Letters to the editor for Oct. 31
Thurston County Home Fund is much needed
I have served as the CEO of Homes First since 2011. For 31 years, Homes First has provided safe and healthy rental homes in Thurston County. Our homes are affordable for people living at or below 60% the county’s average median income. Over 80% of our tenants live at less than 30% AMI.
Our nonprofit model focuses on purchasing and rehabbing existing properties to rent to families in our community with challenges finding a home. In 2020, we provided housing to 275 people of all races, ages, genders and abilities.
We partner with many local organizations to provide permanent housing, such as the Thurston Mason Behavioral Health Organization, Community Youth Services, and Family Support Center. We purchase and manage homes in which their clients live and receive services.
There are many ways to provide affordable homes. Housing is neither free nor cheap. Buying, like building, takes community cash investments.
Thurston County should follow the city of Olympia and implement a 1/10th of 1% tax increase dedicated to housing and mental health for an ongoing source of revenue, adding about $4.5 million annually to the $2.3 million Olympia generates.
These local dollars will not only help us to add units to our existing portfolio of affordable housing, but will also leverage the state’s Housing Trust Fund.
Thank you for considering this important ordinance. Our current housing crisis cannot improve unless we fund affordable housing for low-income people.
Trudy Soucoup, Lacey
Has ‘getting tough’ worked anywhere?
Enjoy statistics? How’s this: 100% of my household was offended by the unsupported numbers on a flier from Corey Gauny’s campaign. To purport 87% of anything is something, you dagnab better site a source, otherwise it’s an invented number.
Their statements in the Voters Pamphlet don’t say it, but at a meeting I recently attended both Gauny and Spence Weigand insisted the solution to homelessness and drugs is “getting tough.” For 30 years the U.S. has “gotten tough” by quadrupling the number of people in jail, while crime has not gone down and homelessness has exponentially expanded. Weigand touts his real estate background, yet cited nothing he did to house poor people.
Their next trope was arrest drug addicts and put them it treatment. Treatment centers have rare vacancies and there’s little funding to create more. Courts that provide alternative solutions (drug court, etc.) are not full, because the pathways for getting people into them are overwhelmed. Adding more people to this backlog isn’t a solution.
Needles on the street are a problem, no doubt, but if people using those needles had a secure place off the street, the needles would go with them, and they’d have more opportunities to take better control of their lives.
For an excellent review of Olympia’s Homeless Responses, contact kkondrat@ci.olympia.wa.us. Tough as it is out there, the city is on the right track and making progress to solve the homelessness crisis. Jim Cooper and Dontae Payne understand the nuances. They are better choices for City Council.
Warren Carlson, Olympia
Not born yesterday
In Amy Evans recent letter to the editor, she states her work with the Port of Olympia real estate lease deal to Pannatoni would only be a “minimal” conflict of interest once she took office as a Port Commissioner. She also states she will not accept her commission on that deal. But whether or not she accepts her commission, we know where she stands. She is neck deep in this deal and it is not a good one for our county. There are financial, environmental, public health, school safety, and other quality of life issues at stake.
There are all kinds of ways to recognize someone’s “good” work besides the payment of a real estate commission. I trust her firm, Kidder Mathews, can find a simple way to reimburse her for her “lost” commission, perhaps with an end-of-year bonus in an equal amount. This is not rocket science. And we were not born yesterday.
Pam Pride, Olympia