News

Join us Thursday for “probably the best movie you’ll see this year”

The Gates Foundation and A24 Films (the firm who brought us last year’s Best Picture winner ‘Moonlight’) have partnered with HDC, WLIHA, and The Seattle University Project on Family Homelessness to host a special screening of ‘The Florida Project.’ Join us this Thursday, 10/19 at AMC Pacific Place for cocktails at 5, film screening at 6, and a Q&A with director Sean Baker immediately following. The event is free, but space is very limited and registration is required.  Get on the list by RSVPing today to [email protected]

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Vets, Seniors, and Human Services Levy endorsed by The Seattle Times!

“The proposal should be an easy yes vote for King County residents.” We agree! You can support the levy by phone banking, endorsing, or sharing your story here.

Other Developments…

• “If you don’t take the risk, why exist at all?” Doris Koo and the courage it takes to face an affordable housing crisis.
• TODAY- October 9th- is the deadline for King County residents to register online to vote on the November 7th general election. Remember that you don’t need a house to vote!
• The Uptown rezone was passed by Seattle City Council last Monday. The rezone adds affordable housing requirements and declares the neighborhood an arts and cultural district.

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HDC staff are in Spokane this week for the 24th annual Housing Washington Conference! If you’re in the Lilac City, too,  catch our presentation on source of income discrimination, visit us at booth 20 to take our prize wheel for a spin, and let us know what great things you’ve been up to. Can’t attend? Follow along on social media using #HousingWA2017

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The Yes on Prop 1 Campaign to Renew the Vets, Seniors, and Human Services Levy kicks off this Wednesday! Can’t attend? You can still help the campaign by telling us why you support the levy, or how it impacts your personal or professional life with this super-simple story sharing survey or you can officially endorse the campaign.

Other Developments…

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Today is the last day to secure early bird rates for our two-day Advocacy Intensive! Build your capacity for systems change work by enhancing your understanding of mobilization and organizing, housing policy and the political process, and how to engage with electeds. Save $30 by registering by midnight tonight!

Other Developments…

• Speaking of deadlines, today is also the last day for HDC members to submit an application for Leadership Development Survey Course. The seven-month course gives participants a broad overview of leadership principles and exposes participants to the varied roles of leaders in mission and value-driven organizations.

• Who’s the mayor of Seattle? As of this writing, it’s Bruce Harrell. By this evening, perhaps Tim Burgess.

• Capitol Hill Housing announced plans to build LGBTQ- affirming housing for older adults.

• Kent cracks the top-10 for highest apartment rent hikes in the country.

• The City of Redmond is considering raising impact fee rates in 2018 to keep pace with inflation.

• You can help the Yes on Prop 1 Campaign to renew the Vets, Seniors, and Human Services levy! Tell us how the levy has impacted your personal or professional life or if you are representing an organization, Click here for an endorsement form and return it to our Government Relations & Policy Director by the end of the month.

• The Seattle Housing Authority will turn an old records storage facility near Yesler Terrace into about 125 affordable homes. 

• Row houses at Yesler Terrace, the nation’s first racially-integrated housing project, will soon be replaced, but the memories and hamsters buried in the backyard remain.

• South King County and the $100,000 parking space: the cost to build parking spaces along the Sound Train line is rising

• Seattle startup (and new HDC member) Blokable‘s modular construction model is attracting the attention of some high-profile investors.

• East King County electeds and King County Council representatives talked affordable housing at a panel discussion hosted by Leadership Eastside.

• Alleged “arch-nemeses” John Fox and Roger Valdez talk to KUOW about their different notions of how to meet the demand for affordable housing in Seattle. 

• Short-term rental owners seem pretty amenable to Seattle’s proposed regulations on AirBnBs and VRBOs.

• Last week Seattle Mayoral Candidates Cary Moon and Jenny Durkan debated growth, housing affordability, and homelessness in a debate that anyone reading this email should watch.  Here’s a full run-down by the event host Solid Ground.

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Seattle Mayoral candidates Jenny Durkan and Cary Moon will debate growth, affordable housing, and homelessness tomorrow, Sept 12th, at 7 pm.  The sold-out forum will be live-streamed by the Seattle Times and moderated by Enrique Cerna of KCTS with reporters Heidi Groover of The Stranger, David Kroman of Crosscut, and Vernal Coleman the Seattle Times.

Join our partners at Firesteel for a pre-debate show at 6:30 pm, livestreamed from their Facebook page. HDC is proud to partner with SKCCH and WLIHA Action Fund to support the forum’s hosts Solid Ground and the Seattle U Project on Family Homelessness.

Other Developments…

• Public hearing double header tonight: Seattle City Council will hear public comment on the MHA-triggering uptown rezone AND improvements to the city’s design review process.

• The City of Auburn partnered with Valley Cities and the Auburn Food Bank to open a new shelter for people experiencing homelessness.

• UW and the Seattle Housing Authority announced plans to build 150 affordable homes in the university district designed for employees.

• Might Amazon’s decision to seek a second headquarters let some of the air out of the region’s housing bubble?

• Shelter, but not housing: Lack of affordable housing is keeping people swept from tent encampments from exiting homelessness.
  

• At-large Seattle City Council candidates Jon Grant and Teresa Mosqueda will debate Thursday.

• The Yes on Prop 1 Campaign to renew the Vets, Seniors, and Human Services levy kicked off last week! Your organization can help by endorsing! Click here for an endorsement form and return it to our Government Relations & Policy Director by the end of the month.

• HDC Members: Applications for Leadership Development Survey Course are open now through September 18th.  The seven-month course gives participants a broad overview of leadership principles and exposes participants to the varied roles of leaders in mission and value-driven organizations.

• Early bird registration is open for our first ever Advocacy Intensive! This two-day training will build your capacity for systems change work by helping you understand mobilization and organizing, housing policy and the political process, and how to engage with electeds. Save $30 on registration now through September 18th.

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King County neighborhoods impacting life expectancy up to 18 years

“It’s not the fact that you’re living at a certain latitude or longitude, it’s all the other things associated with that neighborhood, like socioeconomic conditions, quality of housing, maybe education levels.” Huge disparities in life expectancies across Seattle neighborhoods are visualized in this new Seattle Times piece. For more on how housing conditions drive health outcomes in your city, check out HDC’s Housing & Health infographic series.

Other Developments…

• HDC Members: Applications for Leadership Development Survey Course are open now through September 18th.  The seven-month course gives participants a broad overview of leadership principles and exposes participants to the varied roles of leaders in mission and value-driven organizations.

• Proposed legislation could limit the number of short term rentals such as AirBnBs in Seattle.

• The Yes on Prop 1 Campaign to renew the Vets, Seniors, and Human Services levy kicked off last week! Your organization can help by endorsing! Click here for an endorsement form and return it to our Government Relations & Policy Director by the end of the month.

• Tenants in the new Cubix microhousing had to move out just a few days after moving in after the city building inspectors issued a stop order having not yet issued the appropriate permits.

• Now that Fair Chance Housing is in effect, SCC Insight has a deepdive into the details and rationale of the policy.

• Early move-out fees are hurting even higher income tech workers renting on the Eastside.

• Average homevalues statewide are being driven up by soaring local King County markets.

• Seattle Mayoral Candidate Forum: See the two candidates for Seattle mayor discuss growth, housing, and homelessess at a September 12th forum hosted by Solid Ground and the Seattle U Project on Family Homelessness and sponsored by HDC, SKCCH, and WLIHA Action Fund.

• Weeks ago, the Stranger highlighed cost-burden among millennial renters, but as it turns out every generation of renters is cost-burdened.

• Early bird registration is now open for our first ever Advocacy Intensive! This two-day training will build your capacity for systems change work by helping you understand mobilization and organizing, housing policy and the political process, and how to engage with electeds. Save $30 on registration now through September 18th.

What did we miss? Email us with suggestions.
Send Housing Developments straight your inbox every Monday! Subscribe here.

Early bird registration is now open for our first ever Advocacy Intensive! This two-day training will build your capacity for systems change work by helping you understand mobilization and organizing, housing policy and the political process, and how to engage with electeds. Save $30 on registration now through September 18th.

Other Developments…

• There’s little reason to hope the state legislature will produce a capital budget before the year ends, and local projects are feeling the impact. 

• King County Accountable Community of Health (ACH) is seeking input on draft project plans for Medicaid Transformation. This survey is open through 5 pm on Friday, Sept 1.

• HDC Members: Join us for a Learn @ Lunch with the Seattle Office of Housing this Wednesday 8/30. 

• A lack of trust in housing services helps drive disproportionately high rates of homelessness among Native Americans, according to Colleen Echohawk, ED of the Chief Seattle Club.

• A debate about investment homes has the Seattle mayoral candidates trading barbs like “Trumpian.” You can see the debate live and in person next month.

• Seattle Mayoral Candidate Forum: See the two candidates for Seattle mayor discuss growth, housing, and homelessess at a September 12th forum hosted by Solid Ground and the Seattle U Project on Family Homelessness. Cosponsored by HDC, SKCCH, and WLIHA Action Fund.

• A recent round of testing resulted in 16 property management companies paying fines for source of income discrimination. 

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This morning the contiguous US will be treated to our first total solar eclipse in almost 40 years. Here in King County, we’ll get a 92.2% eclipse, which is still an A as far as eclipses go. NASA will livestream the event for anyone who missed the boat on eclipse glasses, and at least you won’t need them to read this email.

Other Developments…

• Don’t let your systems-change work be eclipsed by the day-to-day grind. Join us in October for a two-day advocacy intensive. Early bird registration is open now!

• The Seattle City Council says criminal history should not overshadow access to housing. The Fair Chance Housing ordinance prohibits landlords from screening applicants based on their criminal history without a legitimate business reason.

• A two-word change in Seattle’s building code could lead the sun to rise again for some housing developments in need of parking exemptions.

• Issaquah’s development moratorium will continue to black out affordable housing development in the city through 2017. Meanwhile the city hopes to complete its Housing Strategy Plan in the fall.

• East African Community members who have called Seattle home are moving to lower cost of living cities in South King County. A planned development aims to fight displacement and keep the community within the local orbit.

• Will Cary Moon eclipse Jenny Durk-sun? See the two candidates for Seattle mayor discuss growth, housing, and homelessess at a September 12th forum hosted by Solid Ground and sponsored by HDC, Seattle U Project on Family Homelessness, and WLIHA Action Fund.

• The Stranger didn’t mince words about the astronomical cost burden felt by local households.

• More than 99% of homes in these Seattle-area zip code are worth more than a million.   Hint: One is home to the two richest people on the planet.

• Upzone for Uptown? The neighborhood also known as Lower Queen Anne is next up for MHA consideration. City, Sound Transit, and Seattle Public Schools projects mean a cosmic shift for the area with or without the upzone.

• HDC members: today is the last day to sign up for a Policy Advisory Group task force!  Don’t throw away your moon-shot to guide and implement our collective advocacy work.

• Helping Homeless Students: McKinney-Vento 101 Workshop on 8/22: SKCCH is hosting this stellar free workshop featuring national expert Dr. Lenore Rubin and presenters from Columbia Legal Services and Schoolhouse WA. Register here.

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… stay tuned for more details. We won’t be able to keep them under wraps for very long.

Other Developments…

• The Seattle City Council will vote on Fair Chance Housing today. The ordinance passed out of committee 6-0 last week, meaning it will almost certainly pass full Council.

• You already knew Weber Thompson for their great affordable housing week video, but did you know they are architects, too?

• Burien advocates are urging their City Council to adopt source of income discrimination protections. Meanwhile, network news struggled to pronounce the city’s name.

• Developers in downtown Seattle may have the option to receive greater height for smaller floor plates. 

• 70 new affordable homes are coming to Lake City! LIHI will host a groundbreaking ceremony for Lake City Family Housing on August 15th.

• Our own Grace Kim was featured in Seattle Neighbors last week.

• A change by Seattle City Council will make it easier for the public to engage with- or challenge- development in their neighborhood.

• Shelter developers/operators in Bellevue will have to apply for a conditional use permit due to an emergency ordinance adopted last week.

• There’s historic preserveration, and then there is the Trueblood house in Kirkland. 

• Fear of a housing bubble is stronger in Washington than in any other state. Those hoping the Canadian smoke blanket might depress home values appear to be out of luck. 

• The Washington State Convention Center expansion project still needs money and land.

• Helping Homeless Students: McKinney-Vento 101 Workshop on 8/22: SKCCH is hosting this free workshop featuring national expert Dr. Lenore Rubin and presenters from Columbia Legal Services and Schoolhouse WA. Register here.

  What did we miss? Email us with suggestions.
  Send Housing Developments straight your inbox every Monday. Subscribe here.