Mercy Housing Northwest recently received a $536,798 award from Healthier Here, a local nonprofit. The grant will help launch an innovative resident and wellness initiative addressing the historic inequities experienced by low-income and BIPOC communities by introducing a model that centers on behavioral health in programming and training, while supporting residents and staff across King County.

This funding will help us assess, test, and iterate both Resident Services and behavioral health alongside complementary tools and practices that help disrupt burnout, secondary trauma, and turnover among frontline and administrative housing staff. We have also partnered with WAPI (a King County provider offering outpatient substance abuse treatment to primarily youth and adults of color) to implement behavioral health supports in a culturally responsive way. MHNW has been working with Healthier Here since 2019.

The outcomes we will focus on are 1) helping to improve behavioral, social, and emotional health for residents of MHNW communities and 2) improving and sustaining more empathetic, equitable, and sustainable workforce development practices. We will grow additional capacity building for supervisory staff who oversee Resident Services and Property Management Staff, helping these staff gain additional skills, tools, and expertise in how to integrate a behavioral health focus into their people management practices. The result will be a “playbook” that serves as an overview and assessment of this grant that will share learnings and recommendations for affordable housing peers exploring similar integration of behavioral health practices for their respective staff and service communities.