Starting this Monday, March 5 and running through April 27 at City Hall Lobby Gallery (5th Avenue entrance) and Anne Focke Gallery (L-2 level of City Hall) we’ll have a national touring photo exhibit from the National Center on Family Homelessness. The free exhibit is called Looking Into Light. Seattle is the third city to host the collection and it will travel the United States for two years. Fifty prints, drawn from more than 20,000 images in the Center’s archive, document family homelessness in America.
I applaud the Seattle University Project on Family Homelessness, the exhibit sponsor while in Seattle. The United States has the largest number of homeless women and children among industrialized nations. On any given day more than 200,000 U.S. children have no place to live and about 1.6 million of them will experience homelessness over the course of a year.
Last November, with $435,000 in new funding, the Council decided to make ending homelessness in families with children a top priority for 2012. The Council asked that by the end of June, the Human Service Department report on “the number of families served by the funding added by the Council and whether there is further need for additional assistance for homeless families.” If the report shows the need for additional assistance, the Council has asked that Executive propose new strategies for assisting families and funding options in the 2013/2014 proposed budget.
The Project on Family Homelessness is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Click here to learn more. Later this month there will be an event reception. Contact my office if you want more information about the reception.