Spot.us story pitch

Hi all,

My story idea has been featured on the debut of Spot.us, a new Web site that intends to fund journalism by proposing story ideas to the readers themselves and asking for pledges. Here's a link to my story idea, about King County's ambitious plan to end homelessness by 2014. This plan was drawn up in 2005 by community and government leaders to take a whole new approach to homelessness that aimed to end the shelter-based approach to maintaining homelessness to a supportive housing model that ends homelessness by quickly moving people from being homeless to being housed. One of the things they said that they would do is build or convert 9,500 units of housing for this purpose.

This plan is halfway through, and we're in the stages of an anemic recovery from a crippling recession, and it's time to check in on the plan -- are they still able to build these units of housing, and how much money is it saving us to use this housing approach as opposed to a shelter approach?

I am going to use my skills as a journalist and as a former manager of a homeless shelter in San Francisco to explain and illustrate this effort to end homelessness. And, I'll publish this on the Seattle PostGlobe, an on-line news Web site that is trying to find its path as a non-profit news organization. We had a nice meeting today of PostGlobe people, and the most memorable line was, "This organization seems like the Post-Intelligencer in Exile." And, this is unfortunately true. We need to get a new mission and a new purpose in our community-based journalism and let go of that defunct newspaper.

Miri and I are doing all right, but we're still looking forward to that wonderful day when we can get our own apartment again.When it will come, we don't know. She now has two part-time jobs, one at the Point Defiance Zoo as a zookeeper and the other at the Seattle Aquarium as an educator. I have two temporary jobs coming up that each should last about two weeks, one as a scorer of standardized school tests and the other as a customer service representative at REI's call center. This is positive news, but I really need a full-time job. I have had a few job interviews that went well recently.

Miri and I had a wonderful Pascha at Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church and a short trip to Vashon Island. We took lots of pictures, and I'm attaching one here.

We hope you are well! Christ is Risen!