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The Washington State Coalition for the Homeless:
25 years of Heroic Efforts
and Significant Milestones
 
In May, at the close of their 20th annual conference, the leadership of the
Washington State Coalition for the Homeless honored their 25th anniversary year
by sponsoring a Celebration Panel of people who have a unique perspective on
their history. Eloquent and thoughtful, these 10 panelists gave us an incredible
oral recounting of the Coalition’s founding and the great strides its membership
has made since that time. This newsletter can’t possibly include all the
successes, or acknowledge all the people who have participated, but it’s an
attempt to capture the historical legacy, as told on that Celebration Panel.
         
Ending homelessness in Washington was the explicit objective when
the Washington State Coalition for the Homeless (the Coalition or WSCH) was
founded in late 1984. Twenty-five years later, this remains the Coalition’s
driving vision. It is a focused and passionate commitment that unites the
efforts of hundreds of members. However, what struck me as I sat listening to
the Celebration Panel is how much the Coalition has accomplished—and how much is
already beginning to slip from our memories.
  
The work of many heroes
The
history of the Coalition is the story of heroic efforts—and heroes. The story
begins with the initial inspiration and pioneering efforts of Martha Dilts and
Maureen Howard. Martha and Maureen are visionaries: They recognized the need and
took it upon themselves to bring together the people who would become the
Washington State Coalition for the Homeless.
 “It
was a very powerful moment. It was the first time people had come together from
across the whole state to talk about homelessness and talk about working
together.”
Martha
Dilts
Twenty-five years ago, except for growing perceptions in urban areas like
Seattle, the extent and root causes of homelessness were not well understood by
most. “This was a very different time,” Maureen points out. “People did not want
to talk about homelessness. There was very little money associated with homeless
programs, and because of enormous cuts to domestic federal programs, communities
were reeling.”
 Maureen
Howard, currently Executive Director of Habit for Humanity of
Washington State
In Seattle, the collaboration and support of public officials was making a
difference. Martha had been one of the founders of the Seattle King County
Coalition for the Homeless (SKCCH) back in 1979. SKCCH was, if not the first,
certainly one of the first coalitions of its kind in the country, and still has
a very active membership. “But our work was centered around the Seattle area,”
Martha notes. “At the same time, there were service providers all around the
state working with their local people on homelessness. We might have known each
other slightly but we weren’t really working together.”
The National Coalition for the Homeless’ Chicago conference in October 1983
was seminal in setting the stage for the Coalition. At that time, Martha was
executive director of Seattle Emergency Housing Service, which provided housing
for families; Maureen was executive director of Martin Luther King Ecumenical
Center, a community-based organization in Tacoma’s Hilltop area where she had
started a number of programs for homeless people. Both Maureen and Martha were
at the Chicago conference; Maureen recalls meeting a number of homeless
advocates from Washington State for the first time, most of them from Seattle.
As Maureen tells it, there was more than a little irony to this: She had to
travel all the way to Chicago to meet these people from her home state. No
statewide forum existed to collaborate on homeless issues. When they returned
home, “that’s when we started talking about developing a state coalition,” she
says.
The first statewide conference: Preparing for launch
What’s the best way to bring like-minded people together? Hold a conference.
But, as Maureen observes, much of the technology used today to connect people
wasn’t around in 1984. “These were the days before the Internet, cell phones,
email, Twitter, and tweets,” she observes. “This gives some perspective about
the work it took to pull together the first statewide conference on homelessness
in our state.”
Led by Martha and Maureen, many people contributed to making this conference
a success, including a planning committee of more than 20 homeless advocates.
“We really worked hard,” Martha recalls. “We saw the conference as part of an
organizing effort to create the state coalition. So we reached out across the
state—we got 60 endorsing agencies, including community action councils,
nonprofit organizations, shelters, churches. We wanted it to be statewide right
from the beginning.” Entitled “Homelessness in Washington State: A Conference
for Shelter Providers, Church Members, and Other Concerned People,” it was held
in Seattle on October 12 and 13, 1984.
288 people attended the conference from all over the state. Martha, who has
recently retired after decades of public service, has somehow managed to dig up
a printed program. She reminded me that I had served on a panel that discussed
working with Washington State agencies—and indeed, it’s there in black and
white. Seattle Mayor Charles Royer was in attendance, as was then-U.S.
Congressman Mike Lowry; they both spoke during the conference’s opening session.
Mike, in fact, had provided the seed money to bring the keynote speaker from
Washington, D.C.: Carol Fennelly from the Community for Creative Non-Violence,
who spoke on “The Politics of Homelessness.”
All along, the idea was to use this event to build relationships and quilt
together an organization that could provide a statewide unifying voice in
working to end homelessness. The last act of the conference was to bring the
Coalition into existence. “We put the proposal to the plenary group about
organizing WSCH,” says Martha. “It was a very powerful moment. It was the first
time people had come together from across the whole state to talk about
homelessness and talk about working together.”
An equal voice for every county in ending homelessness
It was a natural fit for Maureen and Martha to take on the leadership of this
new organization. They were elected as co-presidents of the Coalition (two years
later, in 1986, Martha shifted to the role of vice president; they held these
respective roles until 1992). Both shared very clear ideas about how to
structure the Coalition to enable it to be truly representative of Washington
State.
“We wanted to be a statewide coalition of local coalitions,” explains
Maureen. “Local communities could set up these coalitions in ways that made
sense for them.” The communities themselves would select someone who would
represent them on the state Coalition board. The intent was to have a structure
that would always be in touch with key concerns and issues in every part of the
state. “This also gave us frontline experience on our board. And it gave us a
statewide coalition that truly was the face of our state. Whether you came from
King County or Walla Walla County, you had a place at the table as an equal.”
Adds Martha, “Unlike what happened in some other states where the dominant
city would step forward and typically take the dominant amount of funds that
were allocated, we tried right from the beginning to be very inclusive. I think
that’s the real strength of the Coalition.” In going after state funding, they
knew it was important that homelessness was seen as not just a Puget Sound or
Seattle issue. Martha gives the example of the Coalition’s first major push for
state funding, in the spring of 1985, to establish the Emergency Shelter
Assistance Program (ESAP). “We had people from all over the state coming to
Olympia to testify. There was great buy-in right from the beginning.”
Equally important as the organization’s representation and structure was the
philosophy it espoused. “We did not create the Coalition to make homelessness
more respectable, more manageable or even to ensure as much safety and decency
for homeless people in our shelters and programs as possible—although we were
absolutely committed to principles of respect, decency, and safety,” says
Maureen. “We created the Coalition to bring an end to homelessness.
“We understood ending homelessness was not rocket science—it was a matter of
political will and money. We made homelessness a housing issue. We knew income
was the structural issue but we thought we had a better chance at gaining
support if we focused on housing. Housing was so taken for granted and so
clear.”
The mothers of ESAP
ESAP was the first major initiative of the brand-new Coalition. The creation
of ESAP, which provides funding for emergency shelters statewide, was a
tremendous success on a number of fronts: The Washington State Legislature
ultimately appropriated $1.95 million in funding to create this program in 1985.
This effort gave the Coalition’s member organizations their first major
opportunity to work together collaboratively to create a unique statewide
distribution system. It drew attention to the massive challenge of homelessness
in communities all over the state. And it created an effective model for future
legislative initiatives.
Maureen calls the core group of hard-working advocates and program-architects
the ‘Mothers of ESAP.’ These included Maureen, Martha, Corine Knudsen (who would
later serve as executive director of the Coalition from 2005-2007), and Beth
Palmer. State staff included Kathy Kreidler and Claire Hopkins with the
Department of Community Trade and Economic Development (now the Department of
Commerce). Together, they hammered out the program. “It was a long summer with
amazing results,” Maureen says. “I never imagined we would create this
incredible system to fund shelters and services and specialized housing
programs.”
The funding ultimately came into being as a state budget line item. Senator
George Fleming had initially sponsored ESAP as a bill. Ron Sims, who is now
Deputy Secretary at HUD, was Fleming’s legislative aide back in 1985; despite
their efforts and strong support, the bill did not make it through to a vote.
Instead, Senator Lorraine Wojahn of Tacoma added the money as a line item in the
state budget.
“We had this great opportunity to shape this money,” says Maureen. The
Coalition’s newly minted board had set out key principles to follow. Because
homelessness was a statewide problem, it was imperative that the funding
formulas reflect that: “It wasn’t about who has the best grant writer, it was
all about getting the funding out fairly.” That meant calculating distributions,
arriving at minimum payments to each county, and defining reasonable reporting
protocols.
The goal of ESAP, Maureen emphasizes, was not to directly promote the
creation of homeless shelters. “We said, ‘How can we keep homelessness from
happening?’ I used to advise communities to look for ways to prevent
homelessness, to look at ways to meet emergency needs without having to create
shelters. And so when we designed ESAP, these were the kinds of things we talked
through. We would say, ‘OK, if a small community has an opportunity to rent a
room for a week in a motel, will that work?’ That often made more sense than
building a building unless you absolutely had to. But sometimes you don’t have
the housing stock—or you need it for safety. So many survivors of domestic
violence need a safe place. The point was, ‘How do we keep people safe? How do
we keep people housed? How do we help them become permanently housed and remain
permanently housed?’”
A collaborative model
ESAP’s designers created a funding formula that would be distributed directly
to county service provider committees. Recalls Martha, “this was also another
way for us to promote coalition-building. People needed to come to the table
together, to talk about the funding and develop the relationships and develop
the plans for their county. It was very intentional.”
In other words, it was the local providers that made the decisions. At that
time, Maureen points out, many counties weren’t attuned to homelessness, but the
shelters were. “And in each county, every shelter that agreed to follow the
principles we’d set out was an eligible recipient of ESAP funding. The shelter
providers needed to agree among themselves how to distribute their allocation.”
By working together, the pie got bigger, as Martha points out. “That was
always the goal. Instead of just focusing on dividing up the pie, whether by
populations or location, we wanted to increase it, to move everything along
together. That was always the vision—both to end homelessness and to do it
collaboratively.” This strategy, she explains, was then extended to all of the
Coalition’s initiatives: “Always statewide, always inclusive.” Just as an
example, the Coalition succeeded in getting the ESAP allocation increased by
almost twenty percent two years later, and by 1989, it had doubled to $5.2
million for the 1989-1991 biennium.
Today, ESAP helps support a network of more than 170 community-based
emergency shelters throughout Washington. And this county-focused collaborative
model for state funding, first set in motion through the Coalition, has been
utilized in a number of significant ending-homelessness initiatives over the
past 25 years, including the Homelessness Housing and Assistance Act, which I’ll
talk about later.
The amazing WSCH conferences
The annual conferences the Coalition has sponsored since 1991 have become a
Mecca for people working in this field in our region. Says Martha, “Maureen
deserves credit for seeing that we needed to offer these conferences for service
providers—to help educate them.” Because the early leadership of the Coalition
began from the perspective of service providers, “we knew the daily needs. We
were helping people to get back on their feet and that was tremendously
important. But we also knew we wanted to systemically end the conditions that
existed so people wouldn’t become homeless.”
Maureen remembers it this way: “This is what board members asked for. It was
a testament to the people who were frontline staff, who said, ‘We want to know
how to do this right, we want to do this as well as we can.’”
By any measure, the Coalition’s conferences continue to serve its
constituencies well. As Martha says, “they’ve been wonderful, amazing
conferences.” They’re successful in providing a forum for points of view across
the entire spectrum, from policymakers to homeless people. In recent years, the
conferences have taken place in Yakima. This year, the Spokane location marked a
change in venue that was a great success; the 2011 conference will be held in
Kennewick May 11-13.
 Bob
Peeler has served on the Board of Directors of the Coalition for more
than 20 years. He is Senior Lead Family Development Coach at Spokane
Neighborhood Action Partners (SNAP).
During
the Spokane conference, Bob Peeler was tapped to reminisce about these early
gatherings on the Celebration Panel. Bob has been a board member of the
Coalition for more than 20 years, and has watched the organization, and its
conferences, evolve to meet the needs of its stakeholders. Currently senior lead
family development coach at Spokane Neighborhood Action Partners (SNAP), he has
been a strong and consistent champion for the homeless in his community and in
our state.
“What I really wanted to talk about is the energy that the conferences bring
to people,” Bob says. “You always remember your first conference,” he recalls.
“We were able to bring six staff persons with us from Spokane” to the campus of
Central Washington University in Ellensburg. “We shared college dorms, ate in
the cafeteria, and went as cheap as possible, so we could afford to enable
frontline people to attend. We were able to whine together and come up with
solutions, and get contacts. I taught ‘Case Management 101’ back then. The point
was that we all got really excited about what we were doing. We were exchanging
ideas, helping to motivate one another to get back to what we all do—which is
working with people who are at the most vulnerable point of their lives.”
Staying in the game
Bob recalls that in Spokane County, his local coalition was just getting off
the ground. “It helped to see how communities worked together, and how the state
ran their coalition compared to what we were doing here locally. I think a lot
of people returned home and started their coalitions. Back then, homelessness
was just on the verge of being recognized as an issue that involves all levels
of government—cities, counties, states—rather than just being the guys on the
corner.”
Through the first conferences, the Coalition had already established a great
working relationship with CTED (now the Department of Commerce) and was moving
forward on state plans and programs. ESAP was providing funding for homeless
counts but, as Bob points out, “we were all doing them differently.” The
conferences provided useful tutorials. “Tedd Kelleher at Commerce has been coming
for years. He got the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) in place,
and educated people about the value of counts. The Coalition, in partnership
with Commerce, was very successful in coordinating the counts to make long-term
plans to address homelessness as effective as possible. In our community, these
counts were showing us that 50% of our homeless were families with children.”
These workshops, panels and seminars just get better and better. “Early on,
we started doing ‘Tracks’—frontline, management, friends of the homeless,
legislative, faith-based—so that people could benefit from a full range of
workshops. We always offered sponsorships to help people attend; and always
organized panels of homeless folks, to share their successes and discuss where
we were dropping the ball.”
This year, 350 attendees were expected and remarkably, in a year of shrinking
budgets, more than 450 people attended. Many of the people thronging the meeting
rooms were under 35. “These are very dedicated folks,” says Bob. “The conference
is important to them. From the very beginning, it has helped keep me in the
game. I think it continues to do that for a lot of people.”
The Children’s Lawsuit
In
the entire history of the Coalition, there is probably no achievement that
carries as much emotion and passion, even today, as the 10-year effort to create
a just solution for the thousands of children suffering the consequences of
homelessness in our state. For almost 10 years during the 1990s, the Coalition
and homeless families were represented by Columbia Legal Services and the
Seattle law firm of Garvey, Schubert & Barer in the lawsuit known as the
Homeless Children’s Case. Their lead attorney was Michael Mirra, then with
Columbia and now executive director of the Tacoma Housing Authority. The
Coalition’s determination to see this lawsuit through to fruition truly reflects
the character of its mission—and the character of its membership.
For a clear and detailed history of this landmark effort, the Coalition’s
website offers a compelling history of this period, written by Margaret Maxwell,
who was executive director from 1990 to 2002. What kept this lawsuit alive over
the years was how much was at stake. This is a picture of those times and those
conditions, in Margaret’s words:
In the early 1980s, homelessness began to increase among Washington State
families with children to an extent not seen since the Great Depression. By FY
(state fiscal year) 1987, an estimated 33,000 children with their families were
homeless; nearly 20,000 of them were counted when they were turned away from
shelter for lack of space. The evidence in the case would show that, as a result
of homelessness, children suffer increased rates of acute and chronic illness,
infant mortality (death prior to age 1), mental illness, emotional disturbance,
abuse and neglect, and educational and developmental impairment. The Court would
later find that “[h]omelessness has a devastating effect on children with
significant adverse effects for growth and development.”
In 1990, the Governor's Task Force on Homelessness issued its report calling for
a coordinated and concerted state response to the growing crisis.
By FY 1991, about 67,000 children were homeless with their families. Nearly
50,000 were turned away from shelter. The Coalition and others continued to press for a state response, without
success.
In 1991, after unsuccessful negotiations, the Coalition filed its lawsuit to
determine DSHS’s [the state’s] duty to respond. The Coalition would seek renewed
settlement talks after every stage in the litigation, always without success.
[Washington State Coalition for the Homeless Advocacy for Homeless Families and
Children, 1991-1999,
http://homeless.ehclients.com/images/uploads/Litigation.pdf]]
A legal foothold
Hearing
the lawsuit’s story told personally by Michael Mirra, Phoebe Nelson, and Corky
Senecal gives you a very real sense of what a strenuous odyssey this was for the
direct participants, along with the support of hundreds of others. Over the
decade of the 1990s, Phoebe took over the role of the Coalition’s board
president from Maureen, and Corky eventually succeeded Phoebe.
 Michael
Mirra is Executive Director of Tacoma Housing Authority.
The litigation arose primarily under a state law that dated from the 1960s.
This law directed the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) to devise
and implement ‘a coordinated and comprehensive plan for the protection and care
of homeless children.’ “The main purpose of the lawsuit,” Michael elaborates,
“was to determine what that meant, and whether the state’s efforts under that
meaning were adequate.” The lawsuit posed those questions on behalf of the
Coalition, four homeless families with children, and a plaintiff class of all
homeless families with children in Washington State.
The lawsuit also represented a subgroup comprised of families who needed
housing to prevent or shorten their children’s foster care placements. “We
didn’t fully appreciate this issue until state child welfare workers came to us
and grabbed us by the ears, and talked at us long enough to help us understand
the relationship between family homelessness and foster care placements,”
Michael says.
The Coalition and the plaintiff families filed the lawsuit in 1991 in King
County Superior Court. Judge Ann Schindler presided from start to finish. In
1994, Judge Schindler issued important rulings in advance of trial. On the
foster care issues, she ruled that the dependency courts had authority to direct
the state to provide housing assistance when homelessness was a primary factor
in causing or prolonging a placement.
On the general homelessness issues, she ruled that state law required DSHS to
devise and implement “a coordinated and comprehensive plan” for the protection
and care of homeless families with children, and that this requirement was
enforceable. She also ruled that a trial was necessary to determine if DSHS had
fulfilled this duty. The case came to trial in September 1994.
The testimony in the case illustrated the wealth of expertise and experience
marshaled by the Coalition. Among those testifying for the plaintiffs were
Martha Dilts; Kurt Creager, then executive director of the Vancouver Housing
Authority; Dr. Richard Kovar, a physician with Country Doctor Community Health
Center in Seattle; Dr. Marybeth Shinn, a social scientist then at New York
University and a leading expert on family homelessness; and Barbara Sard, a
nationally prominent expert on public assistance programs.
The organizations, represented by the law firm of K&L/Gates, that supported
the plaintiffs as “friends of the court,” included:
- Washington Academy of Family Physicians
- American Academy of Pediatrics
- Washington Psychological Association
- The Children’s Alliance
- Washington Association of Churches
- Church Council of Greater Seattle
- Northwest Women’s Law Center
- YouthCare
In March 1995, Judge Schindler ruled in favor of the Coalition and the
families. Summarizing the testimony about the effects homelessness has on
children, she found these effects to be “devastating.” Relying on the expert
witnesses, she found that an adequate plan to address homelessness among
Washington State families must provide the following elements:
- Preventive assistance, which is less expensive and more humane
- Shelter to get children out of the cars and off the streets
- Assistance to get children out of the shelters
- A process for its own monitoring and evaluation
Perhaps most importantly, Michael points out, the court ruled that the
state’s plan must meet professional standards in both its planning and its
substantive content. Judge Schindler found that the state’s plan did not meet
these standards. She gave the state six months to submit a proposed plan for the
court’s review.
DSHS appealed the ruling to the Court of Appeals. At the plaintiffs’ request,
and recognizing the importance of the issue, the Washington State Supreme Court
agreed to take the case directly. The Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s
ruling in 1997, issuing its opinion on Christmas Eve.
Enormous devotion to the cause
 Phoebe
Nelson, a board member of the Coalition for more than two decades, is
currently Executive Director of the Wenatchee Women’s Resource Center.
Lawsuits take a tremendous toll on participants. The Coalition’s role as the
state’s premier advocate for the homeless was essential in terms of members’
range of expertise and access to information. “As importantly,” says Michael,
“it gave stability to the lawsuit over nine years of litigation in ways that the
individual family plaintiffs would never be able to provide. It helped to
sustain those families, find them housing, and screen them from the burdens of
litigation. Critically, the Coalition had the statewide support and
sophistication to turn a legal victory into a political one.”
 Corky
Senecal retired from her role as
Housing Director at NeighborImpact in Central Oregon. During the years of the
Children’s Lawsuit, she was Housing Director at Kitsap Community Resources.
Maureen
Howard was president of the Coalition when the lawsuit began, but as president
of the Coalition from 1994 through 1998, Phoebe Nelson carried a huge weight in
moving the lawsuit forward. In the annals of the Coalition, her dedication is
legendary: As director of the Yakima County Coalition for the Homeless, over the
course of the lawsuit and settlement, Phoebe would drive over the mountains from
Yakima to Seattle and Olympia and then drive back home – countless times.
Corky
Senecal took up the presidency following Phoebe. Throughout this time, Margaret
Maxwell served as the Coalition’s Executive Director. “Representing them was one
of highlights of my legal career,” says Michael.
Corky
has a strong recollection of the moment when the Supreme Court issued its
opinion. “As soon as we got the word, Michael told us, ‘We can celebrate for
just a few minutes. Now the real work has to begin.’”
The Supreme Court decision came just a few weeks before the 1998 Legislative
Session. DSHS’s response was to draft legislation that would have repealed the
law that had formed the basis of the lawsuit. “It is important to understand
DSHS’s position,” Michael explains. At the time, Lyle Quasim was the DSHS
Secretary. “Lyle’s position was a completely understandable and honorable
response to the court’s ruling. Lyle had to account for the fact that DSHS did
not have the resources to fulfill this new obligation. And being an advocate and
head of the state’s main social services agency, he fully appreciated that
family homelessness was a serious problem that needed a serious response.”
The Homeless Children’s Plan
During the 1998 Legislative Session, the Coalition and its representatives
worked with the Governor’s office and legislative leaders “mainly to hold things
in place, and spend the interim, between the 1998 and 1999 session, to explore a
settlement,” Michael recalls. “Representative Suzette Cooke led the effort to
allow the parties time to work things out over the interim.” At that time, Rep.
Cooke was Chair of the House Children and Family Services Committee.
Everyone envisioned a settlement that would come in parts. The State wanted
the law changed to place the primary responsibility for the plan on CTED. “We
didn’t have a strong preference where the primary responsibility lay, but we
wanted DSHS to remain in the mix, because it is the primary anti-poverty agency
in the state. You can’t talk about homelessness among children without enlisting
its expertise and help,” Michael says.
Broadly, this would become the ultimate settlement: restructuring the
statutory responsibility, and appropriating additional funds. But it would not
be an easy road.
“That’s when the real momentum picked up,” Corky says. “DSHS was charged to
put together a plan for how they would serve homeless children and homeless
families with children. They submitted it to the Coalition for review before
they sent it on to the governor and the legislature. From our perspective it was
not acceptable. There was no how to or how much or how many. And so that was
when we really began the in-the-trenches work.”
The Coalition and its representatives were charged with working with DSHS to
hammer out the settlement. The Governor provided a mediator. Dave Knutson, a
staff member with the House Children and Family Services Committee, was assigned
to try to bring the two parties together. The bill was heavily negotiated, line
by line. “The meetings were typically on DSHS turf,” Corky recalls. “But we
stuck it out and had strong representation from people all around the state. We
typically had a team of about six or seven and there would be about the same
number from DSHS, and we’d just start through it, chapter and verse.” Corky
remembers these meetings as being intimidating, but “Michael would lead the
whole thing and we got through it. He was a rock.”
Once the team had negotiated a plan that was a worthy compromise, they
submitted it to Governor Locke for review. In order to successfully move it
through the legislature, Corky, recalls, “we formed a strategy team of
like-minded people and organizations, including The Children’s Home Society, the
Washington Low Income Housing Congress [now the Low Income Housing Alliance],
the Fremont Public Association [now Solid Ground] and the City of Seattle. There
were quite a few of us; we would hold our meetings in Fremont. Though not yet
Speaker, [former Solid Ground Executive Director] Frank Chopp was a State
Representative at that time, and Tony Lee [now Advocacy Director with Solid
Ground] was one of our great champions. We came up with a piece of legislation
and we also developed a strong grass roots organization. We had people from
every county in the state who were chomping at the bit to get it passed.”
Now we can celebrate
The
settlement was presented during the 1999 Legislative Session. During this
period, Seth Dawson was hired by the Coalition to be their lobbyist, a role he
holds to this day. “Seth is first-rate legislative lobbyist,” Michael says. “I
don’t think the legislative settlement could have happened without him.” There
were many contributions to this effort, including a part-time staffer made
available by Seattle’s Mayor, Paul Schell, to rally public support for this
effort.
 Seth
Dawson is Lobbyist for Washington State Coalition for the Homeless.
“We were in Olympia almost every day,” recalls Corky. “Seth was down there
working every committee, and we were getting testimony on a daily basis. We were
in legislators’ offices. I’ve worked a lot of pieces of legislation and worked a
lot of them really hard—but this one was classic. If you ever wanted to write a
textbook case on grass roots organizing ... it was just poetry in motion.”
The bill was HB 1493. “Representative Kip Tokuda was our champion,” says
Corky. “He was eloquent and passionate … I caught the end of his comments on the
House floor and then they took the vote and it passed unanimously. And then it
went to the Senate and it passed the Senate unanimously. It passed both Houses,
with not one dissenting vote. And that was just beautiful. And so then, once
again, we all said, ‘Oh, now we can celebrate!’”
There was still much more work to be done on the implementation of this bill,
but all parties had come together to create a solution. “The benefits are
obvious and the benefits still exist, in terms of the legislation, the
budgeting, appropriations, services, the families, the kids—but there was
another wonderful thing that came out of this,” says Corky, “the relationship
between DSHS and the Coalition. It moved from adversarial to being very, very
strong and supportive. We ended up serving on each other’s advisory committees;
we ended up traveling together to different statewide meetings and conferences;
we worked legislative issues together. And I think that piece tends to get lost.
How two very large, very strong entities who went at each other, literally, came
out the other side with such a strong and supportive partnership.”
At the end of the 1999 Legislative Session, $22.5 million was budgeted for
what was originally called “The Homeless Children’s Plan.” That was later
changed to “The Homeless Families’ Plan.” In addition, that session made
substantial companion increases to the Housing Trust Fund. This additional
funding has remained remarkably stable over the intervening time, supporting
existing and new programs for homeless families.
Ultimately, this is a story of so many exceptional acts of generosity and
courage. One that should not be overlooked was the contribution of Columbia
Legal Services. As Michael points out, “A legal effort of this scope and
duration requires a stable, committed, and sophisticated organization like
Columbia, which steadfastly devoted the needed resources to the case for nine
years while facing threats to its own funding and survival. It was a remarkable
example of what sustained advocacy requires and what it can accomplish.”
The Homeless Children’s Quilt
It was estimated that the $22.5 million appropriation represented less than
10% of the need. Yet, as Margaret Maxwell wrote in her history, “it would be a
significant step in the right direction to begin to assist our state’s growing
number of homeless children.”[ibid.]
 It was Margaret’s inspiration to see a quilt created that would represent the
7,500 homeless children who would be helped by this groundbreaking legislation.
Margaret is a master quilter; with the help of several churches and faith-based
organizations, she and other volunteers sought out and secured 7,500 donations
of two-inch fabric pieces—from every county in the state. Nine Puget Sound
volunteers did the design and stitching.
Rep. Tokuda made arrangements for the completed quilt to hang in the Capitol
Rotuda during the week of April 19-23, 1999 in honor of HB 1493. The quilt was
then presented to Michael Mirra at the Coalition’s annual conference as a gift
to Columbia Legal Services for the vital role they played in seeing the
Children’s Lawsuit through. The quilt, which still hangs in Columbia’s Seattle
office, was lent to the Coalition for display at the Spokane conference this
past May.
Legislative advocacy
Bringing in Seth Dawson to lobby for the Coalition’s interests in 1998 was a
huge step forward. Seth’s first job was to help see the Homeless Children’s
legislation successfully through to passage and on to implementation. During the
past decade-plus, his efforts have been critical in helping homeless issues get
the attention they deserve in our legislature.
“Every session we’ve had an agenda, of course, pursuing different policy
items and funding,” Seth says. “Probably the biggest single item has been the
funding. Governor Locke promised that if we reached agreement on the compromise
bill back in 1999, there would be $30 million allocated for addressing
homelessness in addition to that—and he followed through with that. I think
we’ve moved way beyond the Children’s Lawsuit and the court decision. I don’t
think our legislature feels a need to act on behalf of the homeless because of a
lawsuit. They feel a need to act because it’s the right thing to do.”
The Coalition has continued to pursue new funding sources in the fight to end
homelessness. “It took many years to identify a vehicle that was achievable,”
says Seth. This of course turned out to be an increase in the fees for recording
local real estate documents. In 2002, the first document recording fee of $10
per document was enacted that was targeted specifically to addressing
homelessness through new funding for homeless shelters.
The 2004 and 2005 sessions were especially notable for the Coalition. These
milestones, two of which I’ll discuss in greater length in the following pages,
were achieved:
- Washington Families Fund (WFF). In 2005, WFF was enacted by the
legislature, which had appropriated $2 million to this end in 2004. The
funding is awarded in the form of grants to local organizations that provide
service-enriched housing to help families transition out of homelessness.
- Statewide Plan to End Homelessness. Two bills were passed and signed
into law to address plans to end homelessness. SSB 5767, sponsored by
Senator Rosemary McAuliffe, called for each county to appoint a task force
to develop and implement a 10-year plan to end homelessness.
- HB 2163 (Homeless Housing and Assistance Act). Sponsored by
Representative Timm Ormsby and championed by the chair of the then-newly
formed House Housing Committee, Mark Miloscia, this bill was originally
envisioned as capable of raising close to $20 million per year to help
implement local plans to cut homelessness in half by 2015. The funding
source is an additional $10 surcharge on recorded real estate documents.
Counties and CTED (now Commerce) were required to develop 10-year plans to
address housing needs.
There have been many initiatives, and many victories over the years. The
Coalition has paid increasing attention to people with a particularly high risk
of becoming homeless—youth exiting foster care and people released from prisons
and mental health institutions are strong cases in point. The Coalition’s
relationships with other advocacy organizations have gone a long way in ensuring
that its legislative agenda gets the maximum support and exposure each session.
During the last decade, Seth and the Coalition have worked closely with many
allies, including the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance (WLIHA), to secure
and maintain adequate funding for programs like ESAP, the Washington Families
Fund (WFF), and the Housing Trust Fund (HTF).
The Washington Families Fund: Extending the successes of Sound Families to
all corners of the state
There are so many reasons why, in 2004, the Washington Families Fund was able
to swiftly take shape and garner significant support from legislators and
philanthropic partners. Chief among them is the continuing great need for
homeless families to get access to social services—such as job training and
parenting classes—to become self-sufficient and break the cycle of homelessness.
In addition to this, the Fund presented an incredible opportunity for private
philanthropy and the public sector to join forces in committing funding. But it
also didn’t hurt to have so many strong voices from the Coalition making the
case and saying: “We need this.”
 “Undeniably,
the Washington Families Fund wouldn’t be here without the Coalition’s grass
roots support in coming together with the housing authorities and the Washington
Low Income Housing Alliance. That was the real power of it.”
Alice
Shobe is Deputy Director of Building Changes.
The
August 2006 issue of My View was devoted to telling the story of the Fund’s
beginnings—of extending the benefits of the Gates Foundation’s Sound Families
program into all parts of Washington State. That history can be accessed here:
http://www.wshfc.org/Newsletter/2006.08.index.htm. What is mentioned but not
emphasized in that history is the critical role the Coalition played in helping
transform the Fund from a compelling idea to a persuasive legislative strategy.
That is the story that Alice Shobe, formerly director of Sound Families and now
deputy director of Building Changes, told on the Celebration Panel last May.
As Alice points out, about halfway through the Sound Families program, the
first evaluation results began to emerge, and they were very positive. Through
pairing housing with services for homeless families, incomes were rising,
children’s lives were being stabilized—all sorts of benefits were revealed, and
they were far-reaching. “ The Gates Foundation had until that point been the
sole funder of Sound Families” says Alice, “but there was an understanding that
the state would ultimately need to play a bigger role in assuring that housing
and services could be combined over the long term.”
When the decision was made that a legislative approach was the best strategy,
that’s when the Coalition truly stepped up to the plate. Sound Families had
subcontracted with the City of Seattle Office of Housing to help administer the
program. And Maureen Kostyack, Seattle Office of Housing’s Housing Program and
Development Manager, was asked to work with statewide advocacy organizations on
advancing the proposal to the legislature. Maureen reached out to Corky Senecal,
who, in addition to serving as President of the Coalition, was Legislative Chair
for many years.
“Corky helped to bring together the service providers from around the state
to shape what would become the Washington Families Fund, and how it should be
pitched to the legislature,” Alice says. “Under Corky’s leadership, the
Washington Families Fund became a lead agenda item for the Coalition in 2004.”
What Alice and Corky both emphasize is how important it was that the
successes seen in Sound Families, which had been limited to King, Pierce, and
Snohomish Counties, be made available more extensively in Washington State.
“Even though I worked and lived in the I-5 corridor [of Western Washington] I
worked hard for the Coalition to be the voice of the whole state,” says Corky.
Adds Alice, “There was a hunger and an interest in having these kinds of
resources statewide. And that’s just been a huge part of the Washington Families
Fund—reaching all corners of the state.”
Repeat successes
In 2004, the state approved what was provisionally called the Homeless
Families Services Fund. “At that point it didn’t even have a name,” Alice
laughs. “It was widely assumed that a proposal would go forward but would take
years to get through the legislature. And to everyone’s surprise, $2 million was
allocated by the legislature in that first-year request as a budget
authorization.”
The Coalition’s contribution, Alice says, “was that they took this great idea
and then helped expand the partnership to work closely with the Washington Low
Income Housing Alliance and the state housing authorities. This effort, and the
great support and leadership shown by Rep. Ruth Kagi, are truly what got the
Washington Families Fund through that first legislative round. Undeniably, the
Fund wouldn’t be here without the Coalition’s grass roots support in coming
together with the housing authorities and the Alliance. That was the real power
of it.”
The Coalition continues to prioritize funding for the Washington Families
Fund on its annual legislative agenda. And the Fund continues to prove that it
can attract matching funding from the private sector. To date, it has drawn $13
million in funding from the State of Washington and more than $14 million in
matching grants from 23 private philanthropic partners. Building Changes, the
organization that leads the Washington Families Fund, recently published a
five-year report on the successes it has brought in 15 counties throughout
Washington: http://www.buildingchanges.org/results/data-and-evaluation. More
than 1,000 families have been supported in transitioning from homelessness since
2004.
The Coalition has helped the Fund garner four allocations from the state
legislature by making it a legislative priority. “What we’re most proud of,”
says Alice, “is the recent $1 million dollar allocation during this last budget
session, where so many deep cuts and some incredibly tough choices had to be
made. The $1 million was a big win for us. Being a priority for the legislature
had a lot to do with the Fund’s ability to show positive outcomes and to
demonstrate ongoing support from the private sector.”
The Homeless Housing and Assistance Act: Drawing on WSCH’s legacy
Like WFF, the Homeless Housing and Assistance Act (HHAA), passed by the
Washington State Legislature in 2005, represented an enormous victory for the
Coalition in its advocacy for the homeless. HHAA was uniquely crafted to create
a funding source for counties to have the means to create and implement 10-year
plans to end homelessness. Thanks to HHAA, local organizations involved in the
work of ending homelessness and county governments committed to creating plans
and documenting results are continuing to implement solutions that work within
their local communities.
 Lynn
Davison is Executive Director of Common Ground.
The
funding for these efforts comes from real estate document recording fees.
To date (through June 30, 2010), approximately $133 million has been raised to
fund efforts to end homelessness in Washington State; approximately $94 million
has gone directly to the counties, and an additional $39+ million has gone to
broader, state-allocated programs and initiatives. Lynn Davison, executive
director of Common Ground, spoke on the Celebration Panel about the Coalition’s
involvement in putting its strategic weight behind HHAA’s passage.
In her 13-year tenure with Common Ground, Lynn has worked with the Coalition
in a number of roles, including working in concert with the Alliance and the
Coalition in what she calls “collaborative advocacy”—working alongside the
lobbyists for these two organizations in advocating for critical legislation.
She is an astute strategist and consultant on organizational effectiveness and
community development, and has worked with the Coalition’s board over the years.
“HHAA is a wonderful example of how two advocacy organizations, the Coalition
and the Alliance, teamed to make some amazing things happen,” she says. “The
Coalition has had a wonderful history of big successes.” As with WFF, an entire
issue of My View is devoted to this legislation (http://www.wshfc.org/Newsletter/2006.06.index.htm);
My View also revisited the topic of the progress of HHAA and 10-year
plans in February 2008 (http://www.wshfc.org/Newsletter/2008.02.index.htm).
If you’re interested in learning more about this legislation and its continuing
impact on homelessness, it’s a great place to start.
Certainly one of the legacies of the Coalition has been the passage of these
ground-breaking pieces of legislation that are making a difference in ending
homelessness. But not only did they “win” legislation, they laid the groundwork
for success. Lynn points to the legacy of the Coalition’s organizational
structure, and how that structure worked to make things happen.
Think back to ‘The Mothers of ESAP’—that intentional approach made by Martha
and Maureen and ESAP’s other creators to structure funding to give counties
autonomy and to further collaboration at the local level. The beauty of that
model is how effective it is in enabling local governments and organizations,
who know their challenges and capabilities better than anyone, to take
ownership. And, as Lynn points out, to have some resources with which to work.
All of this is a mirror of the Coalition’s own internal structure, with its
board also a quilt of counties that choose their own representatives.
Envisioning the future
“The Coalition is like a big family,” Lynn observes. “The interaction among
members has been very important to them. The organization is structured in an
unusual way. It has served as a particularly strong voice in parts of the state
outside of Puget Sound with smaller populations. That has been a real plus.”
This is an extremely tough climate for nonprofit organizations, and to the
Coalition’s credit, its leadership is examining how they can best meet the
future. They believe that there continue to be opportunities and energies in
terms of advancing their mission of ending homelessness in Washington State.
Mia Wells is the current executive director of the Coalition, a role she’s
held since 2007. “We’re looking at how we can best position the Coalition to
advance our mission,” she says. “Last week, our Board of Directors met in
Wenatchee for our annual board retreat where they elected a new slate of
officers, including a new board president, Troy Christensen. Troy works for
Pierce County and is leading the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s tri-county
initiative to end family homelessness there.
“We remain committed to advancing our mission to end homelessness in
Washington State, and are looking forward to accomplishing this in new and
exciting ways.”
Getting Smarter
“Like most nonprofit organizations,” Mia says, “we’re facing challenges with
funding in the current economy. We have so many goals and aspirations for our
organization, but limited capacity. There’s so much more we’d like to do in
terms of advocacy and engaging our grass roots network, in influencing
legislation—and in supporting 10-year plans.”
 Mia
Wells is Executive Director of Washington State Coalition for the Homeless.
She brings up the point that, as with so many homeless issues, systemic
challenges continue to perpetuate the status quo. One challenge, as Maureen
Howard voiced earlier, is the structural issue of living wages. If affordable
housing remains out of reach even for many people who hold jobs, then
homelessness will never be solved without tackling this imbalance.
Another systemic issue is that of discharging people from institutions into
homelessness: “The problem is huge and complicated and involves many different
players,” says Mia. “There is one piece of legislation that we’ve been trying to
move forward that would ask the state to figure out what it would take to stop
discharging people from mental health institutions, the criminal and juvenile
justice systems, and the foster care system into homelessness.” What the
Coalition is asking for is simply what would be involved in solving this
societal problem. But in a year of austerity and hard choices, it’s a path which
many legislators are not eager to explore. “We’re trying to figure out a way to
accomplish this that doesn’t frighten people so much,” she adds.
If your goal is to end homelessness, it goes without saying that you have to
be ready for a difficult, protracted fight: There are so many barriers. And
that’s what the Coalition has been doing for the last quarter century,
attempting to eliminate those barriers, one after the next.
“The struggle continues,” says Phoebe Nelson, “but we’re learning things all
the time. And I think we’re smarter about how we do shelter—we’re smarter about
getting people into housing as quickly as we can. We’re smarter about making
sure that the services go with the person and that they’re not having to
‘graduate,’ to get into housing. As a result, we’re seeing better long-term
results.”
You could say that the Coalition has changed the course of history in our
state, in working to change attitudes towards homeless people and in ongoing
efforts to change the patterns that perpetuate homelessness.
This has truly been the work of many heroes, working in coalition: This is
their story. As Lynn Davison says, “with advocacy, it’s never a person.
Individual relationships and efforts really matter, but to make these kinds of
big changes, you have to have a broad effort and be able to work in coalition to
make it all work.”
“I take pride in the accomplishments of the Coalition,” Bob Peeler says.
“We’re volunteers who are working in our communities in so many different ways.
Our Board is represented by executive directors, frontline staff people,
managers, attorneys—but we all come back to the same thing: How can we provide
the best answers for the people who we have the chance to represent and speak
for?”
* * *
* * * *
*
The photographs of the homeless individuals featured in this issue are
part of “Faces of Homelessness,” a series of 62 black-and-white photographs
originally organized by the Coalition’s first executive director, Sylvie McGee.
Available for display free of charge, the photos were taken by 12 professional
photographers in 10 Washington State communities. For more information about
bringing this exhibition into your community, contact Washington State Coalition
for the Homeless:
info@endhomelessnesswa.org
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