Thurston Thrives has appointed a Housing Action Team (HAT) with the mission to support neighborhood stability, and people’s health and well-being. The team is working to ensure affordable, adequate and safe housing for all, achieved through collaborative efforts of the public, private and non-profit sectors. Keylee Marineau, Thurston County Homeless Prevention and Affordable Housing Coordinator currently serves as Chair of the team and Derek Harris, CEO of Community Youth Services acts as Coordinating Council Representative.
HAT is comprised of sub-committee action teams Homeless Housing Hub overseen by Derek Harris, CEO of Community Youth Services, Rental Housing Work Group with lead Elisa Sparkman, Thurston County Public Health & Social Services, and Affordable Housing Work Group headed by Craig Chance, Housing Authority of Thurston County. “Since the economic recession of 2008-2009, we’ve been producing 600-625 less housing units a year than we need to accommodate population growth,” says Chance. “We need to build a strategic plan to address these issues; Lacey is beginning to address this with their ADU Program (ADUs are a second, small dwelling on the same property as a standard single-family home) and we need to be working together with both private and public sectors to come up with innovation solutions.”
In 2019, HAT accomplished the following:
- Increased jurisdictional participation: standing monthly updates from Olympia, Lacey, Tumwater and County on all activities related to housing & homelessness
- Approved the new Homeless Crisis Response Plan
- Provided funding priorities for the CIP-RFP 2019
- Developed a Data Workgroup
2020 Priorities include supporting the action teams by:
- Community education on housing and homeless issues
- Advocacy to local jurisdictions and state government
- Community messaging and education
- Collective priority setting and participation in the 5-year homeless plan