OLYMPIA — Activists throughout Washington have a dream: to finish discrimination and alleviate the foundation causes of systemic poverty throughout the state.
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, nonprofit leaders, neighborhood activists and younger lobbyists — together with two dozen from Clark County — traveled to Olympia to foyer for that dream.
The Seattle-based nonprofit Statewide Poverty Motion Community organized the occasion.
Vancouver nonprofit Odyssey World Worldwide Training Providers was among the many 9 teams that attended Monday’s occasion at The Olympia Middle.
“Dr. King was someone who urged us to speak even when we were feeling fear,” Rep. Shaun Scott, D-Seattle, informed the gathering. “My fear in some ways is that we kind of relegate Dr. King to that grainy black and white face that we see. But fighting injustice in the way Dr. King did means challenging all facets of inequality.”
Monday marked the second week of the 2025 legislative session, which formally started Jan. 13. The occasion additionally coincided with Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the presidential inauguration — a trifecta that a number of activists stated felt symbolic.
Vancouver resident Caiden Mizrahi-Boyarsky, 17, stated he traveled to Olympia as a result of he needed to ensure his voice was heard by the lawmakers who signify him within the seventeenth Legislative District.
“I think a lot of time with lawmakers, a lot of them forget that poverty is a systemic issue. It’s not due to anyone’s laziness. It’s not due to anyone’s culture. It’s due to a systemic issue that puts people in that situation,” Mizrahi-Boyarsky stated. “We’re just trying to make sure our people are safe, and they have the same resources that everyone else has.”
Within the afternoon, neighborhood advocates met with the senators and representatives from their respective districts throughout the state.
Advocates from the forty ninth Legislative District spoke to their delegation: Rep. Sharon Wylie, Rep. Monica Stonier and Sen. Annette Cleveland, all Vancouver Democrats. The advocates shared their experiences of homelessness, enduring poverty and the change they hope to ignite by way of lobbying and advocacy.
Escaping poverty
Throughout a gathering with Cleveland in her workplace, about 20 advocates from Clark County urged her to push for laws that may enhance the quantity households obtain in money help and get rid of the 60-month lifetime cap on Momentary Help for Needy Households, or TANF.
Two Vancouver residents relayed their private tales of dwelling in poverty and the way they depend on TANF — along with working — to make ends meet.
“I am advocating for you to look at increases and get those into play,” Vancouver resident Cheyonna Lewis stated. “That is my only income. Without it, I would be homeless, and I don’t want to experience that again.”
In response to information from the US Census, 7.5 p.c of Clark County’s inhabitants reside in poverty.
Vancouver resident Brandi Williams grew to become homeless in 2011 after she misplaced her TANF advantages. She had reached the five-year time restrict on money help.
Though she was working half time, she had three youngsters and was additionally attending college. Her paycheck alone wasn’t sufficient to cowl the price of hire, so she was evicted.
For the following six years, she was homeless, however she informed nobody.
“I couldn’t get another place because I had an eviction and I didn’t make three times the income,” Williams stated. “The whole time I was in school, even while doing this work, I was homeless, and I had just lost everything.”
Williams now works full time for the Southwest Washington Accountable Group of Well being as a community-based workforce senior specialist.
She now pays her personal hire, along with her daughter’s hire.
Williams made it out, however escaping poverty isn’t all the time linear. Some folks want longer to get to a spot of monetary stability, she stated.
“I think they should extend the time because you never know what a family is going through,” Williams stated. “I was just a single mom of three kids trying to go to school to better my life. Had I kept my TANF, my son wouldn’t have had his first bedroom at 17.”
Cleveland stated she’s completed loads of work to attempt to modify the closing dates on money help as a result of she acknowledges it as a barrier.
Regardless of Washington dealing with a projected funds shortfall of greater than $12 billion over the following 4 years, Cleveland stated she would prioritize amending and enhancing applications that many households depend on for money help, meals and housing, similar to TANF and the Supplemental Vitamin Help Program.
“I used to sit on the Human Services Committee, and we did a lot of work around TANF,” Cleveland stated. “Believe me, I have a huge amount to learn, but my priority is to ensure that we protect those safety-net programs that we put so much effort into to help better support children and families.”
Proposed modifications
The Statewide Poverty Motion Community desires to provide the Legislature a map for the way to clear the pathway out of poverty.
In response to a examine from the College of Washington, greater than 1 in 4 households in Washington can’t afford to cowl their fundamental wants with out authorities help.
The community’s listing of proposed modifications consists of reinstating TANF hardship time-limit exemptions, increasing the state’s Working Households Tax Credit score to all adults and aligning its eligibility and utility course of with different advantages applications.
State and federal regulation limits the time an individual can obtain TANF advantages to a complete of 60 months, or 5 years, in a lifetime. Washington stopped providing hardship extensions for TANF instances previous 60 months on July 1, 2023.
“Our state has many pathways out of poverty, but many of them have fallen into disrepair due to lack of investment in their maintenance,” Poverty Motion’s Communications Coordinator Molly Gallagher stated. “The amount that families receive in TANF does not increase or change without an action from the Legislature.”
Gallagher stated yearly the state doesn’t take motion, the money grant loses worth.
The pathway out of poverty ought to be clear, however as a substitute it’s overgrown, complicated and doesn’t meet folks’s wants alongside the best way, Gallagher stated.
“Our hope for this session is to invest in maintaining that pathway out of poverty by tying that cash grants to a number that increases with inflation and the cost of living,” Gallagher stated. “When families aren’t slowed down by insufficient cash grant amounts and obstacles to access, they can navigate a pathway to financial stability.”