LIHI Gala & Auction and Virtual Auction raises $645,000! Thank you Sponsors and Supporters!

Rev Lawrence Willis of Love-To presents gifts to Sharon Lee, LIHI Executive Director.

LIHI's Gala & Auction on Friday evening at the Four Seasons, plus Virtual Auction that ran from November 19 to December 3, raised a record $645,000! We are very grateful to everyone who participated.

The Gala & Auction, held in-person for the first time since the pandemic was a fun, fast-paced evening of bidding on exciting auction items, playing games, dashing for delicious desserts, listening to inspiring speeches, and raising bid cards to support LIHI's Tiny House Villages, Urban Rest Stops, and Support Service programs.

Silent Auction: Dozens of fun, beautiful, and tasty items were available for bid.

Dessert Dash: the table with the highest bid got first choice from the luscious dessert selection. The top table bid $5000! A total of $18,000 was raised for the Urban Rest Stops.

Heads or Tails game: with players posing with hands on their head or rump, coin flips quickly narrowed the field down. The winner got half the $2450 pot!

Golden Ticket Raffle: $100 per raffle ticket gave bidders a chance at many exciting items. Our winner chose the 4 Night Stay in a Methow Valley Cabin.

Lively bidding filled the ballroom throughout the evening as auctioneer Kevin Joyce and co-host Tan Macaraeg entertained, teased, and tempted the crowd with irresistible auction items, including Seahawks and Kraken tickets, a week in Tuscany, an African safari, and vacation retreats in Suncadia, Washington DC, Whistler BC, and Ocean Shores.

Fund a Need: LIHI Resident Speaker Latae Mitchell energized and inspired the crowd with her passionate speech about her path from finding a place to stabilize and improve her life in a Tiny House Village, moving into permanent housing, to paying it forward by starting her own street outreach program to help people who were in circumstances similar to her own.  

Paddles were raised rapidly to donate funds for Tiny Houses, Urban Rest Stops, and Supportives Services. Generous donors raised their paddles for $58,000!

And there was so much more, with old friends reconnecting and new friends being made! Plan to join us next year. Sponsor a table for your friends and co-workers, or grab a pair of tickets. It's because of your help that LIHI can provide affordable housing, and services and programs to more than 10,000 families and individuals each year.

We of course welcome your donations year round. Click here or use the QR code below. 

Gala remarks by LIHI Executive Director Sharon Lee

"I am Sharon Lee, Executive Director of the Low Income Housing Institute or LIHI. Thank you for joining LIHI’s Annual Gala. We are celebrating 34 years of serving the housing needs of the community. LIHI started in 1991 with the purchase of the Aloha Inn motel in the Queen Anne neighborhood. Today we own 89 properties with over 3,700 units of affordable housing. 

Please look around the Ballroom tonight. We thank you as you are the ones who made it possible for us to purchase land, finance construction, and work with lenders, architects, contractors, engineers and consultants to build high quality, energy efficient affordable housing. 

It is a crying shame that we have 16 thousand people in Seattle/King County, including seniors and families with children, who are living unhoused and trying to survive. We at LIHI believe in addressing both the affordable housing crisis and the homelessness crisis at the same time.

We work with you to aggressively build hundreds of more units of affordable housing from the ground up. But, as you know, every new building takes three to five years to complete. So that is why LIHI is also building tiny houses at the same time to address the immediate need for shelter. Tiny house villages can be set up in three to four months. Tiny houses save lives! Each tiny house costs $5,000 in material, and provides a family or an individual a warm shelter in a supportive village setting. Our case managers and social workers work to transition people from tiny houses to permanent housing with a high rate of success."

Frank Chopp Tribute

The Gala featured a tribute by Sharon Lee to LIHI co-founder and longtime Washington Speaker of the House Frank Chopp, who passed away on March 22 of this year.

Sharon presented a housing themed quilt to Frank's widow Nancy Long.  A video interview of Frank was featured in the program. 

Watch Frank Chopp Video