Common Ground (Seattle)
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Common Ground is a nonprofit affordable housing developer in
Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is the List of municipalities in Washington, most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the List of Unit ...
. Its primary goal is creating and preserving high-quality permanent and transitional housing for the homeless; it now also includes nonprofit facilities other than housing, such as community centers and medical buildings. The core of the organization are housing development specialists, who work together with existing nonprofit social service agencies, government agencies and housing authorities.


History

In 1980, county planner Steve Clagett and other housing activists founded Common Ground in response to a growing housing crisis in the downtown core. The organization began helping local social service agencies and churches preserve and transform historic buildings into affordable housing, and identified sites and secured funding for new affordable housing units. The group helped preserve many downtown Seattle landmarks, including the Olive Tower, the St. Regis Hotel and the Josephinum. The organization does not own or manage these facilities. Instead, like market-rate real estate developers, it puts together land deals, arranges financing and supervises construction for social service agencies and housing authorities. Clients include the Metro
YMCA YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It has nearly 90,000 staff, some 920,000 volunteers and 12,000 branches w ...
, Pioneer Human Services, Solid Ground and Downtown Emergency Service Center. In the late 80s, they started to work with churches to provide housing for individuals with mental illness, establishing partnerships between mental health agencies and area churches. The churches rented houses to be used as
group homes A group home, congregate living facility, care home (the latter especially in British English and Australian English), adult family home, etc., is a structured and supervised residence model that provides assisted living as well as medical care ...
and the agency staff provided services and oversight. The experience led the organization into a new area of focus: special-needs housing. Today, Common Ground has expanded throughout the state of
Washington Washington most commonly refers to: * George Washington (1732–1799), the first president of the United States * Washington (state), a state in the Pacific Northwest of the United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A ...
, working with more than 300 community-based organizations to develop more than 6,200 units of housing for people with low-income or special needs.


Residences built in 2011

As of August 2011 Common Ground has developed 5 buildings with 117 units.


See also

*
Housing First Housing First is a policy that offers unconditional, permanent housing as quickly as possible to homeless people, and other supportive services afterward. It was first discussed in the 1990s, and in the following decades became government policy ...
*
Affordable housing Affordable housing is housing which is deemed affordable to those with a household income at or below the median, as rated by the national government or a local government by a recognized housing affordability index. Most of the literature on ...
*
Homelessness in the United States In the United States, the number of homeless people on a given night in January 2024 was more than 770,000 according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Homelessness has increased in recent years, in large part due to an ...
*
Common Ground (NYC) Breaking Ground, formerly Common Ground, is a nonprofit social services organization in New York City whose goal is to create high-quality permanent and transitional housing for the homeless. Its philosophy holds that supportive housing costs su ...


References


External links


Common Ground (Seattle)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Common Ground (Nyc) Homelessness in Washington (state) Housing rights organizations in the United States Organizations based in Seattle Homelessness charities in the United States Affordable housing Housing organizations in the United States Housing in Washington (state)