We would like to take this moment to acknowledge and honor the victims of last week’s shooting in Atlanta, Georgia. Their names were Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Yong Ae Yue, Delaina Ashley Yaun, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, and Paul Andre Michels. Six out of the eight people who were killed were Asian women, adding to the increasing count of anti-Asian hate crimes and fear that has been engulfing Asian American and Pacific Islander communities across the U.S.

The humanity of these women must be remembered as they are reflective of the varying lives within the Asian American experience. They were beloved mothers, grandmothers, wives, friends, and employees, some who immigrated to the U.S. and who worked hard to fulfill their individual American dreams. Their deaths should not be viewed as another statistic; instead, they should serve as yet another devastating reminder of white supremacy, structural racism, and misogyny that has been playing out against Black, Indigenous, and people of color, particularly women, in the U.S. for centuries.

Building Changes mourns and stands in solidarity with our Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. We reaffirm our commitment to addressing harm to all Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities. Whether we are advocating for more health services for pregnant mothers, working to ensure educational access for students despite their housing status and housing supports for families experiencing homelessness, or providing emergency dollars to help more people during the pandemic, our work would not be possible without the partnership of by/for Black, Indigenous, and people of color organizations in Washington State.

A number of our grantees and advocacy partners are doing incredible work to serve the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in our state, including: Communities of Concern Commission, Filipino Community of Seattle, InterIm Community Development Association, International Community Health Services, Korean Women’s Association, Pacific Islander Community Association of Washington, and The Denise Louie Education Center. We are grateful for their tireless work meeting the unique needs of individuals and communities in the face of a health and racial crisis.

At Building Changes, we need to ask ourselves how we can begin dismantling the deeply rooted structural racism and misogyny in the housing, education, and health systems. As an organization, we must be a more thoughtful partner who leans into the expertise of by/for providers and those with lived experience in every aspect of our work. As individuals, we must continue educating ourselves on the history of harm toward Black, Indigenous, and people of color and learn how we can be an ally who stands against hatred in our communities.

One immediate action many of us have taken is signing up for Hollaback! And Asian Americans Advancing Justice’s free bystander intervention training to stop anti-Asian and xenophobic harassment.

Let this not be another tragedy in history, as it is simply not enough to condemn atrocities against Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities. With our partners, funders, cities, states, and communities, we stand together to advocate for, uplift, and invest in building a safe and thriving society for everyone.

— The Staff of Building Changes

Liza Burell, Program Director

Over the past decade, Building Changes led the Family Homelessness Initiative (FHI), a focused effort to create high-performing homeless systems in King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties. Supported through a sustained financial commitment of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Building Changes assisted in the design and implementation of 79 projects totaling $29.8 million, working with the three counties and their community-based providers to improve experiences and outcomes for families engaging with the systems.

Some of those projects worked, and some did not. We often learned just as much from those that missed the mark, however, because they helped us understand the role that a homeless system needs to play.

In that role, the system caters to the individual needs of the families it serves, as opposed to requiring families to fit within the rigidities of the system’s own construct. In that role, system leaders take proactive steps to achieve the goal of an equitable homeless system for all families.

For much of its 10-year lifespan of FHI, I had the honor of leading FHI for Building Changes, first in Pierce County and later for the entire tri-county region. I come away from the experience proud of our successes, and resolute in my understanding that the value of equity must permeate through every practice, policy, and funding decision related to family homelessness. 

Addressing racial disproportionality and disparities is crucial for a homeless system. Here in Washington, 30% of all families experiencing homelessness are Black, yet Black families make up only 4% of our state’s total family population. The situation is similar for American Indians, who account for 5% of all families experiencing homelessness but only 2% of the total family population.

The greatest regret I have about FHI is our failure to address racial equity from the outset. We initially treated it as an afterthought instead of the basis from which all projects need to flow. Admittedly, we have a long way to go to create equitable homeless systems, but I’m pleased over the past few years to have seen progress among all three FHI counties in sharpening their focus on racial equity. 

In pursuit of creating equitable and effective homeless systems, FHI contributed significantly to our knowledge base of what solutions work best for families. For example, FHI supported the continuous improvement of Rapid Re-Housing (RRH), an evidence-based, Housing First intervention that quickly connects households experiencing homelessness to housing in the private rental market. The embrace of RRH moved systems away from transitional housing, an expensive intervention that served few families and yielded poor permanent outcomes. In contrast, RRH serves more families—and in a much more responsive, tailored, and humanistic way.

FHI also supported the development and scale-up of Diversion, an innovative approach that gives homeless systems another tool to serve even more families more quickly. Diversion helps families identify and obtain housing that is readily available through their own support network, rather than having to wait for housing from the homeless system that—due to inadequate resources—may never materialize. 

Diversion puts real dollars in the hands of real people, in the form of flexible funds, to address the real problems that get in the way of households becoming stably housed. One of the beauties of Diversion is how it supports families to recognize and celebrate their own strengths. I credit Pierce County decision-makers for their pioneering leadership in embedding Diversion at the front door of the county’s homeless system. 

I also am proud of the Centralized Diversion Fund (CDF), a project that originated through FHI support. CDF has helped to bring Diversion to scale in King County, supporting more than 800 families, individuals, and young adults successfully exit homelessness and impact racial disproportionality at the same time. Unfortunately, funding for the CDF thus far has come almost exclusively from private sources. CDF is an example of a solution to homelessness that works, yet inexplicably fails to get the public funding it deserves and needs in order to be sustained.

As FHI sunsets, I want to thank the Gates Foundation, each of the three counties, and all of our FHI project partners—in particular the organizations led by Black, Indigenous and other people of color that have helped us understand the human impacts of racial and ethnic disparities, and guided us on how those inequities can be addressed most effectively. They include: Africatown International (which operates the CDF), Mother Nation, Chief Seattle Club, Somali Youth and Family Club, Muslim Housing Services, Multicultural Child and Family Hope Center, and the Tacoma Ministerial Alliance. 

Building Changes has benefited from our relationships with these organizations as much as they benefited from our investments. That, too, is another powerful takeaway from FHI.

Megan Veith, JD, Senior Manager of Policy, Advocacy, & Research
Katara Jordan, JD, MSW, Senior Manager of Policy & Advocacy

In the first post of this two-part series, we shared the early learning and homelessness work Building Changes did through its State Partnerships Grant from Education Leads Home. In this post, we will share some of the updates to our work since it ended and the impacts of COVID-19 on children and families.

Our early learning partners, Child Care Resources (CCR) and the Washington State Association of Head Start & ECEAP (WSA), have expressed concerns about how COVID-19 has negatively impacted young children and families experiencing homelessness and child care providers. Immigrant families and families of color have been hit especially hard during this time. Some of the biggest issues our partners have raised include:

• Contact from families experiencing homelessness has dropped off, especially between April and June.
• Confusion around where child care facilities were open and whether families could continue to bring their children.
• Fear of using child care and venturing out of where families were staying because of increased risk of contracting COVID-19.
• Extra child care support needed to make virtual schooling work.
• Child care centers struggling with class size requirements, lowered enrollment rates, staff layoffs, lack of financial alternatives, high levels of stress and anxiety, lack of supplies such as diapers, technology use and access needs, and an aging workforce.
• Child care providers are also experiencing high levels of anxiety around contracting COVID-19 because many have family members who are essential workers. There is also a lack of mental health supports for child care providers themselves.
• Providers and families are concerned about the eviction moratorium ending, as well as lay-offs, furloughs, lack of employment benefits, and limited work hours due to the pandemic, which are causing disruptions in families’ eligibility in the Working Connections Child Care (WCCC) program and other support programs that are dependent on employment.

In our webinar and through our ELH project, one of our main advocacy strategies was extending the Homeless Grace Period (HGP) under the Working Connections Child Care (WCCC) program. WCCC is a state program that provides subsidized child care benefits to families in low-income households. The HGP originally allowed families in WCCC, who were experiencing homelessness, to have four months to submit WCCC documentation. We helped pass House Bill 2456 during the 2020 Washington State legislative session to extend this to 12 months. While there has been success with this extension, we are concerned about how the Department of Children Youth & Families (DCYF) is implementing parts of this law. We urge DCYF to: 

• Ensure that all families who are experiencing homelessness under the McKinney-Vento definition in the WCCC statute will be able to use HGP as they are entitled to under the law. DCYF should be working with the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) which already has a long history of determining eligibility under McKinney-Vento.
• Change its new practice of requiring families to wait a full year before they can use the HGP again. It can be incredibly difficult to find work for families experiencing homelessness and COVID-19 is making this even harder. It is unfortunate that DCYF is making it harder for families to use HGP to help them secure work during this time. 
• Not create additional barriers for families experiencing homelessness that put families’ WCCC eligibility at risk.

We know that this legislative session will come with new challenges and that the next few months will likely show increases in COVID-19 deaths. During the 2021 legislative session, we are also working to ensure that children experiencing homelessness have automatic and prioritized access to ECEAP. Currently most children experiencing homelessness can enroll, but some are “over income" due to ECEAP’s extremely low income eligibility level.  Building Changes and our partners will continue to advocate for and support efforts to prioritize the needs of young children and families experiencing homelessness, who are often left out of funding conversations and their needs overlooked. 

Learn more about our policy and advocacy work.

Megan Veith and Katara Jordan are Senior Managers at Building Changes, leading policy and advocacy efforts to impact children, youth, and families experiencing homelessness in Washington State. Megan received a B.A. in English (Honors) and Political Science from the University of Washington. She also holds a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center, with a certificate in Refugee & Humanitarian Emergencies. Katara holds a B.A. in Women’s Studies from Barnard College, Columbia University in New York City, a Master’s in Social Work from the University of Washington, and a law degree from the University of Washington School of Law. 

Megan Veith, JD, Senior Manager of Policy, Advocacy, & Research
Katara Jordan, JD, MSW, Senior Manager of Policy & Advocacy

According to a 2018-19 report from the Department of Children Youth & Families (DCYF), one in 14 children under the age of six were identified as experiencing homelessness in Washington State. Furthermore, only 11% of the 39,641 young children experiencing homelessness in the state were in the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (“ECEAP”), Early Head Start, Head Start, or school district programs. Based on our education work at Building Changes with students and families in the K-12 system who are experiencing homelessness, we know that homelessness has negative and traumatic impacts on young people’s education, developmental, and health outcomes.  

Our education work has taught us how schools and teachers can implement strategies with positive impacts on students experiencing homelessness, such as establishing and maintaining routines, providing kid-friendly food to eat, and having a caring adult check in with students and their families.  

Given the alarming number of young children experiencing homelessness outside the K-12 school system in Washington State, we wanted to learn more about how early learning programs can better support these children and their families. We decided to look into identifying and improving state policies and encouraging collaboration between housing and early learning providers.

To continue our learning in this area, Building Changes applied for and received an Education Leads Home State Partnerships Grant and partnered with Governor Inslee’s Office, Child Care Resources (CCR), and the Washington State Association of Head Start & ECEAP (WSA) to better understand the current state policy environment and barriers to early learning access for young children and their families experiencing homelessness.* Below is a highlight of activities and key takeaways from our partnership activities.  

Partnership Activities and Learnings

Our project takeaways highlight that more work is needed to better support young children experiencing homelessness in Washington. Child care and housing providers, partners, advocates, and others must work together across systems and silos to prioritize and expand program access for children experiencing homelessness, particularly children of color.

Statewide Webinar and a Note on COVID-19

Early in 2020, we created a webinar that highlighted our learnings in more detail. We originally planned to release the webinar then, but COVID-19 hit and due to the overwhelming impacts of the pandemic on providers, families, and children, we thought it would be best to delay its release. We are releasing it now to coincide with Washington’s new legislative session.

Given what we know now after months of grappling with the impacts of COVID-19, it is even more critical that state decisionmakers support policies that give child care and housing providers, families, and young children the resources and supports they need. Please read the second post of this two-part series to learn about how COVID-19 has significantly increased the need for early learning and child care services among children and families experiencing homelessness.

(*In December 2018, the Education Leads Home Campaign launched the State Partnerships on Student Homelessness Project. Education Leads Home (ELH) is a national campaign focused on improving education and life outcomes for children and youth experiencing homelessness. Through the State Partnerships project, ELH awarded six states, including Washington, grants to develop and implement state-level activities to support their campaign goals.)

Megan Veith and Katara Jordan are Senior Managers at Building Changes, leading policy and advocacy efforts to impact children, youth, and families experiencing homelessness in Washington State. Megan received a B.A. in English (Honors) and Political Science from the University of Washington. She also holds a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center, with a certificate in Refugee & Humanitarian Emergencies. Katara holds a B.A. in Women’s Studies from Barnard College, Columbia University in New York City, a Master’s in Social Work from the University of Washington, and a law degree from the University of Washington School of Law. 

Building Changes has appointed Daniel Narváez Zavala as interim executive director, effective January 4, 2021. Daniel has been our director of policy and strategic communications since September 2018, successfully leading our efforts at advocacy and making sure that our work is shared in ways that achieve maximum impact.

An advocate for social justice, Daniel believes that solutions to homelessness need to percolate from within communities and center race and equity rather than be dictated through existing power structures. He joined Building Changes after working in education in the areas of policy, government relations, and teaching. His education background has been a real asset to Building Changes as we continue to work to improve the housing and academic outcomes of the more than 42,500 students experiencing homelessness in Washington.

Seattle-born, Daniel is a graduate of the University of Washington Law School. Prior to that, he attended Stanford University where he earned a bachelor’s in international relations and a master’s in psychology. He is also an active member in our community, serving on two local boards assisting youth in low-income households.

Daniel succeeds D’Artagnan Caliman, who is returning to his home state to become director of the new Justice Oregon for Black Lives initiative of the Meyer Memorial Trust. Building Changes thanks D’Artagnan for ably leading us the past eighteen months. We also extend our gratitude to Daniel for stepping up to assume this new role, enabling a seamless transition.

The board was unanimous that Daniel has the background and commitment to ensure that Building Changes loses no momentum heading into a new year full of opportunity. Daniel will lead our organizational initiatives for 2021, which include:

• Improving equitable access and experiences for children, youth, and families impacted by housing crises, with a focus on Black, Indigenous, and other people of color.
• Securing adequate and sustainable resources and capacity for housing, education, and health systems.
• Holding those systems accountable to advance racially equitable and culturally responsive policies, practices, and community partnerships.
• Facilitating leadership buy-in and cross-system collaboration.

With racial justice front and center—and the cornerstone to effective governance—the new Biden-Harris administration has an opportunity in its first 100 days to address homelessness with sweeping and impactful changes centered in equity. With the moratorium on evictions coming to an end, there is no time to wait. 

1. Reaffirm the position of “Housing First” and ensure a right to safe and stable housing for our residents experiencing homelessness. Broaden access and homeless services for those living with others due to economic hardship (i.e., doubled-up). With rent-burdened households and landlords seeking back payments, provide bailouts to landlords and forgiveness for renters to support households staying where they are. Strengthen the financial footing of households through extended unemployment benefits and flexible emergency funds for households in crisis. With an eye toward the growing economic disparities through stagnant wages and underemployment, build more affordable housing for households making less than 30% of the area median income (AMI).  
2. Address the health needs of people experiencing homelessness, especially people of color disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. As a social determinant of health, housing stability should be included in any health care efforts. Recognize that many households are living doubled-up and increasing their risk of exposure to COVID-19. This is disproportionately impacting people of color, especially our Latinx communities and farmworkers. Develop contingencies or enhancements in case the Affordable Care Act is altered. Ensure Pandemic-EBT and other nutritional programs are equitable, and minimize restrictions and other barriers to access. Pass the growing number of bills that address the maternal health care of pregnant and postpartum people in need of stable housing. 
3. Direct more funding for programs and staff to support students experiencing homelessness. Only 56% of students experiencing homelessness graduate from high school on time. And that was before the virus. We need to increase funding for students experiencing homelessness through the Education for Homeless Children and Youth Program (ECHY), McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act (MKV), Head Start, and other programs for students from early childhood to postsecondary, including child care. Biden and Harris can use their platform to bring visibility to a population rarely given the attention and focus needed to bring educational opportunity.   
4. Center racial equity in every approach. Make sure department and agency heads are leaders with strong connections to the communities they will serve. This starts with the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Provide ample funding to tribal nations. Remove the burden and stigma of “public charge.” Focus solutions to meet the needs of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. Further, the overrepresentation of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color among the LGBTQ+  community means addressing the rights  of people discriminated based on sexual orientation and gender identity as part of the solution toward racial equity. 

The Biden-Harris administration promoted itself as a bridge to heal a national divide. Let our nation start healing by rebuilding communities and offering compassionate solutions to our neighbors who are most underserved: people experiencing homelessness.  

By Megan Veith, JD, Policy & Research Associate

Homeless service providers should care about maternal health and mortality because stabilizing pregnant and postpartum moms in housing not only improves their housing outcomes but may also contribute to better maternal health outcomes.

According to the most recent report by the Washington State Maternal Mortality Review Panel, the maternal mortality rate for pregnancy-related deaths was 11.2 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2014-16. Among these deaths, 60% were preventable. The panel’s priority recommendation in preventing pregnancy-related deaths is addressing social determinants of health and social inequities. Strategies include prioritizing funding for housing and addressing the housing crisis to ensure women and children have access to safe, affordable, and stable housing during and after pregnancy. 

The panel also recommends applying a racial equity lens to policies, programs, and resource decisions. This is especially important because we know that people of color are overrepresented in the homeless population and have disparate maternal health outcomes. In the state of Washington alone, the rates of homelessness and maternal mortality for American Indian and Alaska Native families are nearly 7x greater than the rate for white women and their families. 

Another recommendation is to improve and expand the Health Care Authority’s Maternity Support Services (MSS). MSS is a program covered under Medicaid that helps pregnant women in low-income households get the health and social services they need. Eligibility is not based on housing status, but on Medicaid enrollment and pregnancy. The Maternal Mortality Review Panel recommends that the Health Care Authority extend MSS for women to one year postpartum, provide more MSS blocks of time for each participant, and improve reimbursement rates so MSS slots can be expanded across Washington. 

Building Changes actively supports MSS as an opportunity to improve patients’ health and housing outcomes. In 2016, we established the Perinatal Housing Grant project in Pierce County. The goals of the project were to support positive health outcomes for pregnant and post-partum women and their children under MSS, and to house families experiencing homelessness or at-risk of homelessness by training MSS caseworkers in Diversion. The project ends this fall and a final report will be released in 2020. Preliminarily, we are hearing from MSS support staff that this project has helped streamline processes for patients to obtain housing, helped patients avoid costs of eviction and moving, helped cover patients’ rent during unpaid parental leave gaps, and encouraged patients to self-advocate. We’ve also learned that cross-sector work like this between health and housing can reduce trauma and save time and money.

We thought it was a win-win solution to help empower and collaborate with the MSS providers to address housing issues directly with their clients.
—Emily Mirra, Building Changes

In referencing the importance of this project grant and MSS, Building Changes’ program lead Emily Mirra stated, “We learned from the MSS provider community that many of them are working with families who are experiencing homelessness or unstably housed. MSS staff had limited resources to help families with housing and were unclear how to connect them to the homeless response system. We thought it was a win-win solution to help empower and collaborate with the MSS providers to address housing issues directly with their clients, as we know that safe and stable housing is a crucial part of a healthy environment for growing families.” 

Over the next few years, Building Changing will be focusing more on this intersection between maternal health and housing. Building off the Perinatal Housing Grant, as well as recommendations from the Maternal Mortality Review Panel, we are starting a research, policy, and advocacy project to improve and expand MSS to better serve patients experiencing homelessness or at-risk of homelessness. The project will involve provider surveys, patient interviews, statewide MSS site visits, as well as state comparison research. We will then use that research to advocate in Olympia for improving and expanding MSS to better support positive housing outcomes. 

We are excited about this work and believe it is important because as the Panel put so well, “[h]ealth inequities affect everyone, including families and communities. When people of childbearing age experiencing poverty, trauma, homelessness, violence, maltreatment, and other adverse experiences within community environments, the lifelong health and wellbeing of the entire family can be negatively impacted.”