Community Organizer and former Seattle Mayoral candidate Nikkita Oliver. Image Copyright: Vanity Fair
Attain Housing provides transitional housing, case management services, and rent assistance services to all vulnerable families with dependent children who are either experiencing homelessness or are at-risk of losing their housing due to hardships. Due to the historical and current systemic inequalities that exist within this country’s governing, financial, law enforcement, and employment systems, the majority of people seeking our housing services are people of color. Currently, 71% of the families in our housing program are people of color, with 59% of them being Black. 62% of recipients of Stable Home rent assistance funds are also people of color. Our staff and board of directors are predominately white. We realize we have a lot to learn about the inherent racism baked into our society. We want to keep the conversation going and learn about the context of the oppression and how we can more effectively work to promote greater equality.
Our Executive Director Kathy Fleming released our organization’s statement on Black Lives Matter on June 2. We decided as a staff to take the next steps and work on educating ourselves on the issues at hand. Every other week, a staff member picks out one piece of educational media on social justice or racial inequity for everyone to digest and then we discuss it during our weekly staff meeting. We wanted to share the resources we’ve reviewed so far, and will continue to post new resources in the blog section of our website and on social media. We want to keep the dialogue about racism going and also to better serve and understand the perspective of the many different people of color that Attain Housing provides services for.
That said, here’s a listing of the resources we’ve discussed so far as a staff. Links to all of these resources and more can be found below. Let us know what you think!
• 13th – Documentary by Ava DuVernay (Netflix)
• Radiolab – The Liberation of RNA (NPR podcast)
• Community Voices: King County Equity Now (YouTube video)
• It’s Been a Minute featuring Tracee Ellis Ross (NPR podcast)
• The Search for Racial Equity with Nikole Hannah-Jones (YouTube video)
• Life Kit – Microaggressions Are A Big Deal: How to Talk Them Out and When to Walk Away (NPR podcast)