One by one, aged and disabled residents took the mike in the community room of Jefferson Terrace, a low-income Seattle high-rise, to express indignation at a proposal to convert their building into housing for the homeless, a few of them saying they had once been homeless themselves.
But not chronically homeless -- people with addictions or mental and medical issues that many of the residents said Oct. 20 they don't want to live with, or lose their apartments to, in what some call a strange tug-of-war between the poor and the very poor.
The Seattle Housing Authority, owner of the 289-unit building next door to First Hill's Harborview Medical Center, says the proposal would help meet the goals of the county's 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness, which calls for half of all new homeless units to come from existing stock.
But, "I feel like you're shoving us out," one woman told Seattle Housing director Tom Tierney at last week's meeting with about 75 residents. "I feel like you're making us homeless to help the homeless and, to me, that's not logical."
Since March, the housing authority has been negotiating an agreement with a large shelter operator and mental health provider, the Downtown Emergency Service Center, to manage Jefferson Terrace as permanent supportive housing for the formerly homeless. That includes providing meals, on-site counseling, case management, medication monitoring, and activities to help stabilize some of the streets' most frail men and women.
The agency operates shelter and/or apartments at six buildings, including downtown's old Morrison Hotel. An Oct. 3 draft timeline obtained from the housing authority shows DESC would start renting units to 60 clients starting late next year, with a separate Public Health program -- medical respite beds for homeless people discharged from the hospital -- to lease a floor of 21 units.
DESC would then rent 40-80 units a year to homeless clients until 2014, when it would take over sole management of the building from the housing authority. To provide a spot for the agency to build a large kitchen, Seattle Housing has also tentatively agreed to help find a new space for ElderHealth, a senior day center located at Jefferson Terrace, to move to when its lease is up in 2013.
But, "I want to be clear that no decision has been made and that a decision will be made by the Board of Commissioners of the Seattle Housing Authority only after a public meeting where people are allowed to give comment," Tierney said, adding that he would not bring a proposal to the board to change the use of Jefferson Terrace unless he had a plan (and funding) for resident relocation.
No one would be forced to move, he said, as the building's 20 to 40 percent annual vacancy rate and regular turnover would make the change gradual. But for those who choose to go, Tierney said the housing authority would pay to move them to another SHA building or within the building, if needed.
Many residents at the meeting said they don't want to leave what they call the building's friendly community, nor do they want to live with extra DESC visitor or security rules. Among the changes, Hobson said, the agency would make all visitors sign in at door desks and require residents to come down to get them. The agency would also have to pre-approve any non-family member who wants to stay overnsight.
"You can't mix these two groups, particularly if you're not going to at least separate them by floor and preferably use separate security," said Tom Chrispin, a formerly homeless resident who echoed other calls for separate floors and entrances -- an idea Hobson nixed for treating the homeless like pariahs.
"It's not a matter of them being homeless. It is the criminally minded part of their addiction," said a woman who noted that she, too, had once been homeless.
"One of the things that we've discovered about moving people with profound challenges in their lives," Hobson responded, "is that once they find stable housing, they almost invariably begin to act like the rest us."
The housing authority's draft timeline indicates it and DESC could sign a preliminary management agreement for Jefferson Terrace as early as March, with a public hearing at SHA headquarters to come before then.
If the plan moves forward, said Loren Greene, a resident of the housing authority's Cedarville House, he promised legal trouble. "If Seattle Housing doesn't get the message" that people don't want to move, he said, it's "going to be facing a lawsuit [of] astronomical proportions."