Cascade PBS News - Washington state & Seattle News

For older renters, Western WA’s housing boom can sow insecurity

Josh Cohen — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 05:00:00 PDT

Sandra Mears and Maryann Griffin loved their little cottage in West Seattle’s Delridge neighborhood. They had a beautiful garden, good neighbors and felt a sense of community. It was exactly the sort of place they’d sought after decades of living in apartments around the city; the sort of place they could imagine living in forever.

But after about five years in their dream home, they learned the owners were selling and they had to move out. As renters they had no say in the matter. And as a couple with modest means and little savings, they were unable to purchase the home.

Mears has worked in homelessness services for more than 30 years. She leads a small nonprofit called the Jean Kim Foundation in Lynnwood that provides hygiene services and operates a tiny-home village. Griffin is a decade older, now retired and collecting Social Security. She spent her career mostly in customer service and later at a work-release program for people transitioning out of incarceration.

After hearing their cottage was being sold, they went through the expensive and laborious task of finding a new rental home and moved to a new place in West Seattle. The couple was able to stay for about six years in that home before once again learning the owners were planning to sell. The new owner asked them to stay, but they planned to eventually redevelop the property, making it a temporary reprieve.

That was about four and a half years ago. Mears and Griffin left Seattle entirely and found a new rental in downtown Snohomish where they paid $2,000/month plus utilities. In January, it was déjà vu. Mears, a Michigan native, was watching her Detroit Lions lose the NFC Championship to San Francisco when their landlord came by to let them know they were selling the home and that the couple had 90 days to move.

Mears and Griffin take a load of belongings to their storage unit, May 29, 2024. After downsizing to their new temporary rental, the couple has had to keep much of their furniture and other items in storage. (Genna Martin/Cascade PBS)

None of their moves have been easy. But leaving their place in Snohomish has been an expensive, stressful ordeal. Rents are higher than ever, move-in costs are challenging and their options feel limited.

Theirs is a story about the instability of being modest-income renters in a booming housing market; the sparseness of the social safety net; the irony that working in homelessness services pays too little to guarantee housing stability; and the politics of housing development.

“Forget staying at the Edgewater [Hotel] or traveling, my bucket list now is to not be homeless,” Mears said.

They are not alone

Data analysis by AARP shows 6,889 adults 55 and older are expected to experience homelessness this year in Washington state. The homeless population is getting older nationally and locally. The median home sale price in King County has topped $1 million. Median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the Seattle metro area is nearly $1,900/month.

“We have skyrocketing housing costs here in the Puget Sound,” said Cathy McCaul, AARP Washington’s advocacy director. “The more marginalized and more vulnerable in the community are feeling more susceptible to these shifts. Especially if you’re on a fixed income it is doubly, triply, more difficult to maintain stable housing.”

Family photos and other items are collected on a dresser as Mears and Griffin unpack at their new home. (Genna Martin/Cascade PBS)

Mears and Griffin have staved off homelessness again — for now. They found a furnished home in Northgate marketed for traveling nurses. It’s $2,400/month with utilities included. They’re also paying $200/month for a storage space for their personal furniture that doesn’t fit in the furnished unit.

They’re on a three-month lease that becomes month to month after that. Mears described their situation as “rather tenuous,” but is too emotionally and financially drained from the previous house hunt to keep searching for a longer-term solution right now.

Before they settled for the Northgate house, Mears and Griffin cast a wide net: searching as far north as Mount Vernon, joining Facebook groups with rental listings, talking to real estate companies, asking friends and acquaintances for leads.

Mears found the process frustrating. At a Mount Vernon listing, they were told they’d be given only 15 minutes to view the property. Applying for places means paying $50 per person for background checks that aren’t transferable among applications.

“It used to be when we were renting that we could see a home and talk to the landlord and could court them, if you will,” said Mears. “Now it’s flipped. You can’t even see a home until you fill out an application.”

Mears says in total she’s spent nearly $8,000 on the move to Northgate after paying for first and last month’s rent, the security deposit, movers, cleaners, application fees and other unexpected costs.

Sandra Mears looks at the listing for the house where she and partner Maryann Griffin formerly lived in Snohomish. It is now on the market for $625,000. (Genna Martin/Cascade PBS)

To help pay for the moving costs, Mears took out money from the small IRA she’s managed to save. She says working in homelessness services her whole career has made it challenging to put away money and essentially impossible to buy a home in Seattle. She even attempted to buy the West Seattle dream cottage, but it was out of her price range.

Mears is not alone as a homeless-services worker struggling with low wages. Service providers in the Seattle area have struggled in recent years with high turnover and lingering vacancies thanks in part to the low wages they’re able to pay for difficult work.

In fall 2022, state officials used federal COVID-19 relief money to offer small stipends to homeless-service workers if they agreed to stay in their roles. A 2023 report from the University of Washington found nonprofit social-services workers are underpaid by 37% compared to their for-profit counterparts.

Mears said she’s always taken side gigs, like doing field interviews and research, to help pay the bills. She’s been redoubling those efforts to reestablish her savings after the move to Northgate.

“I feel it’s a calling, but it’s unfortunate that people maybe cannot pursue their career choice or talents or commitments,” said Mears. “It’s sad that we cannot, as a society, support individuals that are in public service.”

Improving the system

Having been forced to move far more often than she’d like, Mears has a few thoughts on how the process could be improved for renters.

For one, it would help to require landlords to return security deposits faster. In 2023, Washington started requiring landlords to return a deposit, or provide an explanation for not returning it, within 30 days. Mears said when money’s tight and you’re trying to apply for new rentals that also require deposits, it would help to have that money within two to three weeks.

She also thinks the requirement that a landlord provide a tenant with at least 90 days’ move-out notice should be longer if the tenant has lived there a long time. Say if the tenant lives somewhere for multiple years, require a 120-day notification.

Mears also wants to see changes to the current requirement that each would-be tenant plunk down $50 for a background and credit check on each rental application; instead, applicants should be able to pay for one background check transferable from application to application.

Mears and Griffin have had to move three times after their landlords decided to sell the homes they were living in. They are now living in a temporary furnished home usually rented to travel nurses. (Genna Martin/Cascade PBS)

Sean Flynn does not think those changes would necessarily help, or at least that there would be tradeoffs. Flynn is executive director of the Rental Housing Association of Washington, which represents small-to-midsize landlords.

More notice would just result in a tenant house-hunting too early, so that any open units someone is looking at likely wouldn’t be available when it’s time to move. On security deposits, Flynn said it used to take 14 days, but legal requirements for landlords to provide more details about what they’re using the money for extended the process. And finally, on background checks, he said many of their members use a product called SmartMove that allows some portions of screenings to be reused for a period of time, but that credit checks are a federal regulatory issue.

More broadly, Flynn argued that the rental market needs to be stabilized with more housing supply and by keeping existing rental units on the market. He said many landlords have sold off their single-family rentals in response to new state and local regulations.

“There are real problems [with the housing market],” said Flynn. “Anyone who says oh, it’s fine, they don’t know what’s happening. People need their housing stabilized. But what we’ve done with regulations in the last 10 years has created a lot of problems for people.”

AARP’s Washington chapter has done lots of lobbying around housing stability and supply at the state and local level.

The organization worked on legalizing accessory dwelling units statewide, which the Legislature passed in 2023. ADUs can provide space for multigenerational families to live on the same property; allow older residents to collect additional income that helps offset rising housing costs; or enable a caretaker to live on-site.

Sandra Mears looks into her storage unit filled with items that don’t fit in her new home, May 29, 2024. After downsizing to their new temporary rental, the couple has had to keep much of their furniture and other items in storage. (Genna Martin/Cascade PBS)

AARP also supported the statewide “missing middle” zoning bill that legalized duplexes, quadplexes and sixplexes in all residential neighborhoods in WA. “It’s about letting older adults have more choices for housing options,” said AARP’s McCaul.

The organization also worked on the Legislature’s co-living bill, which makes it easier to build dorm-style apartments and shared living and cooking spaces. The aPodment-style buildings are typically built with 20-something tech workers in mind. But, says McCaul, people in their 60s and 70s want the same amenities: affordable rents, good locations, space to host friends and family and ability to connect with neighbors.

“People all want parks, walkable communities, want to walk to a brew pub or cafe or a park and listen to a band playing live music,” said McCaul. “Community is about creating a space where everyone belongs. And there are small changes we can make that make it accessible, affordable and easy for everyone to live here.”

AARP also worked on a bill to raise the eligibility threshold for Washington’s low-income elderly property tax break. Under the new law, the threshold in King County increased from about $58,000 to $72,000.

In addition to lobbying, AARP also works on making sure people are accessing all the benefits they qualify for, such as the property tax break, SNAP food assistance and rental assistance. McCaul said they’re working with senior centers to try and connect more people to benefits.

Taking a toll

Mears said that ultimately she and Griffin are thankful for the roof over their heads, and acknowledge that plenty of people are in even more precarious situations. “I don’t want pity. And yes, I live better than many.”

But the cost and stress of the moves has had ripple effects in their lives. Griffin had to miss the funeral of a lifelong friend because she couldn’t spare the money to travel to Chicago. Mears has felt slightly unmoored.

“When you’re not stabilized, you’re not your best self,” said Mears. “I think that’s what we lose as a society, that brainpower, because it’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.”

Topics: Housing

Your Last Meal | Writer Geraldine DeReuter on going "bonkers viral"

Rachel Belle — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 04:59:00 PDT

Topics: arts, Food, food history, food podcast, writer

The Newsfeed: Can we learn from history to help shape the future?

Paris Jackson — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 04:58:00 PDT

Topics: Multimedia, Video

Audit finds more problems with how WA spent federal COVID aid

Jacob Jones — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 05:00:00 PDT

With repeat missteps piling up amid billions of dollars in pandemic relief, a new state audit report issued more “findings” against Washington state agencies over improper or insufficiently documented spending of federal money than in any previous year.

The Office of the Washington State Auditor on June 6 released its review of how state agencies spent federal aid between July 2022 and June 2023. That report detailed 86 findings against 11 agencies for failing to comply with federal grant rules or fully account for spending.

“That is the most we’ve ever written,” said Sadie Armijo, director of State Audit and Special Investigations. “We had 70 [findings] last year and obviously it’s creeping up.”

Findings reflect a variety of problems, from missed background checks on contractors to deficiencies in how agencies enforced eligibility for pandemic economic relief programs.

Auditors flagged about $1.17 billion as questioned costs that lacked adequate accounting to verify it followed spending rules. Armijo said the state spent about $29 billion in federal aid during the audit period for fiscal year 2023 — down from a pandemic high of $37 billion, but still far above the $18 billion pre-pandemic average.

This story is a part of Cascade PBS’s WA Recovery Watch, an investigative project tracking federal dollars in Washington state.

State auditors must separately review the federally backed programs at any agency or local government that spends at least $750,000 in federal aid in a year. Armijo explained that the auditors assess each program based on the spending rules and criteria established by the federal programs providing the money.

“We want to make sure ... you have the right controls in place over your program,” she said. “That really helps us to ensure that all public funds are being spent properly.”

Half of this year’s findings involved repeat spending or tracking problems that auditors had identified at those agencies in previous reports. Armijo emphasized that auditors must re-audit those programs each year, compounding the pandemic-related accounting backlogs.

“It just makes the workload massive,” she said, adding, “We really, really believe there are some areas where they could just do some simple things. Some of the things that we report on are pretty easy to fix.”

Sadie Armijo, director of State Audit and Special Investigations at the Washington State Auditor’s office, in her office in Olympia in a March 2022 photo. (Lindsey Wasson for Cascade PBS)

As federal pandemic aid has flowed from state agencies to local governments or nonprofit social service partners, many agencies have struggled to track how those partner organizations have distributed or spent the money. Agencies drew a number of findings over failures to document that “subrecipient” spending to ensure they also follow federal rules.

More than half of the questioned dollars came from state spending of Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds, flexible dollars distributed as part of the American Rescue Plan. In the audit cycle, state agencies spent about $1.9 billion of that money.

The state Department of Social and Health Services received 12 findings in this year’s report and more than $312 million in questioned costs — mostly for insufficient monitoring of how subrecipients verified eligibility for the Immigrant Relief Fund.

“We concur that we should have strengthened our internal controls to have reasonably determined the subrecipient only disbursed grant funds to eligible applicants,” DSHS responded in the report. “[But] the Department does not concur with the questioned costs. The Department used the funds to assist Washington workers/families who were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic but were unable to access federal stimulus programs and other social supports due to their immigration status. Repayment of these funds would only hinder the state’s ability to provide critical services to our clients.”

Auditors also issued a repeat finding against the state’s Office of Financial Management over $300 million in fiscal recovery funds that the Legislature transferred to pay for transportation work. The report states OFM has not detailed those expenses to help auditors ensure the work qualifies for that funding.

OFM responded that all of the funding qualified as “government service,” which is an eligible use.

“The Office disagrees that the total amount of lost revenue transferred to the transportation accounts should be considered questioned costs because the auditors were unable to design tests for compliance,” the OFM response states.

Auditors also issued a finding over a drop in the average proportion of state funding that went to K-12 education, which would violate requirements on federal Education Stabilization Funds. OFM argued it had later updated its data to comply with that standard.

The state Department of Commerce drew 12 findings over its use of fiscal recovery funds and its administration of the Emergency Rental Assistance program. Auditors outlined shortcomings with tracking subrecipient spending, documenting and reporting, unauthorized advance payments to subrecipient partners and compliance with spending deadlines.

“We determined [Commerce] did not request and review adequate supporting documentation before paying subrecipients,” auditors wrote, “and it did not perform adequate fiscal monitoring to ensure that funds advanced to subrecipients were disbursed to eligible households and for allowable activities.”

Commerce responded that it did allow some advance payments to local service partners to reduce cash flow issues as part of distributing the emergency relief. Spokesperson Penny Thomas wrote in an email that Commerce has bolstered its documentation requirements and hired additional staff to help ensure compliance.

“Looking forward with these lessons learned and actions taken in the pandemic,” she wrote, “Commerce is working to standardize and strengthen its internal controls related to risk assessments, sub-recipient monitoring, and invoice documentation.”

Auditors also flagged about $75 million in questioned costs that Commerce paid out to help people with utility costs. The report states Commerce did not collect and review details on the households that received assistance, and some payments fell outside the allowed time period. Thomas noted legislators had approved an additional year to spend the funds that did not match the federal rules.

“Maintaining utility services during the crises was an essential tool in sustaining and protecting the health and welfare of our businesses and citizens,” the Commerce response states, adding, “The Department will also work with utility providers to obtain detailed supporting documentation to reconcile all arrearages paid to determine and verify the amounts expended.”

The Department of Children, Youth and Families received 16 findings, the most of any agency this year. Auditors flagged a combined $473 million in questioned spending, largely based on repeat issues with program compliance and documentation on child care and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families programs.

“[DCYF] continues to balance verification requirements with providing timely benefit decisions to support family access to high quality child care,” DCYF wrote in one finding response. “Additionally, the Department is being intentional in updating our learning resources for eligibility staff. Information from this and future audits will be used to update training.”

Find tools and resources in Cascade PBS’s Follow the Funds guide to track down federal recovery spending in your community.

The Employment Security Department, the Department of Health, the Health Care Authority, the Housing Finance Commission, the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Department of Transportation and the University of Washington also drew findings.

State agencies will have to work with their federal grant partners to address concerns identified in the latest audit. Armijo said federal officials may request additional documentation, or in rare cases could request repayment of money that did not comply with program guidelines.

“We just have not seen [that] in the coronavirus relief funds or any of the pandemic funding ... yet,” she said. “But sometimes it takes years, so we don't really know.”

The auditor’s office noted that five federal programs, including the State Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer Administrative Costs Grant and Veterans State Nursing Home Care, did not see any findings across this audit period.

Armijo acknowledged that state agencies had made important updates since federal funding surged during the pandemic. Many agencies continue to face staffing shortages as they adapt to audit concerns.

SAO officials said the 2023 state audit did not yet include billions in anticipated federal dollars from either the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act or the Inflation Reduction Act.

“In the next year, some of the pandemic funding is going to decline a little bit more, but we also have the influx of the infrastructure money,” Armijo said. “We don’t really know what that’s going to look like in ’24 moving forward. ... There’s still a lot of federal money.”

Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify its characterization of questioned costs.

Article continues below Related Stories

Topics: federal recovery funds, Washington Recovery Watch

Podcast | A WA couple’s struggle to stay housed around Puget Sound

Maleeha Syed — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 04:59:00 PDT

Topics: Podcast

Spokane downtown Pride mural isn’t going anywhere, community vows

Erin Sellers — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 05:00:00 PDT

For 24 hours the intersection in front of Riverfront Park transformed into something akin to a block party as the Pride flag mural was restored to its original glory. The mural, which has been a frequent target of vandalism — as recently as last week — and even arson, was designed by queer Spokane artist Tiffany Patterson as part of the Asphalt Arts program run by Spokane Arts and funded by the city of Spokane.

As Patterson led four painters in restoring the mural last week, gay-associated pop hits like Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” and “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor blasted from speakers placed around the intersection. Just off the mural, Matthew Danielson and Skyler Oberst, the executive directors of Spokane Pride and Spokane Arts, respectively, set up tents with refreshments and information about their organizations and fielded the frequent questions from the public and the media as folks walked by the art-in-progress.

Tiffany Patterson (right) and one of their painting assistants (left) repaint the Pride mural downtown. (Ben Tobin for RANGE Media)

Volunteers flitted in and out of the roped off intersection, rolling paint, bringing snacks or standing by with angel costumes to block from sight any anti-queer protesters, though few showed up.

The volunteers were mostly friends and family, Danielson said, and the artists who had agreed to donate their time on the first evening to lay down the coat of primer necessary for the paint to stick. Some government officials joined the paint party as well: Mayor Lisa Brown; Rep. Marcus Riccelli, D-Spokane; State Sen. Andy Billig, D-Spokane; County Commissioner Chris Jordan and City Council Member Paul Dillon all stopped by to show their support, Oberst said.

“It feels really good to have the community come,” Patterson said. “The massive amount of outpouring of support that happened immediately following [the vandalism] was very rewarding and it showed how important it was.”

Patterson, a transgender artist, paints the stripes symbolizing the trans community in the Progress Pride flag design. (Ben Tobin for RANGE Media)

This is Patterson’s third time leading the repaint efforts, and according to them, “It gets easier every time because we’re learning so much.” Patterson is an experienced public artist with prior mural experience — including the Peaceful Valley basketball court paint job — under their belt, but the project has also created learning opportunities for artists to work under them as paid assistants.

City funds covered the original cost of the project, but the repaint efforts were completely funded by a wave of donations that came after the vandalism. “We raised it in three days. I could not believe that,” Danielson said. “I kept texting [Oberst] to be like ‘Oh my God we have this much!’ It was great.”

Oberst celebrated too, but was more pragmatic. “Given where the city is at financially, it’s nice to provide this to the community without being a burden to the taxpayers,” he said. “Because we live in a city that is deserving of great art, we want to make sure that all vandalism is cleaned up quickly so we can all enjoy it.”

Additional surveillance was also installed around the intersection, including a high-resolution mobile camera system owned by the Downtown Spokane Partnership, which was moved to the intersection for Pride Month to deter further vandalism.

‘Not going anywhere’

Just a few hours after Patterson and their team finished painting and less than three hours before a new state law was passed making “bias-motivated” vandalism of public property a felony hate crime, four teenagers riding Lime scooters were observed by witnesses and cameras doing burnouts over the fresh paint. The suspects were observed yelling obscenities at witnesses as they vandalized the mural. According to a press release from the Spokane Police Department (SPD), the area is clearly marked to keep traffic away as it was just repainted to repair previous damage.

SPD arrested 19-year-old Ruslan Turko and two minors on the charge of first-degree Malicious Mischief. They were caught 34 minutes after the initial 911 call was placed just before 9 p.m. on June 5.

Scuffs visible on the mural after the June 5 vandalism. (Courtesy of Spokane Police Department)

The scooter wheels left black scuff marks across the entire mural. Speaking to RANGE as he observed the new damage to the mural for the first time, Oberst said tire marks from Lime scooters are especially hard to clean.

“The wheels are actually made of a particular compound that is really, really terrible when they burn out on public art,” he said. “If you scrub it, it would take forever.”

Because of the nature of the damage and the cost of closing streets safely for repainting, Oberst and Danielson jointly decided to leave the damage intact, at least through Pride weekend, which was last weekend. “I wish I had a better answer for you, because I would love to have it right like yesterday,” Oberst said. “But it’s not going to be the case.”

Oberst said he and Danielson plan to propose a community service program for the young vandals to scrub graffiti on public art and public buildings as a “learning opportunity.”

“It sends a powerful message of who we are as a community. This is not punitive,” Oberst said. “Restorative justice is who we are. We would welcome an extra set of hands for graffiti abatement downtown.”

On Thursday, as he watched the final steps of the mural repainting, Danielson told RANGE that despite the repeated vandalism, he was proud of the community’s support for the project as a whole. “It's clearly like a very small percentage of people that are not OK with Pride stuff,” he said. “The entire community spoke in raising all this money in three days.”

As the painters worked, a few drivers and pedestrians had shouted obscenities at them from car windows or the sidewalk throughout the day, according to the painters.

But, Patterson said, “for all of the terrible people saying horrible things, there’s ten times more positive people. And the people that stop and thank us is so surprising. It’s people you wouldn’t expect. And people will drive by and roll down their window and scream ‘Thank you!’ … The community shows up and it’s very apparent that the people that are for it are greater [than those against it].”

Patterson smiles as they get back to painting. (Ben Tobin for RANGE Media)

Patterson had no way of knowing what would happen later that evening, but as they put some of the last touches on their work, they shrugged with a smile on their face. “If it happens again, we’ll paint it again,” they said. “We’re here. We’re not going anywhere.”

How the mural is funded

The original funding for the Asphalt Arts program, which includes both the Riverfront Park intersection and the South Perry crosswalk, comes from tickets automatically generated by Photo Red and Speed Radar cameras.

The Asphalt Arts program as a whole accounts for just 6% of those funds, and was chosen as a traffic calming project. Studies show sites with art slows drivers and lowers crash rates.

Spokane Arts facilitates the Asphalt Arts projects and then invoices the city for labor and materials costs.

According to Shelby Allison, the manager of the Asphalt Arts program, it costs about $5,000 just to shut the road down for a few hours to clean and prep for the repaint. After hiring the primary artist and four painting assistants, and buying paint, the total costs to repair the downtown mural is about $14,000.

Community donations and a donation match from the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane completely covered the costs of the most recent repair.

Topics: Features, LGBTQ+, Spokane, Pride

Meet the team behind the visual artistry of Black Arts Legacies

Jas Keimig — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 04:59:00 PDT

In every Black Arts Legacies profile we aim to reveal the essence of an artist — their work and history, of course, but also their image and sound, their community and consequence, and what it feels like to be in their company. We strive to render each complex human as fully and vibrantly as possible.

Which is why video, audio and photography are so essential to this project. They add dimension to the stories we write, drawing on the broad expertise of the Cascade PBS team, in particular our videographer, Tifa Tomb, and our photographer, Meron Menghistab, both of whom have played essential roles in Black Arts Legacies since Season 1.

Over the past several weeks, you’ve seen Meron’s photos alongside Jas Keimig’s profiles of cellist/composer Gretchen Yanover, painter/muralist Moses Sun and actor/director Tee Dennard, and his photos will continue to appear with this season’s remaining profiles. And, on Fridays, see the debut of Tifa’s five video episodes, such as videos on dancer Cipher Goings and longtime DJ Riz Rollins, airing and streaming on KCTS 9.

We’re going behind the scenes with Jas to talk with Tifa and Meron and get a look at Season 3 from their illuminating perspectives.

Meron Menghistab checks his camera batteries during a Black Arts Legacies photoshoot. (Genna Martin/Cascade PBS)

Meron Menghistab on the evolving aesthetic of his BAL photos

For the past three seasons of Black Arts Legacies, photographer Meron Menghistab has crafted beautiful images to accompany each profile.

Over the years, Meron has experimented with the aesthetic of these portraits. In Season 1, he placed gray backdrops in each artist’s home or studio as a way to frame them in a personal place; in Season 2, he projected images of each artist’s work all around them in a studio setting, in tribute to their careers. And this year, he decided to use film photography to capture every subject in their home environment, a nod to BAL’s archival mission.

“My outlook is always thinking about not only the literal sense of archiving artists in Seattle, but how I can make images that are a tribute to the idea of the archival process as well,” he says.

Approaching each photo session, Meron likes to keep it loose and get to know the artist so that he can best capture their personality and the spirit of their work. With cellist Gretchen Yanover, he bottled the intimate, reflective energy of her work and portrayed her playing at home, with her cat making a cameo appearance. And for Moses Sun’s portrait, he positioned the artist among many of his vibrant paintings in his carpeted studio.

“I try to spend a lot of time asking people, ‘Where do you tend to make work?’ or ‘Where do you spend your time in your space to make work?’” Meron says. “Some way to get them involved in how they wish to be represented.”

Tifa Tomb adjusts her video camera at a Black Arts Legacies shoot while Meron Menghistab snaps a photo. (Nimra Ahmad/Cascade PBS)

Behind the scenes: Reporter's Notebook

One of the best parts of working on Black Arts Legacies is being able to create work alongside Tifa Tomb, this project’s videographer. She’s been with BAL since the beginning, crafting excellent video profiles of our stellar subjects.

“The first year, I wasn’t really sure what to expect and how to structure the production of it all. So by this year, I’m a lot more confident in terms of getting the visuals that we need to tell the stories,” Tifa told me recently. “I just try to stay as curious as possible about what they have to say about their lives and their process.”

Even though our final written and filmed artist profiles are different, Tifa and I have similar processes for preparing: tons of background research. But for Tifa, there’s also a visual element.

“We talk [with the artist] about, like, OK, we’re coming to film the interview, but we also would like to get some view of you in your element, whatever that is. We just try to identify what their work is and how we could capture it visually,” Tifa says. “What can we see the person doing that will help tell the story of who they are?”

This year, I had the distinct pleasure of lurking behind the scenes with Tifa and her crew on a few video shoots — and it made me jealous. Writing can be such a solitary process, but when making a video, there are so many more people to talk to and run ideas past. On one shoot for a not-yet-announced BAL artist, Tifa — along with director of photography Neftali Kirkland and gaffer Papa Ibrahima Diop — ran the shoot like a well-oiled machine, framing shots and capturing the essence of the artist with ease. A definite benefit to working with a team versus toiling in front of my computer at home, as I’m wont to do.

As a bonus, Tifa says the project brings her closer to the Black arts community and the city.

“I start to see people and know about other people’s shows because of artists that we’ve profiled, and so it feels like the dots are a lot closer and they connect a lot more,” she reflects.

Topics: black arts legacies, feature, Features

Seattle Public Schools postpones next step in school closures

Julia Park — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 05:00:00 PDT

The Seattle School Board has postponed for two weeks its vote on the district budget, following a series of public meetings on the district’s plan to close 20 K-5 schools.

Seattle Public Schools heard from parents, teachers and students at four community meetings to share details about the plan for a system of “well-resourced schools.” The school board had been scheduled to vote on the budget on Monday, but the decision has been postponed until June 26. The district said on Monday that the meeting had been postponed so they had more time to incorporate public feedback and because of the shooting last week outside of Garfield High School.

At the community meetings, people expressed concerns about the district’s transparency and whether students will come out from the consolidations better and more equitably supported. One of these was Timmesha Watson, a special education teacher at Pathfinder K-8.

“Title one schools are often first on the chopping block,” Watson wrote in an email. “My hope is that the impact to those furthest from educational justice, particularly our Black students and other students of color, will be carefully considered.”

Parents listen during Seattle Public Schools’ “Well-Resourced Schools Community Meeting” at Chief Sealth International High School in Seattle on Saturday, June 1, 2024. (Jason Redmond for Cascade PBS)

The district has not announced which schools it plans to close, calling the plan a move toward creating “a system of well-resourced schools.” SPS describes a well-resourced school as one that offers students quality education that meets their specific needs, including aspects such as having multiple teachers per grade level, stable support staff and art, music and PE teachers.

The district’s guiding principles for maintaining such a system include considering the conditions of school buildings, the geographic distribution of schools across the district and ways to support special education and multilingual learners.

According to Chief Operations Officer Fred Podesta, the district will work with the community surrounding each closed school to repurpose the buildings as community centers or for other uses.

Gaps in federal and state funding have been a major reason for the district’s budget shortfall, which stands at about $94 million for the 2025-2026 school year according to numbers posted in the FAQ section of the closure information web page. The district has also seen declining enrollment in recent years. Twenty-nine Seattle elementary schools currently serve fewer than 300 students.

Eddie Lin, a Franklin High School parent, asks “HEY, LEGISLATORS are you listening?! Students Deserve Better!!!” (Jason Redmond for Cascade PBS)

The district can save money and improve the student experience by consolidating students into fewer buildings and concentrating resources on those schools. According to SPS, these actions are the path toward equity. Some parents, like Samanta Gutiérrez, want to know how.

“I came out here because I’ve been a little concerned that there hasn’t been a lot of information about dual-language immersion,” said Gutiérrez, a parent of a first and a third grader at John Stanford International Elementary, during a public meeting at Chief Sealth International High School earlier this month. “And I feel like the community of [people]that utilize this program across the district … including the option schools, is not necessarily having a lot of representation.”

Gutiérrez’s family is a bilingual Spanish-speaking household, and enabling her children to learn content in Spanish is important to her. At John Stanford, an option school that enrolls students by request and reserves a limited number of seats for students whose first or heritage language is Spanish or Japanese, students can spend part of their regular school day learning in one of these languages.

If John Stanford closes, the family might have to leave the home they’ve rented for 13 years in north Seattle to find a neighborhood school that offers dual language teaching.

Seattle resident Chris Jackins, a Ballard High School alumnus and longtime activist in the school system, was handing out flyers opposing the closures at the Chief Sealth entrance before the community meeting began.

Jackins said the school board didn’t seem to be listening to public input in considering closing schools, or considering that different schools might not need the same resources.

“You can waste a lot of money to give resources where people don’t need them, or don’t even want them, just because it’s in the formula,” Jackins said. He thinks the district should focus more on what each school needs to be successful rather than just following a district-wide formula for success.

During the Q&A portion of the meeting, Superintendent Brent Jones responded to a question about the district’s support of dual language instruction by stating that racial equity analysis is built into the district’s DNA.

“I know there’s been lots of questions about how will this impact our students of color for educational justice,” Jones said. “And we do this analysis ongoing, this formative analysis … we were one of the nation’s leader[s] in identifying more racial equity work … I just want to reassure this community that racial equity analysis is something that we do across the board in all of our programs in the Seattle Public School district.”

This version of the story adds comment from the school district.

Sam Friedman, a teacher at West Woodland Elementary, in a shirt that proclaims “PUBLIC SCHOOLS/THE HEART OF THE COMMUNITY” during Seattle Public Schools’ “Well-Resourced Schools Community Meeting.” (Jason Redmond for Cascade PBS)

Topics: Education

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