Inslee tours Kent to rally support for homelessness funding

Gov. Jay Inslee visited two transitional housing sites Tuesday in Kent to help drum up support for more funding to address homelessness.

Inslee first took a tour of the Radcliffe Place senior living affordable housing complex on the East Hill. He later stopped by the Titusville Station affordable housing site downtown that helps provide transitional housing for people enrolled in drug or alcohol recovery programs.

“Radcliffe is a perfect example of what we can do when we have efficient housing,” Inslee said during a brief interview after the tour. “This provides services for seniors so they can get to their physicians, and so they can have activities and nutrition.

“But we know demand (for housing) is skyrocketing with rent increases of 15 to 30 percent in some places. We need to work to make sure we’ve got a housing budget to help this facility and others.”

State funding for more than 2,500 affordable housing units was allocated in the 2015-2017 biennium budget through the Housing Trust Fund. Inslee has proposed investing $91 million in capital investments in the 2017-2019 biennium to preserve affordable housing and create new units. Inslee’s operating budget proposal includes an additional $20 million to serve more chronically homeless adults, families with children and unaccompanied youth.

Radcliffe Place, 13510 SE 272nd St., is a public/private partnership that offers high quality senior apartment living at prices below market rates. Apartments are unfurnished, with no buy-ins, membership or endowment fees.

People who are age 62 or older and fall under certain income levels can rent units at Radcliffe Place, which is part of the federal Low Income Tax Credit Program. Eligibility is determined by income sources such as Social Security, pensions, interest earned from CDs, bank accounts and other similar assets. Income limits are based upon 60 percent of the King County annual median income.

That means a person whose annual income and assets total $37,980 would qualify to rent an apartment. A two-person household must have annual income and assets of $43,380 or less.

Inslee met with leaders of Federal Way-based Multi-Service Center, a nonprofit group that works with partners to help people become self-sufficient, during his Kent visit.

“There is only one other property like this in the region,” said Robin Corak, CEO of Multi-Service Center, during her talk with Inslee at Radcliffe Place. “In additional to affordable housing, we offer access to services, someone to clean their apartments, food and dining and work with them on their nutrition.”

Inslee heard from Manuela Ginnett, Multi-Service Center housing director, the challenges for people to find affordable housing.

“For every $100 rent increase, homeless increases by 15 percent,” Ginnett said. “In the suburbs it can be a 30 percent increase. We know how much rents have gone up and I don’t think we can solve it without rent control, but we know that’s not going to happen.”

Ginnett told Inslee that even people with Section 8 housing so that their rent is subsidized and affordable, have trouble finding places to live because some landlords raise rents above what subsidies under the program would cover. She said laws adopted by some cities to stop landlords from discriminating based on sources of incomes ends up not working when landlords raise the rents so high.

Inslee later emphasized that more needs to be done.

“Given the dramatic increase in homelessness it’s right for the state of Washington to up its game and make an additional investment, including senior housing,” he said. “Rents are skyrocketing because we have such a hot economy that drives up rents. We need to take care of people at the bottom of the pyramid to make sure they have housing.”

Inslee said there are ways to combat rising rents.

“In short term, we have to build more subsidized housing and long term we have to build more general housing,” he said. “We don’t have enough units for people who are moving to the state.

“It’s a great irony because the reason we have this problem is because we have such a strong economy. About 65,000 people are moving here from the rest of the states and they need housing and that drives up rents. And 40 percent who are homeless have one member of the family who is working. This is a real tragedy. These are working people who are homeless.”

Inslee said governments at all levels need to help.

“It’s going to require a response from every level. City, county, state and the federal government,” he said. “We ought to try to stop Donald Trump from cutting services to these working people. They need health care, they need housing and we are going to make sure they get it.”

Trump’s proposed federal budget provides few answers, Inslee said.

“The budget the president proposes hurts so much for senior citizens,” he said. “It really slashes funds for Medicaid and mental health and doesn’t help housing as much as it should.”