The state Senate has proposed a devastating $39.3 million cut to the Housing Trust Fund.  At least $32 million of this will come from funding that has already been allocated and projects that may already be underway.  The Housing Trust Fund is Washington’s most important means of providing safe, decent, and affordable housing.  Without the Trust Fund, we can’t make progress towards our commitment to end homelessness.  A cut this deep to projects that are already underway will not only put access to affordable housing…

Yesterday, the IRS released a statement indicating that there are more than $1.3 billion in unclaimed federal tax refunds for people who did not file for 2006. This includes approximately 37,000 filers in Washington state! If you are one of those people, you need to file your 2006 return by April 15, 2010, or you lose that refund…

Our sites can help!  Don’t miss out on your money!!

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this post (or any post on this blog, for that matter) represent the opinion of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of United Way of King County staff or volunteers.

My logic tends towards the illogical, as many of you know, so try to stick with me here:

What Is Affordable Housing? from the Center for Urban Pedagogy on Vimeo.

The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), a nonprofit that uses design and art to improve the quality of public participation in urban planning and community design, created a great video and website that explains what the term “affordable housing” means.

For those of you who didn’t already know, the government defines affordable housing as housing that costs no more than 30% of your income.

The video goes on to discuss the implications of affordable housing has on low-income families…

Many of you have heard me talk about “permanent supportive housing” in previous posts.  Washington state’s Housing Trust Fund is the essential tool for the creation and preservation of permanent supportive housing. In order to keep up with the community need, an additional $100 million in funding should be added to the Housing Trust Fund. More than 70 percent of people served by the Fund make less than $17,540 per year, making it a vital resource in the fight to end homelessness.

Funding the Housing Trust Fund now with $100 million would allow Washington…

(Photo from the SKCCH website)

Here are the early results of last night’s One Night Count in King County.

Last night, hundreds of volunteers for the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness fanned out throughout the County.  Between 2:00 AM and 6:00 AM, more than 130 teams of volunteers found 2759 people sleeping on the streets, in parks, in their cars, in temporary shelters and in makeshift campsites.

More later…

(Part 1 can be found here)

Updated at 11:10 AM, Friday January 29th:  Here is the article from today’s Seattle Times.

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(Photo from the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness)

In addition to all of the great feedback on the site this week about our Hunger Challenge, here are a few other items that I wanted to let folks know about:

…on this gray day after reading in the Times how community volunteers are cheering up the supportive house sites run by DESC, a United Way grantee. With the help of the volunteers and a local artist, once-drab walls are now sporting bright hues, making the atmosphere less institutional and more welcoming for the once-homeless people now living at the Union Hotel.

…of Dolores Gancher, a homeless woman taken under the wing of Seattle Times staff members. It’s a good reminder that in solving homelessness, both individual kindness and systemic efforts play their part. By Nicole Brodeur.

I am a big fan of skill-based volunteering. While warm-body volunteering is great, I really like it when people take a skill that only they have and use it to help others. Even a seemingly unrelatable skill can be used to make a difference. Help-Portrait is a great example of this.

Help-Portrait was a simple 4-step project that banded photographers together for a good cause. Here’s how it went:

1. Find someone in need (shelters, hospitals, the streets, etc.)
2. Take their portrait
3. Print their portrait
4. Deliver it to them.

Many people experiencing homelessness…