The design rendering for the Harvard Lofts building
(Image: LIHI)
It’s a seller’s market for medium-sized, newly constructed Capitol Hill apartment buildings. Seattle’s Low Income Housing Institute announced this week it has acquired another building on Capitol Hill with its $21 million purchase of the Harvard Lofts development with plans to offer housing to people at risk of homelessness.
“Thank you to City of Seattle Office of Housing and the State Department of Commerce Rapid Capital Housing Acquisition program for funding,” LIHI said in its announcement. “These public investments enable people living temporarily in tiny houses, shelters and those on the street to secure permanent housing.”
The deal for the newly constructed building just a block or so west from Capitol Hill Station comes amid a flurry of affordable housing activity in the area powered by the Rapid Acquisition program part of the federal American Rescue Plan that allows Seattle and the Washington State Department of Commerce to leverage local, state, and federal funding in grants to organizations like LIHI.
LIHI says the Harvard Lofts are the 10th building where it used Rapid Acquisition funds to “purchase brand new market rate buildings and existing hotels to quickly provide housing and shelter for homeless people.”
Earlier this week, CHS reported on the YWCA’s $38 million deal to acquire a planned microhousing development at 800 E Denny Way for residents at-risk or experiencing homelessness in Seattle. That building is expected to open early this summer. YWCA also is utilizing Rapid Acquisition funding.
Like the YWCA acquisition, LIHI’s new building was planned as a market-rate development. Highpoint Investments will now cash in on the project and hand over the building to LIHI. CHS reported here in 2018 on the design review process for the project.
LIHI says Harvard Lofts will open with 71 studio apartments, each around 274 square feet with washer/dryers in the units. Amenities include rooftop deck and balconies.
Earlier this year, CHS reported on another LIHI building opening for homeless young adults on 10th Ave E.
Meanwhile, the real estate market is being flooded with available buildings as original aPodment developer Calhoun has put its portfolio of properties up for sale.
HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.
Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.
Those buildings end up being problem magnets.
It’s a double-edged sword, it’s more efficient to house and provide services to a single location, but concentrating poverty can be problematic, particularly if those dwelling there aren’t accepted by the community and isolated. This was one aspect of the many deficiencies with previous public housing policy. At least this time around the housing isn’t segregated, completely shody construction, and massive towers in declining areas of the city 🤷🏻♂️ If you want it spread throughout the city, then we need to remove exclusionary single family zoning that was designed to lock historical patterns in place once outright segregation was illegal. Minneapolis did this and was one of the few cities to see rents hold steady or decline since…
Unfortunately, the similarity is that it’s unwelcomed by the community regardless 🤦♂️ Community support of all kinds would have a dramatic impact on how this type of service would work. As others have mentioned, tenants also see neighbors within their building that need additional help, rather than writing off the whole endeavor, work to help those whom it’s working for and to help find something more suitable for those whom it’s not working!
There seems to be a wave of new/recently-completed buildings being acquired for homeless people. This is a huge investment, on the order of $300,000 per unit. I hope it is worth it, but that will depend on the process for selecting the individuals who will be placed in these units. They will need to be people who have a reasonable chance of changing their lives around, and committing to a sober, employed lifestyle. Will these buildings include case managers, mental health/addiction services to help ensure that this happens? I spoke with a young man living in one of these already-opened buildings (on 10th Ave E) and he said he “hated” his neighbors in the building because there was rampant drug use (and associated problems) going on. So, call me skeptical that this concept is a good idea.
P.S. There is now a 24/7 security guard at the building on 10th Ave E (500 block), and he told me this was necessary because there have been problems with both residents and non-residents. This is a building owned/managed by LIHI, and the security obviously adds a significant amount to their costs.
Also worth noting the 420 building is also managed by LIHI and has brought an uptick of SPD/SFD calls to the block. Area residents were told there would be on-site management to help be a good neighbor and they have been anything but. The building is loud, fights spill out to the street, and there visible drug dealing around the building to LIHI residents. I’m sure it’s not all tenants that are causing the bulk of the problems, but LIHI needs to address those who aren’t ready to integrate into stable housing and provide different kind of transitional support.
The 420 also seems to have 2 security personal more present in the past few months.
Oh Zach, stop being such a wet blanket realist! Seattle likes to live in a world where “Housing First” and “Defund the Police” make such great idealistic slogans no one actually thinks about, or comes up with the real nuts and bolts of how the desired outcome might actually be achieved! Just keep chanting the idealistic slogans without doing the hard work it takes to achieve and you are considered a good Seattle liberal. Ask the hard questions, and you are labeled a…or worse. I along with you, also hope these new properties come with case workers and mental heath/substance abuse resources for the inhabitants. If they don’t, this whole exercise will be a giant waste of time and money. I’m hoping for the best for the folks they are meant to serve!
I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, but there really aren’t enough resources and caseworkers to provide services, because no one wants to do that hard work that the rest of society has left to them 🤷🏻♂️
Rather than “hoping” there are caseworkers and resources, how about actually trying to ensure that there are? I would love to see more all over the city, but it’s often met with resistance.
The city seems determined to create a drug abuse and mental health crisis zone out of the area nearby Broadway Ave QFC. It is monumentally unreasonable for existing residents and businesses to be told, essentially, we’re the ‘containment zone’ or ‘district 9’ for the rest of the city. The City seems to have figured out with Sawant in, they’re free to do whatever they want to D3, she won’t complain and her followers will just see it through the “Socialism” lens, not the “addicts/mental health victims that need help and shouldn’t be left unsupervised” lens.
Glad to see some significant efforts to provide housing. We’re talking about human beings, there should not be a condition for having space for you and your belongings.
If you think there are better answers then stop complaining and start working on them, because the commons will always exist and their will always be people that have needs.
We used to treat those with epilepsy like they were possessed by demons until realizing it was a medical condition. In the same manner, we now know there are myriad environmental and genetic factors that contribute to both addiction and mental health. We also know that both addiction and mental health can contribute to someone becoming unhoused, yet once unhoused it is so much harder to address those underlying conditions. Rather than repeating history, and demonizing people going through what is likely the worst experience in their lives, we need to find humane and dignified ways to help our community.