What: Affordable housing workshop, “God’s Work — Our Hands: Working Together to End Homelessness.”
When: 9 a.m. Saturday.
Where: St. Andrew Lutheran Church, 5607 N.E. Gher Road, Vancouver.
Register: Email officeassistant@salcvan.org with your name, email address, home mailing address and affiliated church or faith community.
Churches are considering the ways they could help low-income renters faced with Clark County’s rising rents and low vacancy rates. Members of the faith community are gathering Saturday morning to talk about potential solutions to the area’s affordable housing shortage.
The workshop, called “God’s Work — Our Hands: Working Together to End Homelessness,” takes place 9 a.m. at St. Andrew Lutheran Church in Vancouver.
The thought behind pulling together different faith communities was that more could be accomplished jointly than individually, said church member Denny Scott.
What: Affordable housing workshop, "God's Work -- Our Hands: Working Together to End Homelessness."
When: 9 a.m. Saturday.
Where: St. Andrew Lutheran Church, 5607 N.E. Gher Road, Vancouver.
Register: Email officeassistant@salcvan.org with your name, email address, home mailing address and affiliated church or faith community.
“We don’t have any preconceived answers that we’re going to trumpet,” he said.
Rather, it will be an active discussion to see what kind of ideas garner the most support and are the most doable.
The discussion was spurred last year when residents at Courtyard Village Apartments were notified in monthly waves to leave or reapply for tenancy as new management was renovating the units and increasing rents. A former Courtyard Village tenant, who was displaced during the notices and eventually secured housing, will speak at Saturday’s event.
Mayor Tim Leavitt; director of the Council for the Homeless, Andy Silver; Share’s director of programs, Amy Reynolds, and Rev. David Tinney of the First United Methodist Church are also scheduled to talk.
Challenging task
Community members had a free-wheeling discussion on affordable housing in February at Tinney’s church on Main Street in Vancouver.
“What’s happened is that people can’t get into housing because there’s not enough housing to put them in,” Scott said. “As we’ve come out of the recession, the high demand for apartments has driven rents up.”
Scott sits on Vancouver’s Affordable Housing Task Force, which meets monthly to advise the city council on affordable housing issues and possible solutions. The council is currently considering tenant protections recommended by the task force, such as eliminating source-of-income discrimination and increasing the amount of notice tenants are given to vacate.
Faith-based groups have worked to end homelessness in various ways, whether it’s through church-supported fundraisers, food banks, educational programs or clothing drives. St. Andrew has about 250 members and provides overnight housing in the church gym during the winter months through Winter Hospitality Overflow. It’s a big undertaking to provide bedding, showers, snacks and breakfast. Those involved in WHO, a type of emergency shelter, have started talking about more permanent housing solutions for those living on the streets. St. Andrew Lutheran, whose pastor, Jim Stender, is on Share Vancouver’s board of directors, has long worked toward ending homelessness, Scott said, but the affordable housing crisis is making that work more difficult.
“We’re taking steps and we’re becoming more outspoken advocates for programs that move people into housing,” he said.
Rotating table discussions in the later part of the morning will address what churches are currently doing to end homelessness, what they’re thinking of doing and what churches could do together. The last piece is making those discussion topics become action items, and perhaps organizing a future workshop, Scott said.
