A coffee and pitch session brought together dozens of housing professionals from countries around the world.  During the collaborative housing program, I spoke about several dynamic and innovative programs taking place with the Seattle and Puget Sound Region.  The audience watched a video by the Urban Institute about the Tacoma Housing Authority’s McCarver Program before I gave a pitch about education in housing. Here is the video:

After the video, I also informed the audience of the very innovative systems based education initiatives taking place at the Seattle Housing Authority.  That includes a ground-breaking data sharing agreement between the Seattle Housing Authority and the Seattle Public Schools as well as the Home from School Bailey Gatzert Elementary pilot program.  We discussed how Seattle Housing Authority will be working with its partners over the course of the upcoming years to plan and implement more projects to help students in Seattle Public Housing properties to succeed.  Visit here to read more.  

The last project I spoke about took place at the King County Housing Authority.  I told the audience about this innovative pre-kindergarten program and its major aims.  Some of those program goals include:

1. Build connections between families in KCHA housing and their neighborhood elementary school
2. Develop parents’ knowledge and practice of early childhood development support skills
3. Ensure knowledge of and access to formal early learning programming upon completion of GLEA
4. Create a space to build and strengthen social networks among KCHA families with young children

You can find more information about the King County Housing Authority here.

The programs taking place in and around the Seattle area are all experiments to see if a social housing association can make positive impacts on the students living within the association’s properties.  There are very positive outcomes already coming out of many of these programs.  To find more research on the subject please visit the Urban Institute here.

For direct connections to staff working on these programs, please contact Josh Crites at jcrites007@gmail.com or josh.crites@seattlehousing.org or visit my website at https://internationalsocialhousing.org/