Drivers of Homelessness in Washington State

Commerce's Housing Unit Assistance Managing Director Tedd Kelleher explains what's driving the increase of homelessness in Washington state.

[Amanandhisdog]

I have a plan that will reduce homelessness by 80% in 5 years ... unfortunately I am just a guy with no fancy degrees, no influence, and no money, but I have 30+ years of experience working with those who are homeless and have been homeless myself.

[myrealityblows]

I am homeless and have 7 dogs and just got told we could not stay at motel 6 in the valley any longer after today because he could not get enough money together from his doordash jobs to get the rent paid on time by 11...

Now we I have tried every resource they out there I've tried to get ahold of pathways I try to get ahold of a lot of places that will not help because our talks and they're not really even dogs they are but in my eyes because girls these puppies came along at the same time and basically they helped me through losing my children and I would die to find out they got hurt because they got taken away from me and put into a home where they got mistreated and I wasn't there to save them

[RickArnone-fn]

Commers in Skagit made me homeless and harassed many in community unlawful abuse of power.

[jenniferwilcox]

I just found this video. I'm a community advocate for affordable housing and homelessness prevention. I've been following what our city (Spokane Valley) is doing regarding both topics. The city council and staff are currently in the process of applying for COVID-19 Relief Funds and exploring establishing a youth homeless shelter. They are working on programs associated with a contract they have with the Washington State Department of Commerce. There's a lot of information to absorb and process. Thank you for your hard work in creating this video. It's substantive and helpful, to me. i can follow some of the detailed documents and discussion a little better, now.

[myrealityblows]

We haven't been able to find help bc of the pups between the two of us we have ten total...

We keep up on cleanliness and put over roughly $4k per month into the motel to stay off the streets

Otger hang ups that keeps us stuck in this crappy situation is the amount of money put out here makes it impossible to save money for requirements to get into a place.

Poor credit score 568, 581 and the other ones close to that

Income is doordash and my ssdi

[jasminedonahue]

I would say, the time line directly mirrors when access to extensive backgrounds, including credit scores, became standard. Many people were not prepared for this to be a make or break need, when obtaining housing for them and their families

[kellybaird-qk]

What happens to people that no longer can get unemployment they drop off that unemployment statistic. So then it looks like we have less people on unemployment so less people out there without jobs but that's not true there's just more people that no longer have any sort of

[miguelaguilar]

What about unfair evictions? Lots of families are being evicted so landlords can raise rent

[denniscasey]

To what do we attribute the Rent Increases besides simple GREED?

[jkbish]

easy to fix. stop drug addition, give them forceable hospitalization.