Home Fund promises results

As United Way executive director the past seven years, I spent lots of time working with community leaders and homeless service agencies to tackle the challenges faced by vulnerable homeless people. Homelessness painfully affects individuals and families and also is distressing and costly to our community — residents, businesses and our health care, police and fire, and public services.

There are lots of social and economic reasons for homelessness and, despite those, I believe we have an imperative to do more as a community to resolve it. Locally, we have very few financial resources to actually house our most vulnerable unhoused residents — those with mental and physical disabilities and other significant challenges who require ongoing housing and social services to avoid living on the streets.

The Olympia City Council has stepped up and offered a chance for its residents to vote in February to create the Home Fund, which will raise significant funds over seven years to provide new supported housing options. These local funds will leverage millions of private, state and federal dollars to help create these units.

I urge Olympia voters to vote yes for the Home Fund that will be funded by one cent on every $10 in sales that will be paid by consumers across our region. The city has a strong plan to wisely invest the funds to assure great results.

This story was originally published December 22, 2017 at 2:21 PM with the headline "Home Fund promises results."