When Thomas was living in a homeless shelter in Tacoma, he saved up to get an apartment. He had first and last months' rent, a deposit, and enough money for three tenant screening fees each month. An error on his screening report got him rejected by landlords time after time, though, and he spent hundreds of dollars on tenant screening reports. Thomas was stuck in the shelter months longer than he needed to be. A proposed law making its way through the legislature solves this problem by creating portable screening reports -- find out what you can do to support this solution!
Featured Advocates
Housing and Homelessness Advocacy Day in Pictures
Housing and Homelessness Advocacy Day was a great opportunity to let our friends, family and other online contacts know about our advocacy efforts and encourage them to join us. To make online advocacy easy and fun, Firesteel set up a photo booth, complete with pre-made signs, dry-erase boards for those who wanted to write their own messages, and props. Hundreds of advocates took pictures, which were shared on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and a slew of websites. Check out some of our favorite shots!
Educators Speak Up for Homeless Students
Education is a major focus of this legislative session, in part because policymakers have been directed by the state Supreme Court to invest billions more dollars in funding K-12 education. But lawmakers and advocates alike recognize that as long as family homelessness is a problem in our state, students and schools will suffer. In this video, educators explain how they've seen homelessness affect students, and how these experiences motivated them to join Housing and Homelessness Advocacy Day.
One Night Count Results Galvanize Action
Each year, volunteers across the country fan out through their communities to count people who are sleeping outdoors. 3,117 homeless men, women and children were out in the cold in King County between 2 and 5 a.m. today.
Real Change, a homeless empowerment project and newspaper based in Seattle, organizes a "Sounding of the Gong" event the morning after the count to bring attention to the problem of homelessness. Firesteel spoke with Real Change Founding Director Tim Harris about the count results, which reflected a 14 percent increase from 2013 in the number of people sleeping outdoors. We also interviewed Rachael Myers, Executive Director of the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance, about advocacy efforts to end homelessness in Washington state. Join Housing and Homelessness Advocacy Day on Jan. 28 in Olympia to meet your legislators and encourage them to support policies that will end homelessness.Back to School: “No One Would Have Known I Was Homeless”
At age 14, Brandy Sincyr, along with her mother and sister, escaped an abusive stepfather and found herself bouncing between shelters and temporary living arrangements. Despite the many challenges of not knowing where she would sleep each night, Brandy graduated from high school -- and then went on to earn a political science degree from Seattle Pacific University in June. Now she's leveraging her own experience to advocate on behalf of the more than 27,000 homeless students in Washington state. Read Brandy's story in the final post of our "Back to School" series on student homelessness.