Like everyone, the cost of housing is hitting these young families particularly hard. The Pharis family of five lives in a two-bedroom apartment and dreams of the day they'll be able to finish paying off past debts and start saving for a home of their own. The Martins hope to qualify soon for subsidized housing and have been fortunate enough to find a child care provider who accepts state-subsidized child care rates. Because the cost of living is so high here, many low-income workers are forced to depend on one type of state program or another. As many as one million Washington state residents rely on some form of assistance, whether it is the state's subsidized Basic Health Plan or subsidized housing or child care.
Demand already exceeds supply.
There already is a 60,000-person waiting list for the Basic Health Plan, and more than 3,000 people are added to that list every week, Gould said. For many families, health insurance is an unaffordable luxury, said Sheila Dunn, executive director of Operation Improvement, which provides training and assistance to many low-income workers. Often, parents put any money they can toward their children's health care, ignoring their own health needs, she said. We had to move from a house into an apartment. We'd been in that house for six years.