Bellwether Housing Reviews

Bellwether is great at one thing: talking a good game but not following through. I agree with the other reviews here, the workload Bellwether puts on its frontline employees is excessive and the senior leadership showed no interest in addressing. So they will tell you that they are on it but they'll load you with more work. This shifting of more tasks is partly done on purpose but mostly out of disorganization. The company is very disorganized. Many upper management positions were created that even people who worked for years in their departments knew what they were supposed to do! In the meantime, the frontline staff has to do everything with little assistance. The supervisors are helpful but you are constantly bailing out water in a sinking ship. There's no thriving, all most staff are trying to do is survive the week. Bellwether likes to say that they pay well. They don't, at least not if you are a frontline employee. There was a rockstar manager who I recently heard is no longer part of the company. They told me once that while the pay might seem good, it is not commensurate with the amount of work that Bellwether makes a manager do. In Bellwether ONE manager has to do the work that other housing companies divide among several staff. So here's a few thousand more than Plymouth per year but do four peoples' jobs. So the frontline staff is overwhelmed, especially during and after the lockdown, but turnover has always been an issue. The turnover is high because Bellwether will work you to the ground. And yes, as mentioned in another review, there is a culture of working unpaid overtime. Bellwether fancies itself as "woke" and it's almost treated as a religion. It's all for show though because, as stated in other reviews, they talk a big game but don't care that their frontline staff is underpaid, overworked and mostly people of color. It's the classical privileged, enjoying their privilege while preaching about privilege but ignoring those without their privilege. Their idea of equity is to talk Catholic guilt style about their white privilege and job done,

Bellwether has a serious integrity problem and it starts at the top. I'm not sure the right hand knows what the left hand is doing. The COO is going to run the organization into the ground with her questionable ethics and gaslighting. Some members of the leadership team and management are unqualified to lead. The Board of Directors needs to get on it and investigate. You will not be safe here as an employee unless you are white. There is blatant disregard for your rights as an employee and the protections afforded by the EEOC. Bellwether and it's COO talk a big game about DEI. They will hire a diverse staff, but you will be held to different standards than their white employees. White employees will get promotions and huge raises while POC are overlooked or frozen out of their positions, especially if they opt not to be bootlickers. If they don't want you around anymore, but you haven't done anything wrong, they'll offer you money to leave quietly. If they do promote a POC, they will not help you succeed. You will not actually be empowered to change anything. You will not get the support you need and when you inevitably fail, you'll be fired. They love you until they don't. When they decide they are done with you, they are done, even if you have a spotless performance record. POC, non-native English speakers, differently abled, and older employees make up the bulk of the front line onsite "boots on the ground" employees, yet are the lowest paid, least respected, and most frequently fired. My advice to staff? UNIONIZE. Other housing groups in Seattle are unionized. Follow their foot steps. This is the only way you'll be protected. Then Bellwether will actually have to follow the law instead of deciding if and when it applies to them.