The Central District’s Powell Barnett has become the latest landing spot for asylum seekers from Congo, Angola, and Venezuela who have been shuttled from temporary camps to county and donor-supported motel rooms and back again while local governments try to sort out more permanent shelter.
Mutual aid groups announced the new camp location as tents were set up Monday in this Central District park along MLK Way. The new camp is a few blocks east of Garfield Community Center where the group briefly set up tents on the campus tennis courts earlier this month in what turned out to be a one-day camp thanks to a private donation securing enough funding to pay for more nights at the Quality Inn in Kent.
With funds again short, organizers say the group needs tents, blankets, and tarps to make the Powell Barnett camp livable.
City officials are monitoring the situation and have advocated for a “regional solution” for the refugee camp. “This issue is bigger than Seattle. We do not have the resources to respond to this level of need,” Joy Hollingsworth, District 3 representative on the Seattle City Council, said in a statement when the campers arrived at Garfield earlier in April. “Migrants and asylum seekers who have traveled from countries around the world to various cities in King County are in need of work permits, housing resources, and other services.”
Campers at the Garfield setup earlier this mont
“Our county, state, and federal governments need to help address the crisis from our southern border to our city doorstep,” Hollingsworth said in the statement.
The group has been at the center of demonstrations and protest including arrests at Seattle City Hall as “hundreds of Venezuelan, Angolan, and Congolese refugees” have been “bounced around from a church in Tukwila to hotels in south King County for the last few months.”
$32.7 million has been slated for asylum-seekers flowing into Washington but the process of making funding and resources available is still underway, KUOW reported in early April.
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Mutual aid groups “announced the new tent location”?
How lucky for their housed neighbors in the CD to have been chosen!
Why does the CD have to take on this burden? Who told these migrants that coming to the one of the most expensive cities in the world was a good idea? How did they get here?
I’m all for taking in immigrants, but this ain’t it.
Youll never know, couch potato
The “mutual aid” activists couldn’t be bothered to keep these people in Tukwilla where their children were going to school, the driving back and forth would have inconvenienced the “activists”.
Obviously it was far better to place these people in a park around the block from businesses which are owned by recent immigrants.
The damage to the park will quickly add up to more than the $50K that was used to move them back to the hotel that they had been staying at.
Charity should be provided to the asylum seekers.
If you haven’t already read MLK Jr’s letter from a Birmingham jail, I recommend it. Either way, read this section but replace the context from 61 years ago to today, where asylum seekers are fleeing violence and environmental hazards because we now just treat countries the way we used to treat redlined neighborhoods, and history repeats itself over and over…
“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
Please explain how MLK fighting for American Black rights has any iota of relevance to providing homes to African and South American immigrants who were lied to by a church in San Antonio about accommodations being had for the taking in Tukwila?
Activists are fond of lifting out-of-context quotes from MLK, Trotsky, Alinsky and others, all the while shoving your own half-baked ideas of revolution and revolt down an overburdened America’s throat. At what point do you not see how immoral and wrong you are to be playing politics with immigrants’ lives?
He has a hell of a lot to do with it… He traveled the world and worked to connect and intersect all sorts of social movements, and understood that at the end of the day they were all fighting for the same goal.
Regardless of how they arrived, we can still choose to treat these asylum seekers like humans and show them kindness. Take your frustrations out on the church and larger actors that created this mess, not the most vulnerable people caught in the middle of it. The people playing politics with immigrants lives are the ones who see them as immigrants before seeing them as humans 🙄
Good looking out, very much appreciate it.
I for one think this was a brilliant move. If the City Council is just gonna turn a blind eye, and none of our billionaire philanthropists can be bothered to care……
Well, let’s fund raise via racism. Send some tall dark African men out to camp in one of our nicer (whiter) neighborhood parks, and watch those funds magically appear!
On a serious note, I feel so bad for the refugees. The waiting and uncertainty really gets to you.
You believe that Powell Barnet meets your description of “our nicer (whiter) neighborhood parks”?
Are you new to Seattle, and thus are speaking out of ignorance, or are just some racist troll?
Seeing people who were born in Africa or hold African ancestry is quite common in that general area. You might want to get off your couch and explore a new neighborhood.
There are several tasty African restaurants, as well as grocery stores and at least one bakery which makes fresh teff injera.
So your thought on this being a “brilliant move”? Piss off troll.
I realize that this is the “Capitol Hill Blog”, but maybe it is time to see a few more restaurants reviewed,… which are a few blocks outside of the comfort zone for what is seen as “The Hill”.
Sticking to a nebulous boundary that has no real meaning is in its own way “red-lining”.
The basic problem is that migrants like these have illegally entered the country and are now awaiting their asylum hearings. This wait is years-long, and in the end the majority do not qualify for asylum. Meanwhile, taxpayers are on the hook to support them financially. In my opinion, this is not right! At the very least, they should be given temporary work permits so they can support themselves.
Says the guy who called Broadway a canyon.
I don’t see why people like Tiffany and Mutual are freaking out, it’s just desperate people seeking shelter….
OHHHH WAIT…that’s right…They’re homeless, and therefore are terrifying dangerous monsters. My bad! I guess these rude asylum seekers being kicked around from shelter to shelter forgot to consult “Tiffany” OHHHHHH NOOOO, how terrible.
Welcome back to the neighborhood, y’all. Glad we have space to help until organizers can find proper permanent housing.
The line of actual citizens waiting for “proper permanent housing” stretches long in this city and state. Where was it written that we must provide such housing to asylum seekers, many of whom will not see their cases heard for years? Our country may be obligated to allow them entry but I am not sure that obligation stretches to providing full financial support. Like Zach, who wrote above, I would like these people to be granted work permits along with entry privileges so they could begin supporting themselves as quickly as possible while they wait for final status resolution. That, of course, is an issue for the federal government, which is why this whole mess is beyond the reach of our city. Sorry folks, but we cannot afford to deliver proper permanent housing to you, our most recent arrivals.
Hmm, sounds like your usual “let’s stick with what has worked for me” schtick…
We’re supposedly in a housing crisis but the rental vacancy rate has increased in Seattle, that seems like there may be some local solutions needed still. We have far too many profit-minded development that will take the risk of building unfilled “luxury” buildings in and adjacent to downtown as a hopefull revenue stream, rather than working with the existing communities to build livable affordable housing for the people that live there and are being displaced!
Yes Matt. I am desperately selfish and all my comments reflect my intense and debilitating self interest. Now please tell me how we will be housing these new, and perhaps temporary arrivals, while we allow others who have been waiting for housing even longer to continue waiting.
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
What country do you think we all live in, Glenn? Aren’t you a boomer? I thought boomers love ‘what America stands for’ (forgive my assumption, but you sure comment like one).
You should really visit NYC sometime and check out this new statue they put in…and the inscription on it!! whoa…
What about the black community that live in the CD and need help…oh that’s right, the leftist white folks have moved on from that moment and now on the next…whatever make them feel better at night…so over this city!
You might be surprised to learn that the inscription on the Statue of Liberty is not a law.
I appreciate all these personal attacks, Matt and anonymous CH person. Much easier than actually answering my very practical question. How are we going to house these people in a city and region where affordable housing shortages abound?
Well, I pointed out that there are around 30,000+ vacant apartments in Seattle at the moment… Also, the city council you and your ilk just voted in have decided to sidline a pilot to give more opportunities to build affordable housing… Apparently the solution is to go back to the same developers that have gotten us to this point 🤦♂️
Where did you get this data? I find it very difficult to believe there are 30,000 vacant apartment units in Seattle right now. Of course even granting the point, it still requires lots of money to rent apartments for people who do not have homes. Where will the money come from Matt?
Although the Statue of Liberty encourages us to accept the poor, the hungry, etc., the asylum situation has been abused and now we are facing a huge influx of people who have been granted temporary right to remain without any opportunity to support themselves. They must be granted that ability because no community can be expected to semi-permanently house great numbers of temporary residents on short notice. And it certainly cannot be expected to do so in an era of existing housing shortage affecting longer term permanent residents.
I cannot recall nor find where I saw 30,000 vacant rentals, but here’s a recent study from HUD showing more than 20,000 in 2022. I’ll concede the 30,000 but there’s still tons of vacancies.
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/MCCharts/php/pdf/53033.pdf
This crisis isn’t going anywhere until we embrace housing as a right and not a revenue stream… Please provide this list of the proper order of whom deserves housing and in which order that you seem to be referencing! It’s the same forces that are creating the housing crisis here and causing the asylum influx…
Get them asylum lawyers now. Fast track their Asylum claims. If approved connect with refugee agencies. If denied – deport.
YES! Exactly right.
The asylum system cannot accommodate their numbers right now. It is overwhelmed, and these cases will not be adjudicated for years.
I really just imagine y’all as slave catchers, you don’t make it that hard to imagine honestly…