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| Doug Justus is president of the King County Corrections Guild. He says a pattern of abuse and neglect highlighted in a Justice Department report on the 1,700 bed county jail are the fault of the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. “If there’s better training and equipment, then shame on [the DAJD] for not giving us those tools.” Photo by Luke McGuff |
There is a clock ticking in downtown Seattle that’s about to put a lot of people out on the street.
On Feb. 7, after wrangling with the city over whether it would sell the historic Immigration and Naturalization Service building to a private developer, the federal Government Services Administration put the former immigrant detention center on Airport Way South up for sale in a GSA-run online auction.
The auction won’t close for a couple of weeks, says Fred Zderic, a realty specialist in GSA’s property disposal division. But residents of two homeless shelters that have occupied the building’s basement for some time have been told they have to be out Feb. 29 — one of a spate of upcoming displacements that Seattle shelters will face this year as a result of the sale or redevelopment of downtown properties.
Safe Haven and Veterans Hall, which together house 50 people, are part of the self-managed shelter system operated by Seattle’s SHARE, which has not identified a site where either shelter could move.
“How would you like to lose your home? How would you like to not know where you’re sleeping the next night?” asks Shane Callahan, 21, of the dilemma he and other Safe Haven residents are facing.
Callahan says he’s been homeless nine months because he can’t find work. The group is determined to stay downtown, he says, because it’s near the services and resources that people like him depend on.
In mid-April, new owner Nitze-Stagen is expected to start demolishing all but the sanctuary of the Fifth Avenue’s historic First United Methodist Church to make way for a 41-story office tower. First United, which plans to break ground on a new church at Second Ave. and Denny Way sometime in the next 18-24 months, currently houses the First Church Men’s Shelter and Mary’s Place, a day center for homeless women run by the Church of Mary Magdalene.
The good news is that The Compass Center, which operates the 40-person men’s shelter, has found and expects to announce a new location sometime before March 1, according to Kim Sather, The Compass Center’s program manager for emergency services. The bad news is that Sather expects Hammond House, a 40-woman shelter located in the MJA Building on Stewart St., will have to move at some point in the near future as a result of the building’s recent sale.
While there will be no disruption in service, Sather says, “We need to move a whole program, from mats to lockers to the office. So it will be a challenge.”
Sometime this fall, the 53 women who live in the Noel House shelter and Rose of Lima apartments will also have to move for a redevelopment that the Archdiocesan Housing Authority is planning at the shelters’ current site inside a building at Second Ave. and Bell St.
Bill Hallerman, director of special ministries for AHA, says the two-story building — which houses the Recovery Cafe on the ground floor — will be torn down to make way for a six-story facility in which Noel House’s 40 residents will be on the second floor, instead of in the basement, and Rose of Lima’s single-occupancy transitional housing will increase from 13 rooms to 50.
During the demolition and construction, which he says won’t start before November at the earliest, Rose of Lima residents will move to the AHA-run Josephinum Building at Second Ave. and Stewart St.
A temporary downtown location for Noel House has not been found yet, but “we’ll find a place for the women to stay,” Hallerman says. “I’ve relocated four programs during construction.”
The fate of the popular Recovery Café, a separately run support center for the homeless, addicted, and mentally ill, is also unclear. Though he says the cafe would be welcome to lease the 2,500 square feet of retail that will be part of the new building, the program is currently looking for another location downtown. n
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