Greetings Housers,

“Covid-19 has impacted the housing industry in numerous ways; we’ve seen physical distancing employed to safe guard our community and vulnerable members of our society from infection, we have seen many businesses shut down – some permanently – to prevent the gathering of individuals in an effort to reduce the spread of COVID-19, and we’ve seen massive unemployment; at levels far beyond the experiences we have had in recent history. Yes we are facing some challenging times; and I know many of us in the industry are ready to assume an expanded role in providing the necessary housing assistance our community needs.

And yet, we must adjust to a new reality. A majority of our interactions have happened online- and we know that there are digital divides within our community and those we serve. We’ve had fluctuating budgets, and we await federal legislation that will determine the extent of our efforts. As we adjust to all of that, I want to thank all of you for your work, and I will continue to support you in whatever I can, with whatever you need.

In the meantime, the Pacific Northwest Region Council Planning Committee has had conversations about holding an exciting fall conference online, and have extensively brainstormed the future of involvement, convening, and advocacy. And I’ll say this much; I’m excited for the offerings ahead.

Please stay healthy, stay safe, and if you can, stay home.

Cupid Alexander



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With the postponment of the Annual Conference and the nationwide pandemic not allowing us to meet in person. PNRC has partnered with National NAHRO to provide you with multiple training opportunities whether you are working from home or in the office.

Here is a list of the upcoming courses and links to register.

If you want to register by credit card click on the link below; if you want to be invoiced and pay by check simply email [email protected] and we will get you registered.

NAHRO's Procurement and Contract Management Seminar is completely revised and updated for HUD's new handbook 7460.8 REV 2. Understanding the new handbook and how it interfaces with the asset management paradigm will help your agency in determining responsibility and accountability at the development site. You will learn how to procure quality goods and services for the right cost, the highest quality, for timely delivery, and in compliance with applicable laws and policies. The training covers estimating costs of goods and services, and developing criteria for analysis of proposals.

This two-day training program will focus on Fair Housing within the Assisted Housing Programs with a special emphasis on the Public Housing and Housing Choice Voucher Programs. The program will begin with the basics of Fair Housing, but then will take you deep into the Fair Housing process, program specific requirements, best practices, resolutions of complaints, 504 standards and processing reasonable accommodation requests. It will provide the latest information on the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), the newest protected classes, Limited English Proficiency (LEP) and other federal provisions. The seminar will also include information on cases for Fair Housing violations, voluntary compliance agreements and special conditions that may be required by HUD or DOJ.

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Kurt Wiest, the longtime head of the Bremerton Housing Authority, is set to leave the agency in late June after 14 years leading its affordable housing programs in Bremerton

In an announcement to staff on Monday, Wiest said he will start as the executive director of the Housing Authority of Alameda County in Hayward, California — where Wiest worked prior to taking over at BHA in 2006. 

The move allows Wiest and his wife to care for an older family member in the San Francisco Bay Area, with plans to work a few years before the family moves back to Kitsap County for retirement. “It was just serendipitous,” Wiest said in an interview with the Kitsap Sun. 

During his tenure at BHA, Wiest oversaw a transformation of the housing authority, including the multimillion-dollar redevelopment of Westpark, which turned the World War II-era housing project into a new mixed-income neighborhood.

The Bremerton Housing Authority now manages 573 affordable units across the city, in addition to administering Kitsap County’s Section 8 voucher program, serving more than 2,200 low-income Bremerton residents. 

In recent years, Wiest has been a vocal advocate for affordable housing and efforts to combat chronic homelessness, even as housing costs have become increasingly unaffordable across the Puget Sound region. 

That included bringing famed “housing first” advocate Lloyd Pendelton to Kitsap in 2016, invigorating efforts around permanent supportive housing as a solution to rising homelessness in the West Sound. 

The Bremerton Housing Authority pitched in $3.1 million to fund Pendleton Place, the 72-unit permanent supportive apartment complex, which nonprofit Kitsap Mental Health Services expects to break ground on this fall.

Last year, the housing authority also started a rental assistance program to help low- to mid-income tenants stay housed, marking one of the most robust city assistance programs in the state. 

“I’ve been grateful for the things we’ve been able to accomplish over the last 14 years,” he said. “While there’s sadness in leaving, there’s satisfaction in accomplishing everything that was asked of me and this agency.”

(Photo Left: Anthony Williams outside of his Sheridan Heights apartment in Bremerton. Williams, who wasn't sure how he was going to make rent in April, received rental-assistance funds from the Bremerton Housing Authority.)

As  tenants face another month's rent due  in May, Kitsap County is going ahead with a countywide rental assistance program to help residents struggling from the COVID-19 pandemic’s economic fallout. 

Kitsap County received $641,438 in housing grants as part of the federal coronavirus aid package passed in late March, known as the CARES Act. That money will go toward short-term emergency rental assistance, split between social services nonprofit  Kitsap Community Resources  and  Housing Kitsap , the county’s housing authority. 

Housing Kitsap will receive $250,000 for its own tenants, while KCR will distribute $391,438 for renters in Poulsbo, Bainbridge Island, Port Orchard and unincorporated Kitsap County. The aid will  cover up to three months' rent for households  who make below 80% of Kitsap’s Area Median Income and have lost a job or seen income reduction because of the coronavirus crisis. It can apply retroactively to April rent. 

“I think it will be a godsend when the dollars are able to go out into the community,” said Kitsap County Commissioner Rob Gelder, who added it will not only provide stability for renters but also help landlords

“It's kind of a domino effect where the ability to help someone with their rent allows them to stay housed,” he said. “That’s good for them but it also has an ongoing effect through the local economy, for the landlord and property owners.” 

Renters in Bremerton have access to  rental assistance through the Bremerton Housing Authority  under a program city leaders and the housing authority started last year. That joint program has already passed out more than $88,000 to Bremerton renters impacted by the COVID-19 crisis. And it will take in another $268,383 in federal funding earmarked for Bremerton under the CARES Act. 

Housing Kitsap is working to get its program up and running as soon as possible, with plans to start accepting applications by the start of May, said Stuart Grogan, the housing authority’s executive director. 

“I think it will be huge and take an enormous pressure and stress off our clients,” he said, indicating that about 400 of Housing Kitsap tenants are likely eligible for the aid. 

Kitsap Community Resources started  accepting applications  this week and has beefed up its staffing in preparation for an influx of inquiries. Jeff Alevy, KCR executive director, says it hopes to turn around those requests in three days or less, which is especially important because May rent is due soon. 

“The timing is really critical,” he said. “It’s a blessing to be able to serve families who are struggling and don’t have other options.”

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When going through any emergency, there are seemingly infinite factors to consider when not only getting oneself through it but also guiding staff through the emergency. Some factors offer easy solutions and others have more complexity in the response. One of these areas is DEI in an Emergency. I had the opportunity to attend 2 recent workshops on working with DEI during the Covid-19 crisis. The workshop that I want to discuss is “Navigating DEI through Covid” which was held by the organization, Partners in Diversity.

This workshop discussed how employers can address staff needs during this health emergency using an equity lens. The panelists involved were:

The panelists discussed examples of how they are addressing the Covid crisis with a focus on DEI.

 

Portland State University (6000 employees with 5 unions)

City of Portland

 

During this health emergency, there are many things to consider when responding to staff needs during Covid using an equity lens. Some of these factors shared are:

 

Things to consider when navigating staff through Covid

The panelists also discussed ways employers can put “Equity in Action.

Equity in Action

There were many insightful things that were shared during the webinar but one I would like to highlight in centering DEI work not only in an emergency but also in general is, “Nothing about us without us.” Engage communities before making decisions that will affect them. 

As we navigate through this time, I am very appreciative of Homes for Good’s quick response in setting staff up to continue to serve our community. There is a lot to be learned from this time and I feel we will come out of this stronger and more connected to the communities we serve and each other.

What will be the shape of the future: V, W, U, L, or a swoosh?

This is shorthand for the direction of the economic recovery. V is a big fall but quick bounce-back to expansion. W indicates a double-dip recession — that might happen if another wave of the pandemic hits — while U signals a steep drop and a harder recovery. A deep dive and a long stay in contraction/depression is L.

And swoosh? According  to The Wall Street Journal , “Named after the Nike logo, it predicts a large drop followed by a painfully slow recovery, with many Western economies, including the U.S. and Europe, not back to 2019 levels of output until late next year — or beyond.”

Sorry, but no one anticipates an Amazon Smile trajectory.

But the experts may be getting ahead of themselves. As a society and an economy, we’re hardly at the whiteboard yet, much less drawing letters or shapes. The shutdown to battle the public-health emergency of COVID-19 was carried out quickly and effectively.

But industries, companies and consumer behavior won’t respond so snappily to executive orders about reopening, whether coming quickly in some states or at a much more measured pace in Washington, California and others.

President Donald Trump is pushing for a quick reopening of the economy. His chief pandemic adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci,  strongly warned a Senate panel  against doing that.

As a result of the shutdown, national unemployment jumped from a 50-year low in the opening months of the year to 14.7% in April, the highest level since modern record-keeping began in 1948.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said it could reach 20% this month.

The U-6 jobless rate, which includes workers not actively looking for a job and part-timers who want full-time work, shot up to nearly 23% in April.

Even with trillions in federal spending, little evidence indicates a quick return of an up cycle — the W or V scenarios. Key industries such as airlines, hotels and restaurants, remain in trouble of historic proportions. An estimated  100,000 small businesses have closed forever  nationwide as a direct result of the pandemic.

My colleague  Paul Roberts reported  that Amazon’s move to allow engineers and other staff to work from home until at least early October will badly wound downtown, the biggest economic engine of the city. But the policy is not limited to Amazon, nor the damage to downtown.

This metropolitan area enjoys a heavy concentration of tech workers and other elite jobs that easily allow people to work from home for an extended period.

But many more sectors — hotels, sit-down restaurants, brick-and-mortar retail, construction, manufacturing — can’t. Vendors that depend on the tech giants also can’t necessarily work from home. The convention and tourism businesses have been decimated.

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Over the past few years, the metro Denver area’s rapidly growing economy has caused both cost of living and rental rates to surge. Lakewood, Colorado has seen an increase in working families and individuals who are struggling to find safe, decent and affordable housing. Since early 2014, the average rent in Lakewood had risen by more than 23 percent, adding an extra $3,372 to annual housing costs for Lakewood’s renters. For those struggling to keep up with the skyrocketing cost of living, affordable housing is vital.

With land acquisition rates also on a steady rise, Metro West Housing Solutions (MWHS) used adaptive building reuse and public/private partnerships to combat the affordable housing crisis and transform a vacant office tower into a 152-unit community.

Before its transformation, 5800 W. Alameda Avenue was the site of an eight-story office building, six stories were never occupied, surrounded by unused parking. The tower connected to a long-abandoned single-story retail center that housed a dry-cleaning business whose onsite chemical disposal had contaminated the surrounding property. Due to its vacancy and brutalist architectural style, the building became infamous in Lakewood; developers avoided the neighborhood for nearly two decades.

MWHS saw an opportunity. After assembling a team of partners—JHL Constructors, architects from Sprocket Design-Build, and engineers from Martin & Martin and JCAA—a vision for the abandoned office tower began to take shape. The transformation required innovation, both in vision and construction, because office buildings aren’t designed to be apartments. The design team worked relentlessly to ensure that every apartment accommodated families while offering exceptional mountain and downtown cityscape views.

The 14-month construction process presented many challenges. The team had to work around structural columns and rebar tendons that could not be moved, figure out how to meet ADA requirements with a building constructed in 1981, and more. The construction team had to create a budget without knowing what they would find behind a wall. The successful transformation of the building’s challenging site highlights the creativity and problem-solving skills of both MWHS and the top-notch team of architects, designers, and contractors it assembled for this project.

The design of the buildings, which includes amenities like youth and adult education rooms, on-site bike storage, a community room, a rooftop deck with mountain views, and a fitness center, foster community among its residents. Additionally, MWHS employs an onsite Resident Services Coordinator to help residents connect to local resources and agencies. MWHS is committed to maintaining a safe and beautiful building while offering its residents vital resources as they work towards continued financial and economic stability. Although the construction of Fifty-Eight Hundred was funded by several different sources, these lasting resources are self-funded through rent collected from tenants. Now that construction is completed and residents have moved in, all property management is handled onsite directly by MWHS employees.

MWHS utilized a mix of public and private funding to build Fifty-Eight Hundred and provide its amenities. The project is also the first non-light rail and non-Denver County site to employ the innovative  Denver Regional Transit-Oriented Development Fund .

Turning Fifty-Eight Hundred from dream to reality required innovation, a lot of creative problem-solving, and perseverance. This successful affordable housing community stands as a testament to the innovation, collaboration, and passion of a determined team. Through adaptive reuse and innovative financing, a once-vacant office tower now provides beautiful homes and the opportunity for financial stability to hundreds of residents.