We are a network of organizations and community members working across regional geographies, sectors, and ideological boundaries to build a future where everyone, regardless of income level or background, has access to a safe, stable, and affordable home. We believe that the benefits of growth should be shared equitably by all those who live and work in our region.
We believe in building a King County for Everyone.
Why King County for Everyone?
We recognize that no single sector, funding source, policy, or jurisdiction alone can solve our ongoing housing affordability and equity crisis. The housing challenges that we face are massive, interrelated, and regional. Neither the ongoing causes nor the effects are contained tidily within single cities or neighborhoods. Even with hard fought local victories for affordable housing, our region has failed to build and preserve enough homes for current and future residents across all income levels and backgrounds.
Despite the scale of the challenges we face, there is no shortage of community wisdom, housing expertise, and planning foresight to come up with the right solutions. There is, however, a lack of coordination and dialogue between diverse organizations to agree upon and realize bold, comprehensive, and sustainable solutions.
What we do
To overcome the inertia of the status quo, we intend to collectively foster coalition partnerships, technical solutions, education, and the broad political will necessary to demand policies that connect housing to everything else: community stability, racial equity, environmental sustainability, transportation, access to jobs and amenities, economic growth, public health, quality of life, and so much more. Specifically speaking, we:
◊ Develop bold and innovative policy and regulatory recommendations
◊ Use our collective voice to inform and reframe the public conversation
◊ Uplift vulnerable communities
◊ Empower and connect work that is already happening in King County
◊ Organize and mobilize grassroots support
◊ Provide education and technical expertise to local leaders
◊ Stimulate and support the spawning of KC4E chapters in other cities, like Seattle for Everyone
Founding Principles
King County for Everyone represents the evolution of the work done by Seattle for Everyone. For this work to be truly authentic and owned by those who are doing it, we must leave space for our values and goals to evolves with new voices and local prioritization. We propose the following principles to start the conversation:
◊ There is untapped power in creating a truly broad and diverse regional coalition
◊ Focus on aligning behind shared outcomes; find intersections of values
◊ Solutions to the housing crisis must be comprehensive; this emphatically includes subsidy and incentives for supportive, low-income, and middle-income housing.
◊ Honest discourse is needed to create credibility and transparency
◊ Focus on mission before organization
◊ Manage through trust, not control
◊ Promote others, not yourself
◊ Build constellations, not stars
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