Sharon Lee was born in New York and spent part of her formative years with her grandparents in Hong Kong when her parents divorced. Even at age 5, Lee, executive director of Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI), reports being conscious of the wide wealth disparities that existed in the world. Each morning when she arrived at school, she passed men and women sitting outside the gate, asking for spare change.

Unprecedented. Difficult. Heartbreaking. The words that come up when people discuss 2020 are rarely positive. But as a pandemic and economic hardships spread across the United States, NeighborWorks network organizations moved quickly, created new partnerships, worked long hours and offered new services to help residents in their communities. As we begin a new calendar year, we asked a few leaders across the network to share some of their thoughts about the year we just completed, and about the year ahead.

In January, Darryl Smith became CEO of HomeSight in Southeast Seattle, the most diverse part of the city. When COVID-19 hit the United States, Washington was the first to be listed as a hotspot. There have been more than 25,000 cases of coronavirus confirmed in the state, and more than a thousand deaths. About half of those have been in King County, named for Martin Luther King, Jr., the county where Seattle is located.


Have you ever noticed how tight finances and low temperatures often seem to collide? Come January most people are still dealing with extra holiday spending and then the cost of living goes up with higher energy bills!

While lecturing now about budgeting for Christmas would be a bit tardy, it's not too late to take a look at ways to help residents save money on their power bills. We'll focus on the low-cost ways to tackle that bill now, with some hints about more substantial expense — and subsequent saving — to be considered later.

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