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The Washington State Affordable Housing Advisory Board recently released a “Housing Advisory Plan” to address what it describes as an “urgent crisis” of needed affordable housing options in the state. According to the plan, there is only one affordable housing unit available for every five households in need (for those at or below 50-percent of median family income (MFI)). To illustrate the scope of the problem, the plan notes that in 2023, there were 453,423 renter households in the 0-50% MFI bracket and a supply of only 155,214 subsidized units. Drawing on the additional need in higher MFI brackets and the expected population growth, the plan’s authors claim that Washington “needs to add more than a million new homes” in Read More ›

In this episode, I’m joined by Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Marvin Olasky who is the author of 29 books, the former editor of WORLD Magazine, and has spent the last year living in homeless programs across the U.S. to learn from the people living in them. We discuss the bias of West Coast journalism, what makes programs successful, and the Read More ›

An eviction in Auburn, a city south of Seattle, turned deadly the other week. Six deputies with the King County Sheriff’s SWAT team approached an apartment home to “serve a high-risk civil eviction order” and were shot at, according to video. It appears that deputies returned fire in self-defense, killing the shooter inside the home. The circumstances surrounding this dangerous eviction are unknown for now, but the event brings to mind another eviction-turned-violent that occurred in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle last spring. In this case, a tenant named “Eucytus” fired at deputies while barricaded in the apartment and then died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Seattle detective David Easterly was critically injured by a gunshot wound during the incident. Read More ›

Andrea Suarez, the founder of outreach organization We Heart Seattle, joins Caitlyn McKenney on this episode to talk about the power of volunteerism to restore city spaces and get people off the streets. We discuss protecting parks and green spaces, what’s going wrong in Olympia, WA, and the failures of low-barrier supportive housing.