Social equity, education, jobs and housing were main talking points at Friday’s meeting of the Washington State Commission on African American Affairs. But that last topic, housing, was the most-discussed at the public meeting held at Vancouver Housing Authority’s offices in west Vancouver.
Clark County is in the midst of an affordable housing crisis that is playing out statewide, said Andy Silver, executive director of the local nonprofit Council for the Homeless. He told the commission that while 2 to 3 percent of Clark County’s population identifies as black, they make up about 16 percent of people accessing homeless services. There’s a long history driving that, he said.
“The 1930s is when our country started really started focusing for the first time on homeownership as a very important piece of the American dream and started spending a lot of federal tax dollars on encouraging and increasing homeownership,” Silver said. “That effort was extremely successful. Between 1930 and 1960, the homeownership rate in our country about doubled from about 30 percent to 60 percent. There was, I think, about $160 billion invested in order to do that. Ninety-eight percent of that money went to white families.”
He said the country hasn’t recovered from that disparity and that people of color continue to disproportionately have trouble securing housing. As historically black neighborhoods in Portland gentrify, people are moving to the suburbs in search of more affordable housing. That means Clark County is tasked with providing culturally specific services that have historically been available in Portland, not Clark County, he said.
“There are unique barriers that some of our communities of color face that need to be addressed in order for us to have the same success in our services in those populations as other populations,” Silver said.
The Council for the Homeless helps connect low-income residents to resources needed to get housing, such as getting housing vouchers that reduce the cost of rent. Silver is part of the group advocating for an affordable housing levy that will be on the November ballot in Vancouver; the money generated from the levy is supposed to buy, build and preserve low-income rental housing.
“I appreciate this conversation because it directly affects me as a millennial,” said Dolly England, who represents Southwest Washington on the 10-person Commission on African American Affairs. She works as the diversity outreach manager at Clark College. “I pay — between my husband and I — almost as much in rent as we do in student loans, and it’s preventing us from buying a home. The home we live in that we’re renting now, we would never be able to afford, so we will absolutely have to relocate.”
England joined the commission last year when she learned there wasn’t a representative from Southwest Washington.
Dr. James Smith, who represents King County on the commission, said that Seattle did an investigation that found evidence of housing discrimination.
“Redlining still exists, but in a different form,” he said.
“We don’t have the capacity here locally to do that sort of testing; but anecdotally, we do see intentional housing discrimination, and it’s gotten worse in this market,” Silver said. He pointed toward screening criteria that — when rental vacancies are low — filter out people with poor credit, evictions or criminal histories. “Who in our country has a criminal record? Very much disproportionately people of color.”
The Commission on African American Affairs will take the comments and questions from Friday’s meeting when it considers legislative recommendations. It meets every other month at cities around the state to discuss issues pertaining to the rights and needs of African-Americans.
“We can’t fix something if we can’t acknowledge that it’s broken, and that’s why we’re here today,” said Commissioner Sara Franklin-Phillips, who represents South King County.
