HiFi Farms Proud to Announce Alliance With the Welcome Home Coalition
HiFi Farms is proud to announce our alliance with the Welcome Home Coalition, continuing our involvement with the successfulYes For Affordable Homes campaign. For the past two years, Welcome Home has grown a coalition of 140+ organizations dedicated to building back our affordable housing infrastructure to ensure that all families can count on a home they can afford. Tragically, the region needs more than 63,000 affordable homes for families with low incomes and to solve this problem, we need dedicated public funding to ensure this critical community need. Through policy research, community education, grassroots organizing and leadership development among community members and electeds. Welcome Home has successfully championed revenue campaigns that will result in the creation of thousands of new affordable homes. In the last year alone, Welcome Home has secured hundreds of millions of dollars for affordable homes, including an historic voter approved ballot measure, all with an annual budget of less than $200,000!
But the work must continue and is more critical than ever. National politics threaten to unravel our already underfunded safety and dwindling federal resources for housing. Homelessness among Oregon students rose again to 21,000 children last year, and rents are rising faster than any other place in the nation. We must continue to fight for seniors in Hillsboro, veterans in Gresham, homeless youth in Milwaukie, and families struggling across the entire Metro region. We must do better, and we can with mobilized, organized, and dedicated full hearts — until home is a place we can all afford.
Potential and developing local funding strategies and campaigns for 2017
- Washington County Levy for affordable homes and critical services
- Multnomah County local housing voucher program funded with reallocated hotel taxes (upon the completion of the Convention Center Hotel)
- Construction Excise taxes dedicated to affordable homes in growing cities including: Milwaukie, Beaverton, Tigard and Hillsboro
State funding and policy campaigns we will support in 2017
- Expanded GO Bond funding for affordable homes at the state ($70million)
- Expanded Emergency Service funding for shelters and rent assistance ($10million)
- Expanded Document Recording Fee for affordable homes ($12 million)
- Just Cause Evictions to protect Oregon renters from discrimination
- Lift the Rent Control Preemption for local control to prevent excessive rent gouging.
Please consider this: While homelessness across the nation continues to decline, Oregon has the highest percentage of homeless families with children not living in a shelter, according to the latest national estimate by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Donate to the Welcome Home Coalition HERE.
