Poverty Issues Overshadowed In 2000 Elections

While discussion of poverty and low-wage jobs infiltrated local campaigns, housing remained a stealth issue.

Marj Dahlstrom, the new executive director of the Spokane Low Income Housing Consortium, said she saw no mention in dozens of legislative campaign mailings about critical housing problems - such as high local foreclosure rates and a lack of family-sized apartment vacancies.

She believes the absence is because housing is seen as a secondary problem attributable to poverty.

“A lot of people characterize housing issues as income issues: If people had better jobs, more money, then housing would be more affordable,” she said.

“It may be just overshadowed by income issues, or it’s possibly overshadowed by other larger issues like education.”

But housing is itself a significant barrier to economic well-being. The Spokane Housing Authority has a waiting list of 2,500 families and six years.

A study by a national housing research group estimated that a Spokane County worker would need to clock in 62 hours a week at a minimum wage job to afford an average-priced, two-bedroom apartment.

Seattle low-income housing advocate John Shaw said discussion of unaffordable apartments and homes were also absent from statewide races.

Shaw notes the last time significant poverty issues were discussed in Olympia was during the 1997 welfare reform debate.

It’s since been glossed over, as much of the Puget Sound area revels in prosperity. “For some reason, helping people has become something we discuss in secret, or private, and not in public,” he said.

“It’s really too bad,” said Shaw, of the Washington Low Income Housing Network. “We do need government to address the problems we’re seeing. The market is not going to be the solution in any time we see in the near future.”