(Image: Lavender Rights Project)
It has been 600 days since King County and Seattle officials crammed into an E Republican studio just off Broadway to tout the Capitol Hill property as the next addition to a network of former market-rate apartment buildings and hotels turned into supportive housing hoped to help break the cycles of the region’s homelessness crisis.
Officials say the $11.6 million investment purchasing the Prescott apartments as part of the program will finally begin to pay off in early 2025 when the first residents begin to move in.
The processes of public funding plus construction challenges and limited and stretched county homelessness resources across efforts to open and operate several sites across the region have added up to a long delay in opening the building.
King County Health Through Housing representatives have been meeting with neighbors and community members about the coming opening including a meeting held last week when representatives from the Lavender Rights Project, Chief Seattle Club, King County, and other partners provided updates on the building and answered questions from community members.
New supportive housing efforts continue to face heavy scrutiny from neighbors even as larger projects continue to take shape.
On Belmont Ave, the Downtown Emergency Service Center is in the middle of the public planning process surrounding its effort to create a new 120-unit supportive housing apartment building with onsite services for its residents on the site of a trio of former transitional housing building from Pioneer Human Services it acquired for $6.5 million.
King County’s $11.6 million investment to purchase the Prescott leapfrogged much of the city’s typical development process as the acquisition snagged a building originally lined up to join Capitol Hill’s waves of market-rate housing development.
CHS reported here in April 2023 as King County Executive Dow Constantine and Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell squeezed into one of the recently completed units to announce the project and tout the new approach to supportive housing.
The building is planned to provide supportive housing for “queer, transgender, two-spirit, Black, Indigenous, people of color” experiencing chronic homelessness as part of the county’s Health through Housing initiative, At last count, the initiative had grown to 1,358 units across 16 locations in seven cities but the path to opening the buildings and adding residents has been slow and, in some cases like the Prescott, fully stalled.
Officials have been meeting with neighbors about the project
On Capitol Hill, that process is finally picking up steam. A representative says a recent visit by the King County Facilities Management Division and the Seattle Fire Department was part of routine preparations around readying the multifamily building for emergency access.
Meanwhile, temporary fencing that has gone up around the building is in place while Deacon Construction is on site “to do some tenant improvement,” the county says.
The plan, the county says, is for the first residents to finally get keys in the first quarter of 2025.
The Capitol Hill opening comes under the Health Through Housing measure passed by the King County Council in 2021 which aims to house up to 1,600 people experiencing chronic homelessness by using hundreds of millions of dollars raised from a sales tax on properties in Seattle and five nearby cities. The E Republican apartment building started construction more than seven years ago in a process that was delayed and then brought to a standstill during the pandemic. The development’s marketing name for the project still hangs in blue letters on the building.
The county says all Health Through Housing properties will include 24/7 staffing and on-site support “to help vulnerable people regain health and stability.”
That will hopefully help cool some neighbor concerns about the project and separate it from the concerns generated by unsupervised supportive housing recently illustrated in the 10th Ave E dog rescue incident that caught citywide attention. That building has residents supported by the King County Regional Homelessness Authority with housing costs and services but not onsite support.
In the E Republican project, the Lavender Rights Project and Chief Seattle Club are taking on the challenge of developing the new social housing. Jaelynn Scott, executive director of the Lavender Rights Project, told CHS the experience Chief Seattle Club has gained in operating supportive facilities with its management of the Salmonberry Lofts in Pioneer Square will help her organization grow its offerings.
The Capitol Hill location is a four-story building with 11 different plan types consisting of small efficiency dwelling units ranging from 279 to 314 square feet, and a one-bedroom unit with 388 square feet. A number of supportive housing locations and shelters for those experiencing homelessness do not allow pets—creating additional barriers—but for this location, the majority of well-behaved pets will be accepted.
According to the Health Through Housing program, standard practice for permanent supportive housing locations consists of residents contributing 30% of their household income towards rent, and these rental payments will assist with supporting program operations.
Officials say the 2023 $330,000 per unit investment in the building could be a bargain, saying it would cost the county and the city $450,000 to $500,000 a unit to “purpose build” supportive housing.
The Capitol Hill apartment building is also part of a wave of low income and social service acquisitions expected to continue to grow. CHS reported on a handful or recent purchases here last year. More will be coming with approval by voters creating a new Social Housing Developer in Seattle to acquire and take over management of existing properties for affordable housing while also setting the groundwork for philanthropy and grants to create new renter-governed housing in the city.
How to pay for that push will be on the ballot this winter. The Let’s Build Social Housing ballot Initiative 137 would add a 5% tax on companies for every dollar over a million paid to a Seattle employee in annual compensation including salary, stock, and bonuses. It will appear on the ballot in a special election in February. Voters will also be able to choose a competing alternative from the Seattle City Council that would not create a new tax and, instead, amend the existing JumpStart payroll tax to provide $10 million annually to the Seattle Social Housing Developer while also limiting the types of housing it pursues. Voters could also decide to do nothing as Seattle’s housing costs and homelessness crisis continue to grow.
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Why did it take so long?
Why? I’m totally agree with the concerned neighbors. 24 hours supervising does nothing. Go to the Belmont Ave apartment to understand that. Why the city government is trying so hard to buy those properties here in the Capitol Hill, when they can pay less for more apartments in other areas? Why there is a need to keep supporting housing in this area? Why not to help the working adults and families or disabled without substance abuse problems? What are they doing? What’s their real purpose?
Short answer is: the city government didn’t, I’m pretty sure. In fact, the only mention of any city officials I see in this article comes references Bruce Harrell attending a press event there in 2023.
Okay NIMBY. Where then?
Call me a NIMBY then but I retrieved the 911 call data from the city’s website for the other DESC and LIHI buildings on Cap Hill and you’ll see that it’s a lot of calls made.
I have yet to pull the police records related to those calls but I wouldn’t be surprised by the finds.
people are sick of being shuffled out of the city because it’s “cheaper” – and it’s no longer cheaper really, since landlords/owners wanna match capitol hill prices. it’s unfair to push people out when all services and communities are pretty much near and around downtown
No, the answer is to build services and housing where land is cheaper. We can’t build our way out of this problem at $330k/unit. That’s magical thinking encouraged by grifters making money to build these things.
Why are we not standing up supportive communities near other cities in this state that have lower costs for housing and that could use the services investment for their existing communities as well?
We have a dilemma here on Capitol Hill. We have a never-ending high demand for housing from working-class people who make 30-75% of the Seattle’s Average Medium Income, ie $84,320, who have a hard time finding affordable apartments here. Meanwhile we’re building spaces as supportive housing for people making 0-15% of the AMI who also bring along a number of problems to the area and attract drug dealers to the area. So we’ll definitely see a steady increase in residential theft (aka porch pirating), break-ins and robberies, and random assaults.
I’m sure you’ll label me NIMBY but I don’t care. We just a relatively safe Cap Hill.
I dunno if you know this, but drug dealers prefer to do business with people who have money, preferably, large amounts of money. Also, like most people, they don’t like dealing with unstable and unpredictable people when they can avoid it. The majority of drugs sold on Capitol Hill are not being purchased by extremely poor people. Night life and wealthy people attract drug dealers. You could remove every single homeless person and broke person from the Hill and revenue from sales of illegal substances would probably go up in response.
And if you want to talk about working class people not being able to afford housing, maybe worry about all the developers building unaffordable “luxury” housing for the top end of the market instead of building for average people. There’s way more of those going in than there are housing projects aimed at the homeless.
There’s just no pretzel certain in this city won’t twist themselves into to make the argument that wealth is the one and only thing that ails society. What a ridiculous game to play. What drug dealer is out there means-testing their clientele? A homeless smack addict’s rumpled $40 from fencing stolen copper spends the same as the crisp $40 some Amazon-employed party boy Venmos over from his MorganStanley checking account.
The majority of drugs aren’t being purchased by poor people? How do you know? Prove it. Or are you just saying so because you want it to be true?
I live 2 blocks from this building and was not aware of any meetings for neighbors/community members. At minimum, they should have mailed fliers to every address in the area. It’s almost like they really did not want any input from those who will be affected by this development.
You got to be tuned into the city building processes. They announce these things. There’s a whole legal process. It’s why it takes so long and costs so much. Then? People like you show up. And the literally Tens of thousands saying EXACTLY what you said.
Then? Cuts in funding comes next because it’s not doing what YOU want?
*head desk*
The words “accountability” and…No…Just that, comes to mind.
The building was completed years ago. It’s been sitting vacant for 3+ years now…
They went round and announced some meeting that was (on purpose?) during a time a regular-office-hours job wouldn’t allow you to attend. Handed out business cards with contacts that, when written to, never respond. Need I say more?
If by “some tenant improvement” they mean again, for the I think third time, ripping off and replacing siding as well as interior drywall most likely water-damaged from a roof that wasn’t protected for almost a year, then sure. That building has been through what, three development companies, and seems to be just about the worst construction quality I’ve seen in a while. One can only hope there’s nothing nasty lurking behind the walls …
Having watched development around the area generally “not buttoned up before wet weather” is pretty normal for most new buildings. Most new construction projects I’ve seen have had standing water on subfloors for long periods of time, and all the framing gets soaked. Among other subpar construction practices. I’d be rather hesitant were I in the market.
Yes in my neighborhood! It is wonderful folks will be getting homes soon. I’m disappointed by the comments here. People are mad when people are living rough outside yet… mad when people get housed too? Pull your hearts out of your assholes for a second
That’s a rather narrow viewpoint, and conjecture at best (something that proponents of this sort of thing are sadly all too often guilty of). I don’t think anyone is mad there’s more housing, but rather mad about everything else that happens around a project like this. And they are right to be mad about being woken up in the middle of the night every night by shenanigans, by having their surroundings destroyed (and don’t you dare patronize me asking for examples and evidence – that’s blatantly obvious to anyone living anywhere near most of these projects), and so on. I don’t know why, but generally the accountability of whoever runs those endeavors ends when people move in, nobody really cares (or has the ongoing means to care) what happens afterwards – that accountability and responsibility must come with it, otherwise it’s a failure waiting to happen.