Let’s talk about something that doesn’t scare us!

Real Change

Looking for a shelter without snakes — how about a jail cell?

by Dr. Wes Browning | April 3rd, 2019

Real Change columnist

The King County jail is opening up an unused wing as a 40-bed men’s shelter.

We’ve come a long way from those heady days of what I used to call the Ten Year Plan to Plan Ending Homelessness, when it was seriously proposed that all the planning to plan was so sure to work great that Seattle would soon need only around 250 shelter beds.

The idea was, we’d get out so far ahead of the problem that as new people became homeless, we’d need to shelter them only a short while before we’d put them in one of the many new housing units that our planning planned for.
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Real Change

Reflections on navigating higher education in the wake of the Operation Varsity Blues scandal

by Oscar Rosales C... | March 27th, 2019

Real Change columnist

Several days have gone by since the college admission bribery scandal hit the news. In many ways, I long expected the wealthy to utilize their means and privilege to aid their progeny in accessing elite institutions. But I was shocked that they would go so far as to commit fraud.

There is so much to unpack with this story and I still grapple with many of my personal feelings about the matter.
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Real Change

Seattle is splitting, not dying

by Tim Harris | March 27th, 2019

Director's Corner | Tim Harris, founding director

A funny thing happens when you Google “Seattle economy growth.” One of the top hits is an October 2018 story from KOMO: “Seattle named third fastest growing economy in America.”

Seattle’s economy is producing some of the highest wages and growth in the nation. While that growth is uneven in terms of who benefits — KOMO’s story describes Seattle’s persistent poverty rate as a sour note in an otherwise rosy outlook — few would argue from this evidence that Seattle is in trouble.
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Real Change

The Middle Ground 3/27/19

by Sam Day | March 27th, 2019

Contact Sam Day at sam@samday.com
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Real Change

Lessons from the North Star: you have more power than you think

by Dr. Wes Browning | March 27th, 2019

Real Change columnist

Last week I alluded to a job at a sleazy motel. I said it paid my college expenses and was educational. I’d like to share that education.

In 1969, my piggy bank was empty. I had tuition to pay. I wanted to escape my parents’ house. My thinking was, paying rent would call for even more money.
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Real Change

Real Change vendors and housing advocates reflect on their experience in Olympia

by Lisa Sawyer and... | March 27th, 2019

By LISA SAWYER, SHELLY COHEN & ANITRA FREEMAN

More than 600 activists turned up in Olympia on Housing and Homeless Advocacy Day, Feb. 28, to push for affordable housing. The event was coordinated by the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance (WLIHA), but about a dozen of the activists were affiliated with Real Change, and three of them have written about their experiences.

Lisa Sawyer, Real Change vendor and 11th Legislative District Lead:
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Real Change

I grew up witnessing how Washington’s tax code hurts families – let’s fix it now

by Rep. Debra Entenman | March 27th, 2019

COMMENTARY

I remember growing up in a housing project in Seattle and my mother having to make choices. Choices like which of my siblings got to go on the field trip or which store to shop at to get the cheapest groceries to stretch her teacher’s paycheck just a little bit further.

Too many working Washingtonians face those choices still today as they struggle to keep up with the skyrocketing cost of living.
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Real Change

The Middle Ground by Sam Day 3/20/19

by Sam Day | March 20th, 2019

Contact Sam Day at sam@samday.com
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Real Change

Plagues of biblical proportion

by Rabbi Olivier B... | March 20th, 2019

Real Change columnist

Climate change is here. And not just here as in “affecting someone else in a faraway place that doesn’t really concern us.” No, it is right here, in our great Pacific Northwest, burning our forests every summer — making our air barely breathable — and killing our livestock in the winter. The Seattle Times had a recent article reporting the Yakima Valley deaths of 1,850 cows from last month’s blizzard. The headline read: “What next?
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Real Change

Let’s talk about something that doesn’t scare us!

by Dr. Wes Browning | March 20th, 2019

I don’t know how many of you have noticed, but ever since the Republican Presidential nomination was decided for Generalissimo Covfefe, two out of three of these columns have been about things he has been doing to suspend the workings of the known universe. These things have all been downers.
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