of Helping
Hand House (HHH), a nonprofit provider of emergency and
transitional housing and homeless prevention services in Pierce
County, in south Puget Sound. For the past two years, she has
also served as board president of the Washington State Coalition
for the Homeless (WSCH)—and was recently elected to another
two-year term in this role. Since last spring, she’s
collaborated with Ben and others on the 2008 Joint Agenda.
Clearly, her knowledge of the scope of homelessness in our
state, as well as her efforts to respond to homelessness both
statewide and in those communities that HHH serves, have given
her a nuanced perspective on what the issues are, and what will
be required to solve them.
I asked Nola for her thoughts about the 2008 Joint Agenda’s
goals of reaching out to various constituencies, to make them
part of the solution. “It makes so much sense,” she says, “if
we’re building on this agenda in an ongoing way.” She gave the
example of meeting with one of her legislators about the
Washington Families Fund (WFF): “It really helps if someone is
engaged—and you can continue to work with them over a long
period of time.” On the Senate side, she adds, “we’re definitely
trying to make some inroads.”
Nola emphasizes how difficult it has been to get the general
public to engage with homelessness issues. “The Coalition is
trying to beef up our publicity. Marketing may sound odd,
but we realize that in general, people just don’t think about
the issue. We’re trying to find ways of getting it before
people, so that they’ll want to do something about it, to help
solve the problem, to support legislation, and help change the
tide. There’s no reason, in this incredible country, to have
homelessness.”
At an open house celebrating the homes built in Royal
City by the Washington Agricultural Family Assistance (WAFA)
program are, left to right, Congressman Doc Hastings, who
serves central Washington’s 4th District, John Poling,
executive director of the Housing Authority of Grant County,
and WAFA founder Mike Lowry.
As with Governor Lowry’s WAFA, HHH’s innovative programs and its
successes with the people it serves have benefited from state
resource allocations that are a cornerstone of the 2008 Joint
Agenda’s long-range planning policies. For example, the WFF,
which has been critical in providing services to help end family
homelessness, will see its initial $6 million investment from
Washington State fully committed this fiscal year. The beauty of
WFF is how it has leveraged that $6 million—private foundations
and other funders have fully matched that amount to help
homeless families. The 2008 Joint Agenda asks for a
renewal of funding for WFF of $8 million.
By early next year, HHH will be overseeing a total of 66 units
of supportive housing for formerly homeless families. Eight of
these homes, in rural Pierce County, are part of the Rural
Bright Futures Transitional Housing Program, a partnership
between WFF and HHH. Nola’s organization provides long-term
transitional housing and wrap-around case management services to
residents of these homes.
They can’t do it alone
Those who know Nola know her as tireless and totally committed
to solving homelessness in our state. Each year, WSCH’s annual
conference in Yakima draws hundreds of supporters, who come
together to build on strategies and incorporate great ideas and
best practices. I brought up her moving speech during the 2006
conference, in which she shared her personal story of her own
experiences of homelessness as a child and single parent. “So
many times,” she relates, “our families at HHH have the same
kinds of stories. And when we start believing in them, they just
bloom. They just need people to see that they have potential and
they don’t want to be where they are. They can’t do all those
pieces alone.
NOLA RENZ, (left) executive director of Helping Hand
House, and board president of the Washington State Coalition for
the Homeless
“At HHH,” she says, “we turn away between 25 and 50 families a
month that are looking for housing. The rent and utilities
assistance we give out—we turn nine away for every family we
serve. And I know some of those people end up becoming homeless.
Serving a rural area, as hard as you try, homeless families
outside of a city are really hard to count.
If they’re homeless, they become invisible. 14,000 children in
our state last year were identified as homeless through OSPI
[Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction].”
With the 2008 Joint Agenda, the hope, Nola stresses, is
to find ways to help both individuals and families. “This is
such an incredible time to have so many people focused on this
issue with this agenda,” she concludes. “We’re all working
together on: this is what we need to do, this is why. Coming to
consensus has been very important. And then to have the support
of the legislature: It’s an exciting time, to see what the
future holds for this work.”
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Can We Afford It?
Representative Larry Springer represents several urban and rural
communities east of Seattle in King County, including his
hometown of Kirkland where he served as mayor for four years. He
brings a thoughtful and balanced perspective to his work in the
House, and has clearly done the same in assessing the agenda’s
merits. “The agenda that the coalition presented us with is an
ambitious one and I applaud them for the work,” he says. “The
topic of housing is so complex; you have to craft a package of
bills, because there are so many ramifications for people of
different income levels.”
As an example, Larry points to the 2008 Joint Agenda’s
initial take on resources for the next session, specifically, a
request for an additional $100 million allocation to the HTF. He
says he thinks they’ll be able to gather widespread support for
an increase to the HTF in the legislature. “But it’s a matter
always of whether or not the dollars are there—the competing
interests .... But I think much in this particular supplemental
budget period will depend on what our revenue forecasts look
like.”
Representative LARRY SPRINGER, (left) Vice-Chair of
the House Housing Committee
Of particular interest to Larry, since he’s the prime sponsor of
the bill, is the 2008 Joint Agenda’s request for a $10
million increase in the THOR program. Currently funded at $5
million per biennium, THOR provides transitional housing and
rent assistance to homeless families with children. “What we’re
trying to do is to add the $10 million to that program and
expand its eligibility to individuals. It clearly has a track
record that is very impressive. It demonstrates how important it
is, when you are dealing with homeless individuals, that you
can’t simply provide a roof—there need to be support services to
go with it: financial literacy, job training, mental health
services—
“Where homelessness is concerned, I have become a convert to the
concept of Housing First,” Larry says. For those unfamiliar with
the concept, the Housing First imperative is to help homeless
people secure stable, relatively permanent housing at the
outset. They are then better positioned to benefit from the
supportive services they receive. “This was new to me three
years ago, but I’m now convinced it’s probably the best model.
There’s a lot of evidence nationwide, that the cost of
homelessness to society is much greater than the cost of simply
building a house and putting somebody in it and letting them
live there for free.”
It’s clear that the kinds of costs that the 2008 Joint Agenda
presents to the state’s budget will be carefully weighed.
“In the agenda are a number of reforms,” Larry points out. “And
a number of them are not as simple as just changing regulations.
Some of them would give tax exemptions or a tax preference.
Those do have a financial impact on the state. They’re not free,
and somebody is going to pay for that.” He pointed to the listed
reform that impacts the Commission’s work, a suggested increase
in the Commission’s debt limit. “This does not have a fiscal
impact, so it’s one I think we’re going to look at very
seriously as a way of extending downpayment assistance and the
other work of the Commission in a way that doesn’t cost the
state any additional money.”
Affordable housing vs. housing affordability
Larry says he’s had several conversations with Ben about how to
incentivize communities to support smart development and create
their fair share of affordable housing. He is careful to
distinguish, though, between what he calls affordable
housing—and housing affordability.
“In housing policy, I’ve tried to make a distinction between
needing to provide more affordable housing. Most of us
know what that means. It’s housing for low-income people, for
the homeless—it’s all those things that we’ve come to understand
are necessary for the least fortunate among us.”
For Larry, the other part of the equation is the need to
increase housing affordability across the board. “Right now what
we are facing is a housing affordability crisis that is hitting
the middle class. And until we address that issue, we’re
not getting ahead of the problem. What I’ve tried to do is look
at policies and legislation that might help increase housing
affordability.” One of the ways you do that, he describes, is
increasing housing supply. But that, he admits, runs up against
all kinds of regulatory and political webs, including the Growth
Management Act.
For Larry, the bottom line in increasing housing supply is the
need for densification in urban centers. “We are not going to
increase housing affordability in any way by continuing to build
single-family houses. You’re tinkering at the edge and kidding
yourself if you think you’re going to get there,” he says. “The
problem of course, if you go to a city like mine, and you say to
the City and its residents: ‘we need to increase affordability
so your kids can have a house to live in, so we’re going to make
that condo complex next to you six stories instead of four.’ And
they go ballistic. So that’s the political problem.”
One of the approaches Larry and his House colleagues have
discussed is revising the way a city’s fair share of housing is
calculated. “It should track job growth more closely than it
does - because housing follows jobs. So to the degree to
which cities meet those goals, they should go to the front of
the class for the goodie bag. Which could be the Public Works
Trust Fund, or infrastructure financing—it could be any number
of carrots out there. Those that don’t ... we don’t want to beat
them up and make them go to the dunce corner, but they go to
bottom of the list.”
Balancing interests
“Our job as the Housing Committee,” Larry emphasizes, “is to vet
these bills, listen to the stakeholders giving us the yea and
nay on both sides, and make a decision as to whether or not we
think a bill is worthy of going to the floor for a vote.” In a
short session like the one ahead, which is not a budget year,
fewer bills will make it because there simply isn’t enough time.
“One of the big struggles that we always have, even within the
committee itself, will be the struggle between doing something
for one sector of the housing market, and trying to ensure that
it doesn’t come at the expense of another.”
A classic example, Larry points out, is the current debate over
condo conversions. A request for increased relocation assistance
for tenants displaced by these conversions is included in the
2008 Joint Agenda. The difficulty, as Larry sees it, is in
balancing competing interests: between people who may be losing
their only chance at an affordable rental home, and people who
might be missing out on an opportunity to buy an affordable
first home through a rental converted to a condo. “That
particular issue I think is going to be back in spades this
session. I’m hoping the advocates on both sides will be willing
to find compromise ground there.”
Most everyone would agree, Larry affirms, that we don’t want a
person of limited means to be out on the street. “It’s often
said our problem in Olympia is not the problem, it’s the
solution. The question is - how do we do that in the fairest way
possible? And in a way that’s sustainable, so that we won’t be
fighting that battle again next year?”
The 2008 Joint Agenda’s objective, in working to create a
consensus, has been to highlight the critical challenges facing
affordable housing in Washington State, and set out a
far-seeing, long-term approach to solving them—to win the “war”
by staying focused on the big picture. An agenda this ambitious
will need the support and leadership not only of our elected
representatives, but of people from all walks of life—our
state’s citizens. We need to continue to foster this dialogue
among all our stakeholders.
Ben puts it this way: “We see this as a multi-year effort, as
the first year of a new way to approach housing and
homelessness. Business as usual is simply not enough. Much more
is required. The 2008 Joint Agenda is the centerpiece,
the handle for that conversation.”
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