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After months of relentless and strategic advocacy – we’ve done it. Together, we’ve won new state investments in safe, healthy and affordable homes. We’ve secured funding for the services that prevent and end homelessness. We’ve taken Washington further in eliminating barriers to housing – with the opportunity planted for more progress. We’ve protected critical safety-net services from cuts and we’ve broken through on revenue and set the stage for more of it next year.
The successes this year have everything to do with you and your fellow advocates choosing to stand up and demand a new path forward. Together, housing and homelessness advocates held dozens of meetings with elected officials, made hundreds of phone calls, and sent thousands of messages. Congratulations – it worked.
We hope you are as proud as we are and that you will join with us this summer and fall as we use the interim to educate elected officials and to build even stronger champions. This is critical because we will be back next year with another ambitious agenda that will continue to move Washington closer to being a place where everyone has the opportunity to live in a safe, healthy, affordable home.
In the meantime, it is time to thank our friends and let them know we look forward to working with them next year. Please take a minute to send one last email to the elected officials in Olympia who made affordable housing and homelessness a priority.
It’s time to thank our friends! Saying thank you is important, especially when our friends have worked as hard as they have. The legislature stayed up all night on the 10th, working into the morning on the 11th to reach a budget deal. And our allies stood firm to their commitment to protect the safety net and to pass a jobs package that included the Housing Trust Fund. It was a very long, hard session and we want to make sure they know we were watching. Please take a minute to say thanks. Click here to send your message to all of our champions. |
Outcomes for the Housing Trust Fund
The session ended with $67.1 million allocated for the Housing Trust Fund. This is on top of the $50 million allocated last year. Including a $1.8 million set-aside in this year's allocation, the biennial total is $118.9 million. That is an incredible allocation that will build or preserve over 1,832 safe, healthy and affordable homes.
Low income housing was funded through two bills this year: SB 6074 and SB 5127. Total funds for creating and preserving affordable homes = $93.9 million! Here's how that breaks down:
SB 6074 -
People with developmental disabilities: $2.9 million
People with Chronic Mental Illness: $1.125 million
Housing for the Homeless: $28.944 million
Housing for Farmworkers: $6.215 million
Housing for low-income Households: $2.982 million
Housing Competitive Pool (of which $1.5 M must be used for a demonstration project that houses the homeless with low cost living quarters.) $4.530 M
SB 5127 -
Housing for Families with Children: $8.250 million
Housing for Seniors, People with Physical Disabilities: $9.666 million
Housing for People at Risk of Homelessness: $2.5 million
Set-asides in 6074 -
LIHI: $1.8 million
Weatherization in SB 6074 -
Energy Matchmakers: $10 million
WSU Community Energy Efficiency Program: $15 million
Total for the Housing Trust Fund = $67,112,000
Total for Affordable Housing (with $1.8 M set-aside) = $68,912,000
Total for Affordable Housing with Weatherization = $93,912,000
Again, thank you for your extraordinary commitment to expanding access to affordable housing and to ending homelessness. Stay tuned for opportunities throughout the interim to keep advocating. We will keep in touch –
With gratitude,
Michele
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