The Executive Alliance has announced that Washington Appleseed will receive an Honorable Mention for the 2008 Evergreen Award, an honor given to a nonprofit organization that exemplifies collaboration across sectors.
The first place award recipient, Sea Share, and the Honorable Mention award winners will be recognized at the 14th Annual Washington State Nonprofit Conference on April 9th, at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue.
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Washington Appleseed received the Honorable Mention award for initiating an innovative affordable housing project, in which attorneys at the Seattle based law firms of Foster Pepper and
Davis Wright Tremaine worked pro bono
to create a revolving fund of over $25 million for the YWCA of Seattle, King and Snohomish Counties to purchase affordable housing units for low-income
families. In the summer of 2007, their collaborative
efforts - with numerous project supporters - led to the largest affordable
housing purchase in Snohomish
County history.
Collaboration across sectors was the cornerstone of this project's
outstanding success. The expertise of
attorneys and professionals in the private sector, with the invaluable support and
foresight of elected officials in county government, enabled the YWCA to take a
major step towards meeting an ambitious ten-year goal of creating
hundreds of additional units of housing for
low-income women and families. The
community benefit of this project in Snohomish
County is tremendous, and
the possibility for replication makes it a model for consideration by other
municipalities across the state and the nation.
With the high cost of housing in the Puget
Sound region, this project is particularly remarkable. The YWCA recognized that its goal to
significantly increase their number of affordable housing units in King and Snohomish Counties would be difficult to meet with
the rising costs of housing and land in the region. Too often the YWCA simply didn’t have
sufficient resources on hand for the huge down-payment needed to purchase
multi-family housing complexes when they went on the real estate market. The financing solution provided by the
private sector team, with support from the Snohomish County Council, was
innovative and very timely.
The attorneys at Foster Pepper and Davis Wright Tremaine, working pro bono in collaboration with the King
County Housing Authority, the Snohomish County Housing Authority, the Seattle
Housing Authority, and Seattle-NW Securities, put together a private-sector
mezzanine financing package of over $25 million for the YWCA’s acquisition of
affordable housing units. The project
garnered support from Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon and unanimous
support from the Snohomish County Council.
In December 2007, this inventive project was named by Bond Buyer: The Daily Newspaper of Public
Finance as a "Deal of the Year," an award bestowed to the top ten ground-breaking
financing deals across the United
States.
Representatives from Foster Pepper, the Snohomish County Executive's
Office, NW Securities, Washington Appleseed, and the YWCA were present at the Bond Buyer's 6th Annual Deal of
the Year Awards Dinner in New York
City on December 11, 2007 to accept the award
on behalf of the successful partnership.
