Housing Summit Seeks Help For Poor Experts Will Brainstorm Saturday For Ways To Create Affordable Homes

An upcoming Spokane housing summit may plant seeds for a new low-income housing levy voters could see as soon as next spring.

A broad spray of housing advocates, city leaders and others will gather Saturday to brainstorm ways to create more affordable homes in the area.

“A Roof Over My Head II” comes as Congress announces plans to shrink the federal government’s role in housing the poor.

It also arrives as Spokane’s tight rental market is forcing impoverished families to share homes, or squeezing them out into the streets.

“I am getting besieged with calls for help,” said Jackie Brislin of the Greater Spokane Coalition Against Poverty. “There’s no more money available. Everyone is squeezed dry.”

Housing advocates point to these numbers as proof of a crisis:

More than a dozen families are turned away from the Spokane Homeless Project on a daily basis.

Rents have shot up about twice as fast as wages during the past decade.

About 20,000 households in the Spokane area spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent.

Brislin said activists have tried to rebound from the defeat of the 1994 housing levy, which proposed raising $20 million by hiking property taxes over a 10-year span. The whole plan called for pumping about $80 million into building and rehabilitating housing for the poor.

Brislin said a new levy would try to do more with less.

“You’re going to get more for your bucks,” she predicted, noting a rough plan calls for a more comprehensive approach to the housing problems.

But Jim Bamberger, a likely architect of any new levy proposal, said everything is on hold until it becomes clear how much local, state and federal governments plan to invest in affordable housing.

Bamberger, director of Spokane’s Legal Services Center, said it appears Spokane will have to save itself this time instead of relying on help from outside coffers.

“The community has to galvanize with a sense of purpose,” he said.

The Saturday program begins at 8 a.m, inside the Lair Student Union Conference Center at Spokane Community College. A $20 registration fee includes lunch. Some homeless and poor people will be admitted for free.

Spokane Mayor Jack Geraghty, state Rep. Lisa Brown, D-Spokane and other decision makers have been asked to attend. They are expected to get together with housing advocates in a couple of weeks and try to craft a plan.

, DataTimes