WHO WE ARE
Taproot White Center is a community planning committee that aims to engage neighbors and collect data on housing experiences and housing disparities in unincorporated areas like White Center. This data will be used to shape actions based on the community's priorities.
The committee has met monthly over the past year and uses a results-based accountability framework to judge which housing policies are helpful, and which may sound good but are counterproductive. This effort works to address White Center's history of housing displacement and gentrification through policy change and advocacy that reflects the voices of the people living here.
Committee Members have the role of:
-
Guiding community outreach and priorities
-
Elevate lived experience (housing, small-business, anti-displacement)
-
Turn community feedback into recommendations for decision-makers
OUR WHY
A taproot, by definition, is the primary root of a plant from which other roots emerge from. In a similar manner, we seek to deepen our understanding and advance strategies related to permanent affordability, with the aim of ensuring benefits for future generations within our community.
The Forever Homes Committee is a community engagement committee dedicated to co-educating our community about permanently affordable housing in our neighborhood—essentially homes that are kept off the traditional real estate market for perpetuity. This is done in a variety of ways but usually involves organization setting up a community land trust that owns the lands and restricts the resale of the structure on the land at an affordable rate.
The end goal of this project is to gather communal testimony with the collaboration of the CDA staff and the Forever Homes Committee in order to co-author and create a report laying out the top preferences on the type of permanently affordable housing model that King County should adopt and fund that would effect unincorporated neighborhoods of King County, like ours.
Community land trust homes resist speculation from investors and can possibly preserve intergenerational belonging in White Center. Through collective action and community envisioning we’re planting the seeds for a future where housing in White Center is protected from displacement.
TAPROOT'S LEAD UP
Taproot White Center is a community planning committee that aims to engage neighbors and collect data on housing experiences and housing disparities in unincorporated areas like White Center. This data will be used to shape actions based on the community's priorities.
The committee has met monthly over the past year and uses a results-based accountability framework to judge which housing policies are helpful, and which may sound good but are counterproductive. This effort works to address White Center's history of housing displacement and gentrification through policy change and advocacy that reflects the voices of the people living here.
