Affordable and Healthy Rental Housing

Summary of Taking Action

Assessment:
In 1990, a group of local community leaders recognized a need that was not being addressed. Homes First! affordable rental housing program concentrates on the segment of our population that is often overlooked - those who don't and quite often will never own their own home. Although it is often stated that homeownership is the "American Dream" Homes First! recognizes that the true dream of most Americans is simply to have a clean, safe, and dependable home in which to live - regardless of whether one owns it or not. Rather than assuming that 'success' = 'owning a home', Homes First! ensures that having a clean and healthy home in which to live allows people to choose for themselves what success equates.

Planning:
Homes First! was formed as a Community Housing Development Organization (CHDO). CHDO is a special status which the federal government grants to nonprofit community organizations engaged in housing development activities that benefit low and moderate income families. Our commitment to our community is that through our CHDO affiliation, we will invite and listen to the voices of the people we serve. We do that by ensuring that at least 1/3 of the members of our Board of Directors represent those people. 1/3 of our Board is currently experiencing living at low income (80% or less of Area Median Income) or represent a designated low-income neighborhood.

Taking Action:
We are supported in our effort to provide supported, scattered site, affordable rental housing by a variety of local partners. We have support from local funding jurisdictions through allocation of public funds. As a 25 year old organization, we have excellent policies and procedures in place to acquire, rehab, and maintain homes, and are constantly expanding our partnerships to increase our ability to ensure our tenants are able to maintain housing which they might otherwise find challenging. In 2015, we are undertaking our next big housing innovation through our leadership of the Community Housing Partnership. The intent of Homes First! and its partners is to take a local motel, built in the 1940s, and convert it into 35 units of supportive housing with an onsite counselling center which is staffed 24/7. The single-person efficiency units will stabilize housing and health for 35 chronically homeless people.

Evaluation:
The evaluation of our program is simple – have we acquired new properties and maintained our high level of service at the same time? Are we seeing our tenants maintain stability in housing? If we can say ‘Yes!’ to both of those questions we know that we have reached our objectives. We keep close track of our vacancy and turn over rates. We meet weekly as a staff to discuss how we can improve our systems and connections to services for our tenants. We report this data quarterly to our board of directors and seek input from our tenants and community providers on both the community’s needs and if we are fulfilling our mission.

Sustaining the Work:
Our projects are ongoing! Funding from this proposal will go specifically to support a property we have had donated from Wells Fargo Bank. YouthBuild is doing the rehab. However, we will continue to work to house the over 15,000 households in Thurston County, WA who are struggling to maintain or even find housing. We will continue to grow our partnerships so that our collective impact will be multiplied.