A 2021 Washington Child Care Collaborative Task Force report estimated that 63% of Washington children live in areas with inadequate child care, reducing our state’s workforce by 133,000 people. These areas are considered child care deserts. Skamania County is one of them. The Washington State Department of Commerce is working to address such disparities.
By car, bus, Amtrak train, ferry and airplane they came. Young people with lived experience of homelessness gathered in SeaTac from all over the state to participate in a weekend-long summit and evaluate dozens of applications for grants from the state’s Office of Homeless Youth.
On Nov. 15, heavy rainfall and strong winds after a prolonged drought led to flooding, landslides, and debris flows which damaged infrastructure in northwest Washington and southwest British Columbia. After a series of atmospheric rivers started pounding the Pacific Northwest, fuel emergencies soon followed in several communities.
Aerospace leaders from Washington and across the globe were on the ground for the Dubai Airshow, the fastest-growing airshow in the world. It opened Nov. 14 after a two year-hiatus.
Funding for housing action plans and transit-oriented development helps communities address years of underbuilding that left middle and lower-income residents priced out of housing as state’s population boomed. A 2020 report tagged Washington state with one of the 10 worst housing shortages in the nation, underbuilding by over a quarter of a million homes over the prior 15 years. Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies documented the nationwide housing shortage and…
A lack of affordable child care is keeping an estimated 133,000 workers out of the workforce. A new report from the task force recommends specific policy changes and investments that would result in increased affordability and availability of child care for all Washington families.