TACOMA, Wash. — Alexandria Alcantar has been working for the Tacoma Housing Authority for more than two years.
She enjoys the work that goes into helping the people that walk through their doors, but admits that it wasn’t the most well-paying job when she started.
“Definitely had to have roommates,” she recalled. “I know two of my colleagues, a lot of them had to apply for other positions in the agency because of the low pay in this position.”
But earlier this month, the housing authority announced a sweeping change to address its employees’ low pay. All of the agency’s full-time workers will now be paid at least $32 an hour.
Executive Director April Black said the decision to increase pay was necessary, given what the housing authority stands for.
“It’s really against our values,” she said. “We’re a social justice organization, we work to fight poverty, and we were paying wages that were causing our staff to be in poverty and to qualify for our programs.”
Alcantar currently works as office administrator and said having a livable wage is a big relief for employees who would otherwise not be able to afford to live in a city that they’re helping people move into.
“A vast majority of employees were looking forward to our waitlist opening up so they could apply for housing assistance,” she said. “Low-income can mean a wide range of things, and seeing that we actually had clients that make more than us that qualify for our programs, rightly so, it makes a big difference to see that now we can afford to live in this area.”
Black said although the housing authority receives federal funding, it’s not a state agency, which gives them some flexibility on how those federal funds can be used.
Black said since she made the announcement, they’ve been getting more people coming in looking for jobs in the housing authority. She also said that since the announcement,other groups have been looking at their budgets to see what they can adjust to raise salaries for all their employees.
But Black admitted that other organizations who rely on grant funding may be concerned about losing employees because they can’t raise salaries. She hopes that the the housing authority's announcement won’t be seen as a challenge in Tacoma, but as an example.
“We want to be used as a comparable wage so they can advocate for themselves when they submit their applications,” she said. “They can say, we need these salary dollars so we can adequately pay our staff and retain them so they can provide the services that we’re hoping to provide through this grant application.”