Tag Archives: broadway hill park

Capitol Hill’s permanent supportive housing location for Trans and Gender Diverse BIPOC set to open early in 2024

Posted on by

(Image: Lavender Rights Project)

Ebo Barton outside the soon-to-open supportive housing location alongside Jaelynn Scott of LRP (Image: Lavender Rights Project)

The Lavender Rights Project and Chief Seattle Club are ready to open a permanent supportive housing location — which will provide safety, resources and shelter to Transgender and Gender Diverse People of Color — in Capitol Hill in early 2024. The two organizations will collaborate to operate and maintain the just off Broadway apartment building.

This permanent supportive housing location is part of the county’s Health Through Housing Initiative, which seeks to address the housing crisis and to assist those at risk for experiencing chronic homelessness through repurposing existing buildings in the region.

But the Lavender Rights Project hopes to do even more to grow community around the 35-unit building near Broadway Hill Park.

“We’re working with a number of organizations within the LGBTQ community, but also within the trusted Black community to provide services that are centered for Black, Gender-Diverse individuals,” Ebo Barton, director for housing services at LRP, told CHS.

With Chief Seattle Club for support, LRP focuses on elevating the power, autonomy, and leadership of the Black and Gender Diverse community. CSC will be in charge of the building and its property, including maintenance, while LRP’s work will focus on ways to care for the residents. Continue reading →

Seattle Fire back for more ‘live’ training across from Broadway Hill Park

Posted on by

A scene from the March training at the corner

Development of new housing near Broadway Hill Park will bring another opportunity for Seattle Fire Department crews to hone their firefighting skills.

SFD will be at the corner of Federal and Republican this week for three days of live-training involving plenty of real smoke and flames:

Today, the department will have 4-6 fire evolutions spread throughout the day each lasting 15-20 minutes. Residents will see smoke as controlled burns are set inside the vacant apartment structure. All carpet, plastics and toxic synthetic materials have been removed along with required asbestos abatement. The training officers will set wood fires in a controlled method with safety officers on-hand during the exercises.

Continue reading →

Here’s why the Lavender Rights Project, county officials, and Seattle’s mayor think this Capitol Hill apartment building is the right place to start a new approach to creating supportive housing and putting a real dent in the homelessness crisis

Posted on by

The 35-unit building is part of a neighborhood that includes small to midsize apartment buildings and single family style homes like the famous pink house next door (Image: CHS)

An $11.6 million acquisition is turning a market-rate Capitol Hill apartment building into affordable, supportive housing for “queer, transgender, two-spirit, Black, Indigenous, people of color” experiencing chronic homelessness as county and city officials pin their hopes on a new approach to creating housing facilities better integrated into neighborhoods and communities.

King County Executive Dow Constantine and Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell squeezed into an E Republican studio apartment just off Broadway Monday morning to explain why the housing is being created here — and to introduce the Lavender Rights Project, the organization that will operate the soon to open building and make it the black and trans community resource and advocacy group’s new home with help from the American Indian and Alaska Native people-dedicated Chief Seattle Club,

“We’re working to have Health Through Housing facilities in every community, particularly communities where there’s need,” Constantine told CHS Monday about the program that powered the purchase of the newly constructed 35-unit apartment building using funding including $6 million allocated from unneeded jail spending during the pandemic.

“This building is really focused on two aspects of overrepresentation in the homeless community. Black indigenous population is massively overrepresented in homelessness,” the county executive said. “This population intersects with gender diverse communities which are also overrepresented. So this is a place where we can meet those who most need the help and get them into safe housing with services and remaining connected to community.”

The new building will be a test of the concept as previous acquisitions of hotel properties in commercial areas of the county haven’t worked out.

CHS broke the news earlier this month on the supportive housing project’s plans to join this Capitol Hill neighborhood just off Broadway near Broadway Hill Park as the county program moved beyond its earlier unsuccessful acquisitions of hotels. The Capitol Hill deal 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 five 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 supports “to help vulnerable people regain health and stability.”

In the project, the Lavender Rights Project and Chief Seattle Club are taking on the challenge of developing new social housing. Continue reading →

King County’s $11.6M acquisition of Capitol Hill apartment building part of plan to house 1,600 homeless people — UPDATE

Posted on by

King County’s quest to house 1,600 homeless people by 2028 will include new homes on Capitol Hill as officials try to improve the results of the challenged program behind the acquisition.

According to the latest efforts to document the crisis, there are an estimated 13,400 people living homeless in the county and the Department of Community and Human Services estimates more than 40,000 people are in need of homelessness services around Seattle and the county over the course of the year.

According to records, the county has purchased a four-story, 35-unit apartment building just west of the intersection and Broadway Hill Park for $11.6 million. The $322,000 per unit price to the private developer that constructed the building is in line with recent similar transactions in the neighborhood.

The deal is the latest 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. Continue reading →

Seattle Fire battles blaze in basement of boarded-up house set to be demolished for new apartment building across from Broadway Hill Park

Posted on by

A boarded-up 1904-era house on the list for years for demolition to make way for new development next to Broadway Hill Park burned Friday night as Seattle Fire battled a stubborn basement fire.

Seattle Fire was called to the southwest corner of Federal and Republican around 10:30 PM to the reported basement fire in the single family style, one story structure. Continue reading →

With eight stories, brick veneer, and preserving an ‘exceptional’ birch tree, development plans rise again across from Broadway Hill Park

Posted on by

(Images: Grouparchitect)

A plan to bring new development to the corner of E Republican and Federal Ave E neighboring the area’s mix of single family-style homes and old apartment buildings stalled during the pandemic, but now it’s coming back and will appear before the East Design Review Board this week.

Three existing homes, each dating to the first years of the 20th century, will be demolished. According to tax records, two of the three are single family homes, while the third is a duplex. In a trade a city desperate for new housing should be happy to make, an eight-story, 75-unit building will rise across from Broadway Hill Park.

In the works for years, developers began meeting with the Pike Pine Urban Neighborhood Council in November 2019. There were more community outreach meetings in November of that year and in January 2020. Then 2020 happened. There was another, email evaluation by Pike Pine Urban Neighborhood Council. There was some movement later in 2020, but then things seems to have stalled. That earlier version had called for a 117-unit building, but there’s no longer any mention of that number.

And now, it’s back in the building pipeline with a recently released plan for design review (PDF). Continue reading →

Homeless, gay, vulnerable: March murders echo with Capitol Hill’s cold cases past

Posted on by

Broadway Hill Park (Image: CHS)

Before Jonathan Caradonna was stabbed and killed on a Saturday morning last month on Capitol Hill’s 13th Ave E, he had mostly called the neighborhood’s Broadway Hill Park his home.

Some living nearby remember Caradonna as a peaceful resident in the neighborhood even through uprooting events like city clearances of the small Capitol Hill park.

Wood

Caradonna

11 years earlier, a woman walking her dog around sunrise spotted Zachary Lewis sprawled out in a vacant lot on the corner that is now Broadway Hills. He had been beaten to death. More than a decade later, the investigation into Lewis’s killing remains open.

If last month’s two killings of gay men living homeless on Capitol Hill fade into Seattle Police’s cold case files, they will join a sad list of unsolved murders of victims living on the edges on the neighborhood’s streets.

Caradonna, 32, died Saturday, March 19th after suffering multiple stab wounds in an assault near 13th Ave E.

Brent Wood, 31, was found beaten to death on the pavement behind the Broadway Rite Aid early on the morning of Thursday, March 3rd.

SPD detectives continue to investigate the March murders and the other cases including Lewis’s stretching over the past decade remain open, a department spokesperson tells CHS. Continue reading →

Broadway Hill sweep: Two referrals to a ‘shelter surge’ hotel, five ‘voluntarily relocated,’ and a bin of personal belongings

Posted on by

City crews are at work in Capitol Hill’s tiny Broadway Hill Park after Wednesday morning’s deadline for removing personal property from the public greenspace.

Seattle Parks and the Human Services Department say two people living in the park were referred to shelter at the Executive Hotel Pacific, one of the city-leased in a “shelter surge” effort to move more people out of camps as COVID-19 slows. One of the referrals came Wednesday morning, the city says, while five others “voluntarily relocated out of the park.” Continue reading →

Broadway Hill Park next in ongoing Seattle homeless encampment sweeps — UPDATE

Posted on by

Broadway Hill Park is slated to be the next public space on Capitol Hill to be cleared of homeless encampments.

Advocates say the park at Federal and Republican amid townhomes, apartment buildings, and single family homes is one of a handful of spaces across Seattle set for sweeps this week.

A Seattle Parks representative said more information was coming including information from the Human Services Department regarding shelter referrals.

UPDATE 5:08 PM: Seattle Parks says the sweep is needed because of concerns about recent fires.

“After a series of fires in the park, the City has requested that outreach efforts at Broadway Hill Park intensify this week with the goal of getting all who are onsite situated into shelter and on a path towards a permanent housing solution,” the parks department statement reads.

Continue reading →

Dear humans, it’s time to help shape the design of new housing across from Broadway Hill Park

Posted on by

“Dear humans, I’m sad to say this will be my last spring bloom with you all…” (Image: @maniftendst)

There is good reason for the City of Seattle’s streamlined design review process. And there is good reason for new housing across from rare Capitol Hill parkland. But it doesn’t make the scene passed by on so many COVID-19 walks at Federal and Republican any less melancholy. The little house and the blossoming tree are, indeed, enjoying their final season.

The proposed project by Mercer Island-based Sealevel Properties at 1013 E Republican will use the outbreak-streamlined administrative design review process and is part of a sudden, busy pulse of review activity across Capitol Hill. It’s time to add your comments before the proposal is assessed. Owing to coronavirus restrictions, the city has adjusted development regulations to cut out the in-person meeting with the design review board and allow developers to instead go through an administrative process with a public comment period. The comment period for the project opened with notices to neighbors two weeks ago. It closes May 26. Continue reading →