KING 5 Story: Is Washington State’s Non-Profit Housing System Fair and Efficient?
People make mistakes. Things get confused. The media can sometimes put a headline into circulation before a situation is resolved. I say these things before I mention a story that aired on KING 5 about a couple very highly placed in state government that apparently owns a subsidized condominium in Bellevue. I feel sorry for them getting swept up in this kind of story. However, there is an arrogance among the non-profit community that will hand wave this issue. I actually don’t care all that much about this unit in Bellevue. That this is what the media has fastened on is absurd. We have a much bigger problem. That’s the prologue I’ll give ahead of posting the email I sent below to legislators and others.
Greetings,
We’ve already pointed out that rural counties like Grays Harbor and Kittitas have received no money from the state’s Housing Trust Fund in the last 10 years even though Grays Harbor has a serious problem with homelessness and Kittitas has the lowest vacancy rate for housing in the state. And throughout the state, rural counties have higher rates of poverty, lower vacancy rates, older buildings, and higher unemployment rates than King County or Seattle.
You can read four posts I’ve written on the years of Commerce data below.
But there is a disturbing story from KING 5‘s investigative unit that raises even more concerns about the way we fund and operate subsidized housing. You can watch or read the story by following this link:
The story is about,
High-level Washington state government employees who have owned a waterfront home in Olympia since 2001, paid $206,000 in 2009 for the unit in the McKee Condominiums on Main Street in Old Bellevue. The contract the couple signed at the time said the unit was designated “for households of low and moderate incomes.”
The story goes on to say that one of the employees has,
a deep understanding of how affordable housing works. She serves as the chief deputy clerk of the Washington House of Representatives and is listed as one of the architects of affordable housing laws in 2009 and 2010. She also served with the Washington State Housing Finance Commission.
It remains to be seen what really happened in this particular situation and whether it has been duplicated elsewhere. We just don’t have a clear picture of how efficient the system our state relies on to help people who need it get housing whether it is first time homeownership opportunities or trying to find rental housing that is affordable for them. How many units are misallocated? What processes are in place to be sure money and units go to help people truly in need? And how do we answer these questions not just for one unit in Bellevue, but across our whole state?
When organizations like ours try to raise these issues, we are ostracized.
What’s going on at the McKee Condominium’s might be an isolated incident. Perhaps there is an explanation. Maybe the problems with that one unit can be sorted out.
But when the legislature makes a special $2,500,000 appropriation for non-residential use in the $73,000,000 Building 9 project in Seattle creating just 150 units of housing, but does not allocate ANY money to rural counties that are experiencing serious housing shortages for seniors, workers, and families is there any outrage about that?
There should be.
Roger–
