Washington Low Income Housing Alliance Programs
In partnership with a coalition of housing and homelessness organizations, service providers, individual advocates, and foundations the Housing Alliance works to turn good ideas into sound policy and mobilize public support to achieve policy wins. Our three program areas are advocacy, education and mobilization.
Advocacy & Public Policy
Advocacy works! Despite a brutal session in Olympia last year, we had many successes. In 2012, more than 1,200 housing advocates stood united and contacted their elected officials multiple times. We won $67.1 million for the state Housing Trust Fund which will give 1,832 families a home they can afford. We passed the Fair Tenant Screening Act to remove barriers to rental housing. We preserved Housing & Essential Needs funding to keep very low-income families in their homes, and we secured funds to help 71,000 people avoid homelessness.
Every year, the Housing Alliance develop a legislative agenda to meet our state’s housing needs. We provide our supporters with a direct line to legislative action at the state capitol, access to tools that deepen the impact of advocacy, and the current facts and figures needed to tell compelling stories, gain housing champions in Olympia and pass socially-just public policy to end homelessness.
Mobilization
We mobilize people to make a difference. The Housing Alliance brings advocates together as part of a united affordable housing movement, empowering people to tell their lawmakers that everyone should have the opportunity to live in a safe, healthy, affordable home.
Our movement is growing. In February of this year, more than 600 people rallied on the steps of the capitol building in Olympia for our annual housing and homelessness advocacy day. This is the largest turnout we have ever seen!
Education
We tell the housing story. Children deserve a chance to succeed in school and in life, which all begins with their families being able to afford a home. This can be hard to understand for someone who has never had to choose between feeding her family or paying the rent. But when a child explains that she’s doing better in school because her family didn’t have to move this year, the real impact of affordable housing and the need for action becomes clear.
Recent Successes and Current Challenges
Advocacy works! Despite a brutal session in Olympia this year, we've had many successes in 2012 because housing advocates stood united, contacted their elected officials and made contributions to support ending homelessness.
2012 legislative successes:
- We won $67.1 million for the state Housing Trust Fund! This will build or preserve over 1,832 safe, healthy, affordable homes for low-income families.
- We secured funds to help 71,000 people avoid homelessness.
- We passed the Fair Tenant Screening Act, a law informing tenants of the contents of tenant screening reports and providing avenues to correct wrong information.
- We preserved Housing & Essential Needs funding and convinced legislators to make NO cuts to TANF and Disability Lifeline programs for very low-income people.
- And, we mobilized over 1,200 supporters to take action by calling, emailing, and/or visiting their elected officials in Olympia to advocate for more affordable housing and ending homelessness!
Ending homelessness is possible, but it can only happen when a majority of Washington residents take action and donate resources to make it happen. We need to grow the number of contributions we receive from individual donors to increase the visibility of our work and increase the number of advocates who participate. Our supporters power us from the ground up and every win is due to the work of our member organizations and individual supporters statewide. Please join us to end homelessness in your community by donating today.