Mayor Brown Commits to ‘HEART Fund’ for Affordable Housing in Spokane
News Story By Mia Gallegos | FāVS News
On Thursday night, the Spokane Alliance held a Housing Assembly at the Unitarian Universalist Church. With Mayor Lisa Brown in attendance, various speakers and community leaders asked the mayor to commit to their vision for bringing affordable housing to the city of Spokane, one that has been wrought with homelessness in recent years.
The 1590 Levy, created in 2020, is one of the only local sources of funding for new affordable housing in and around Spokane. The 1590 was cultivated and passed from the efforts of HEART, the Housing Equity Action Research Team. However, over time, the $11 million in funds generated by the 1590 levy were increasingly diverted away from their original intended purposes.
HEART Team’s Efforts to Safeguard 1590 Funds
“In 2022 and then again in 2023, the HEART team organized to stop the 1590 funds from being spent on other things. And we appreciate that our city council has voted to preserve these funds for their intent,” said the Rev. Katy Shedlock, one of the co-chairs of the event and pastor of Spokane’s West Central Abbey.
Shedlock explained how the HEART team, including herself, had new goals for these 1590 funds as they entered into 2024.
“I have been a part of the story of passing and defending the 1590 funds and I am proud of that work. But I am still hearing heartbreaking stories from my neighbors about losing their housing and not having anywhere to go. I did not spend the last five years going to meetings and turning people out and prepping testimony and meeting with elected officials and sitting in church basements – which are always either too hot or too cold – for any other reason than [wanting] my neighbors to be at home here in our city,” Shedlock said.
Housing Instability’s Toll on Students’ Education
Jeremy Shay of the Spokane Education Association took the floor following the opening remarks, and explained how affordable housing – rather, the lack thereof – is impacting the students who are suffering from homelessness.
Shay explained how many students that don’t have consistent living conditions struggle within the classroom, as they are constantly moving to different schools based on the shelter or temporary housing arrangement they are involved with at different times during a semester.
“This constant change has a substantial negative impact on their learning. It is difficult for these students to build strong relationships with the educators and students in the buildings where they attend for a short time before transferring. Not only do students [who are] facing housing instability change schools frequently, but many also have poor attendance, adding to their academic challenges,” Shay said.
Shay also said the various instances of faculty members throughout the Spokane school districts who are forced to work additional jobs on top of their roles as educators just to afford rent. Making housing more affordable, he said, would make it easier to fill the employment gaps that exist within many schools, as it would be more accessible to get by working only one job as opposed to taking on multiple just to survive.
Firsthand Accounts of Spokane’s Housing Crisis
The mayor made a few opening remarks, reflecting on Spokane’s past affordability that has since vanished from the community.
“I have had the pleasure of living in so many of our wonderful neighborhoods in Spokane. I used to brag to my friends about that affordability that evaporated so quickly and has left us with such an amazing challenge,” Brown said.
Several community members came up and gave testimonies about their experiences with the struggle that has come with the lack of affordable housing in the city. Emma Cremeen and Kishanee Haththotuwegama, medical students from the University of Washington and Washington State University respectively, worked in The Trent Resource and Assistance Center (Trent) during the below-freezing winter months that encapsulated the city this year. They explained how unexpected some of the tasks were that they underwent within their work in Trent, which is located three miles east of downtown.
“We thought we’d be helping the medical team with taking blood pressures or more advanced things. The reality is, my smartphone, with access to the internet and the ability to make phone calls is vastly more useful than my stethoscope in that setting,” said Cremeen.
The Harsh Realities of Life in a Homeless Shelter
Cremeen explained some of the unexpected tasks that the medical students had been helping out with at Trent over the last six months including replacing EBT cards, scheduling specialty care appointments and other administrative chores that would be not accessible without the help of someone who is familiar with the various resource outlets throughout Spokane.
Cremeen shared a story of a wheelchair-bound mother who was living in Trent and needed to find out why her social security check hadn’t arrived in the mail. This being her main source of income, she had to find a quick solution in order to keep her and her son afloat.
“For most of us, administrative chores like a trip to the DMV is irritating at best. For someone with a physical disability living at the Trent shelter, this can be next to impossible. Her journey entailed busing from Trent to the Social Security office to The Department of Social Services building and then back to Trent to make it back for dinner at 5 p.m. This trip requires six bus transfers and 1.9 miles of walking, or in her case, rolling her manual wheelchair down the sidewalk,” Cremeen said.
Haththotuwegama explained some statistics surrounding homelessness, and how the people living at Trent and other shelters around Spokane are subject to some of these concerns with the increasing amount of time that they occupy these temporary living circumstances.
“Homelessness is detrimental to your health for many reasons. Housing status has become a major predictor of mortality in the U.S. Unsheltered people are nearly 10 times more likely to die of any cause than the average adult. Even when staying in a shelter, people are 2.7 times more likely to die than average. In this context, the healthcare disparities made by homelessness can be viewed as a systemic rather than personal failing,” Haththotuwegama said.
Mayor Vows Action on ‘HEART Fund’ Demands
The call for systemic change was the rationale for Brown’s attendance at the assembly. After several more personal anecdotes, the mayor took the stage with Daniel Roberts of the West Central Abbey in order to verbally commit herself and her administration to these efforts that the 1590 levy has been seeking to tackle for years since it has been passed.
The Spokane Alliance asked Brown for three commitments:
- Asking for her support in releasing a Requests for Proposals (RFP) that incorporates the recommendations that are presented related to equity and transparency.
- Asking that 100% of the funds generated from the 1590 be allocated for the public RFP process.
- Asking for her pledge to provide transparent reporting by releasing her report at the end of each year that lists funds generated, funds spent and RFPs awarded.
Brown pledged her commitment to each of the requests made above, and took things a step further, surprising many in the crowd.
“Because the legislature every year has new bills, there will be new 1590s as time goes on, and I would like our fund to represent the work that has gone into it. If you would agree, I would like to call it the HEART Fund,” Brown said.
This was met with warmth and excitement by audience members and community leaders who were in attendance at the assembly.
“I’m so pleased that you are sharing stories and I just want to encourage us to share these stories as publicly and as widely as we can. Our success in this effort will be as we pull more and more of our community into the belief that we can make a difference and turn this around,” Brown said.
Excellent reporting – projects a very clear picture that mostly lets participants speak for themselves. This is what democracy should look and feel like – respectful engagement between elected officials and well organized community members, accurately reported. Nice work all the way around!!