Community Council

“Board of directors are elected at the annual meeting of the corporation. Directors serve three-year terms, on a rotating basis, with no more than one-third of the directors' terms expiring at any one time. Members vote on the board of directors. The nominating committee makes recommendations to the membership for the new board positions, and nominations are accepted from the floor.”

“Board members and officers provided copy of 990 with an opportunity to ask questions.”

“Annually the conflicts of interest statements are reviewed by the executive director for appropriate action.”

“The board obtains information on local salaries for non-profit organizations in the community prior to hiring the executive director.”

“Form 990s, and form 1023, are available on the website: https://wwcommunitycouncil.org”

“Study implementation highlights affordable housing implementation task force in 2020, community council continued to facilitate the work of the affordable housing implementation task force (itf) as it advocated for the implementation of the recommendations from the affordable housing study report. In response to the covid-19 pandemic and economic crisis, the itf pivoted to address immediate housing needs within our community, while at the same time continuing to work on the long-term goals established through the study. In coordination with other state and national housing advocacy groups, the itf paid close attention to state and federal policy issues as they related to housing within the context of the covid crisis. The subcommittee wrote and submitted a number of letters to state and federal representatives, advocating for immediate housing relief in relation to the covid-19 crisis, such as extensions to eviction moratoria and the establishment of emergency rental assistance to keep low-income renters stably housed during the pandemic. The itf produced and continually updated and distributed its english-language and spanish-language covid-19 housing & utility relief information sheet, which briefly explains state, federal, and regional relief measures that have been enacted in response to the pandemic to protect residents from eviction, foreclosure, and displacement. Other highlights of the implementation task force's work include: advocacy for manufactured housing park residents' opportunity to purchase legislation in washington state. The compilation of a packet of resources for manufactured housing park owners, informing them about the opportunity to sell to resident-owned cooperatives in the event that they want to sell their parks. The production of a report to local governments on local policies that can be adopted to help preserve manufactured housing communities and protect the residents within them. The development of a multi-media public awareness campaign on the benefits of affordable housing for our community. This included publishing articles in local newspapers, developing social media posts on affordable housing facts, and producing a short video on our region's affordable housing crisis. These can be found on our website: www.wwcommunitycouncil.org. The preliminary development and graphing of affordable housing measurements for our region, such as the number of affordable homes available to households per income bracket. Learning from multi-jurisdictional affordable housing coalitions from other regions, as the itf considered how to form a lasting coalition that can advance affordable housing priorities in our region. The implementation task force also carried out much of the preliminary work necessary to establish our region's first community land trust, which will be called common roots housing trust. A community land trust (clt) is a nonprofit organization that owns land and develops housing for the purpose of creating permanently affordable homes. Homes on clt land are owned or rented by households, and the land, which is owned by the clt, is leased to the residents for a modest fee. Clts also provide financial services, such as counseling and access to lenders, to support their residents so as to prevent foreclosure. Common roots housing trust, will acquire land on which to develop a portfolio of affordable homes to meet the specific needs of residents of our region. It will create lasting home ownership opportunities for community members who have steady incomes but cannot afford to buy safe, market-rate homes in our region. The itf chose the name "common roots" for the clt, and developed common roots' mission, vision, and values statements. In fall 2020, common roots began receiving a year of technical assistance in clt formation from the northwest cooperative development center (nwcdc), which won a united states department of agriculture rural cooperative development grant to provide this assistance.”