In 2017, 70,000 extremely low-income households in King County rented the home they lived in. Many of these households included family members who are elderly or disabled. Many included young children. Two-thirds of these households were severely rent-burdened — meaning they spent over 50% of their limited household incomes on rent and utilities. The one-third who spent less than half their income on rent were most likely assisted through the region’s Public Housing or Housing Choice Voucher programs. What these numbers tell us is that just about every unassisted extremely low-income family that rents a home in King County — over 44,000 households — is one paycheck or one rent increase away from homelessness. This is our challenge. As rents continue to rise, this reality is visible on our streets and in our open spaces — Seattle is now reporting the third-largest homeless population in the country. And our county’s school districts reported 9,119 homeless school children in their classrooms during the 2016/2017 school year. In the face of this overwhelming crisis, the King County Housing Authority’s mission is clear: to increase the number of households we serve and to preserve housing affordability in a continuously escalating rental market. In 2017 we did just that. We provided homes to 2,300 new households, and we increased our federal program capacity by nearly 500 subsidies. One half of new households served this year came directly out of homelessness. Many were disabled veterans or families with homeless children. This expansion was critical, but not sufficient in the face of the region’s urgent housing needs, and it comes against a backdrop of draconian cuts to the federal housing budget being proposed in Washington, D.C. KCHA also intervened in 2017 to preserve two affordable communities at risk from increasing market pressures. In Redmond we purchased Friendly Village, a mobile-home park that is LETTER FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR 2017 ANNUAL REPORT 3