Editorial: Increase fee that helps fight homelessness

Published 1:30 am Friday, December 23, 2016

By The Herald Editorial Board

On Wednesday, the year’s longest night, officials with Snohomish County, the city of Everett and homeless advocates marked the fifth annual Homeless Person’s Memorial Day, remembering 15 people who died on the streets, of whom six were veterans.

“Regardless of the circumstance of someone passing away, they deserve to be recognized and memorialized,” said Cammy Hart-Anderson, a manager with the county’s chemical dependency, mental health and veterans services department, in a report in Thursday’s Herald by Caitlin Tompkins.

These advocates and officials have worked in recent years to increase the visibility of those who are homeless and push for programs that address homelessness and its causes, notably resulting in continuing housing efforts in Snohomish County and Everett’s Streets Initiative.

But as local communities look to expand and strengthen programs that address homelessness and help to keep families and individuals in their homes, an important source of revenue could dwindle over the next two years before disappearing all together after 2019.

Since 2002, the state has collected a document recording fee on home sales and refinanced home mortgages. Currently at $48, the homeless housing surcharge likely goes unnoticed by most, but the revenue it generates is the state’s most significant source of support for homelessness programs, representing almost half the funds the state has available to move people off the streets and into shelters and long-term housing, according to the Center for Community Change, a housing advocate.

Nearly 60,000 people were provided housing between 2013-15 through the support the fees generate.

Legislation that authorizes the fee was scheduled to sunset, eliminating the funding source, but last-minute legislation in 2014 saved the fee and the programs it supports. But supporters now face another deadline as the fee is again subject to be reduced by nearly $70 million before 2019, at which point the legislation sunsets, reported public radio station KNKX (88.5 FM).

Currently the fee is expected to bring in about $113 million over the next two years. About 60 percent of the fund is distributed among the state’s 39 counties and to cities and towns in each county, funding specific programs in homeless housing plans. The remaining portion is used by the state for grants to provide housing assistance and shelter programs.

But in the threat of a sunset is the opportunity to not only continue the fee but increase it and expand on the good that it does. Advocates, including the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance, plan to lobby to increase the recording fee to $100. The group also is seeking an end to the sunset clause to avoid the program’s potential loss in the future.

The Alliance also is asking the Legislature to consider a boost in funding of the state’s Housing Trust Fund. Investing $200 million would build about 5,700 affordable homes, providing housing for families, seniors and those with mental illness.

The state Department of Commerce, which administers the homeless housing surcharge, also tracks statistics on housing issues, county by county.

Snohomish County’s rental vacancy rate is 2.6 percent, a factor in the cost of rent as well as availability. During 2015, 2,669 people were provided rental assistance or housing because of the surcharge. The average length of stay in emergency shelters or transitional housing was 58 days in the county; 20 days or less is the goal. And the percentage of those who move on to permanent housing was 45 percent; with 80 percent being the goal.

As the costs of rent and housing have increased, so have the numbers of those who are homeless or are in jeopardy of losing their housing. Last February’s Point in Time count of the county’s homeless population found 481 people without shelter, an increase from 321 the year before. The number of unsheltered families with children more than doubled to 35.

Rather than allow a successful program to sink under a sunset provision, the homeless housing surcharge needs to be doubled and made permanent.