City roils community by funding shelter in Keiro

By Mahlon Meyer
Northwest Asian Weekly

Janice Lee, project manager of the ACLT Community Home at Keiro, runs through a presentation about culturally-responsive care.

There was really only one moment when the moderator for Africatown relaxed and smiled.

In the course of two community engagement meetings, on Sep. 16 and 23, during which the nonprofit laid out its plans to convert the former Keiro nursing home into a homeless shelter, almost all of the community feedback was negative. But when the president of the Seattle Judo Club, David Fukuhara, said he’d like to welcome Africatown to the neighborhood, the moderator’s eyes filled with tears.

Fukuhara went on to say that when another nonprofit, Casa Latina, which helps Latino immigrants, moved into the neighborhood, his father explained to him why they should support it, against community opposition.

“It wasn’t too long ago those same arguments were being used against the Japanese,” his father told him. “I can’t in good conscience oppose it.”

Fukuhara added, now speaking to the Africatown leaders, “If you’re successful, we’re all going to benefit.”

While the moment was anomalous, its intensity underscored the tensions and stakes surrounding the project.

The challenges are in some ways even greater than those facing the region’s so-far halting attempts to deal with homelessness. There were 11,751 persons experiencing homelessness in Seattle/King County as of January 2020. And the issue has caused ongoing problems in the Chinatown-International District (ID).

What makes the new shelter, to be run by Africatown Community Land Trust (ACLT), even more controversial is a massive sense of betrayal on one side—Japanese American community leaders who built or contributed to the establishment of Keiro decades ago to care for their aging first-generation.

On the other is a grasping for community support and understanding by a young generation of Black activists who are grappling to put together a team to run a shelter to focus on caring for their community, which as in almost every other social determinant, is vastly overrepresented in the homeless population.

Adding to the challenge is a plan by the city that seems to be running on two separate tracks that could ultimately bring about a complication, if not a collision.

On one hand, the city has allocated up to $2,239,497 to fund the ACLT Community Home at Keiro through the end of this year. Next year, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority will fund the shelter until the end of 2022. But by the middle of next year, Africatown will have to reapply for funding for all its programs as part of a competitive process against other bidders.

But at the same time, according to Kevin Mundt, of the city’s department of human services, Africatown is also “in negotiations regarding the purchase of the property” from Shelter Holdings, the current owner. In an email, Mundt said Africatown was providing funding which could be bolstered by additional “proposed fund sources,” including the state’s Housing Trust Fund, Housing Finance Commission, and the City of Seattle’s Office of Housing. He implied financing will be closed in the coming weeks.

Asked if Africatown could acquire the property but then lose funding in a little over a year to run the project, Mundt said he “didn’t have anything new to add” other than the details he had already provided about funding and acquisition.

Community feedback

Comments made by community members reflected not only feelings of outrage and betrayal but pointed to practical challenges the Africatown team is potentially facing.

Tomio Moriguchi, one of the founders of Keiro, in an email to the city and government officials, said he could not understand why the city had chosen to fund a shelter “tailored to meet the specific cultural needs of the Black community, even though the proposed shelter is to be located in the midst of a traditional Asian and Japanese community.”

Moriguchi mentioned that 30% of residents in the area were incarcerated without due process in 1942, referring to the concentration camps created for Japanese Americans during World War II.

He also pointed to the many older Asians that live immediately adjacent to Keiro that could be impacted by a shelter.

“Why is the City pitting one community of color against another rather than promoting unity, cooperation and joint governance, programs, and property ownership?”

Moreover, Moriguchi’s dismay about the loss of Keiro, which closed in 2019, is widely reflected in the community. He added that hundreds of people had volunteered through decades and donated millions of dollars to keep it going.

Shelter Holdings, which acquired the property for $11 million, was previously offering the building for sale at $13.8 million after community opposition emerged to its proposed development of market-rate housing.

Africatown leaders said repeatedly they were hoping to create a community where all ethnic groups would thrive. At the same time, they and their supporters said that the shelter would be part of a project to fight against the broken systems and white supremacist institutions that had banished Blacks from the area and largely disenfranchised, if not destroyed, them.

K. Wyking Garrett, CEO of Africatown, said that while 25% of people experiencing homelessness are Black, Blacks make up only 7% of the area’s population. He said the ACLT Community Home at Keiro “would be the first Black homeless shelter of scale.” The shelter is for men only.

Other speakers organized by Africatown said such a change was necessary, not only to reverse generations of white supremacy ensconced in the shelter system, but to contribute to changing perceptions about Black men that prevented them from returning to the community.

“You see a Black man coming and all you see is danger—and that can’t be the thought,” said Zaneta Reid, of the Lived Experience Coalition, in a distraught manner.

She said Black men trying to return home would feel: “I’m back in my community and now I’m not wanted.”

Shelter operator concerns

For the city’s part, the crisis of homeless people along with the pandemic has created an acute urgency. In response to criticism that the Japanese American and Asian community, along with other local residents, had been excluded from the earlier planning process, and that there had been no competitive bidding, Mundt said that the city and Africatown had to move “quicker than normal in community engagement timelines.”

Yet Africatown leaders said they had reached out to the neighborhood and referred to the three community engagement sessions, on Sep. 16, 23, and 30.

Mundt said that the new shelter would supply up to 150 non-congregating spaces, to add to the hundreds of hotel rooms and other spaces where homeless people can shelter without an increased risk of infection from COVID-19.

Some community members expressed consternation at Africatown’s seeming lack of experience in running a homeless shelter.

“Why isn’t the city contracting to Low Income Housing Institute?” asked former Keiro board member Fred Kiga at the first meeting. “These are experienced providers. You’re going to stand up on your own—that is a recipe for disaster.”

Moriguchi, in an email, said, “I’m dismayed to learn that the City of Seattle, waving honest democratic budget practices and under the guise of COVID-19 restrictions, has decided to fund an organization to operate a homeless shelter that has no experience operating a homeless shelter.”

He added that even those organizations that had experience were having trouble running shelters, and cited “the failed Navigation Center.”

Garrett emphasized that Africatown would be partnering with experienced providers, including the Salvation Army, Catholic Community Services, and the City of Seattle. But he also said that his organization would avoid some of the pitfalls troubling agencies that served those experiencing homelessness in traditional ways.

While Africatown is still assembling a team, he said the residents would be viewed as “assets” rather than “liabilities.” He also seemed to imply that the fact that it would be a Black-led team working with primarily Black residents would make a difference, although he did not elaborate in an email request.

In response to another email, Garrett said that despite the fact that Black people are significantly overrepresented in the homeless population, there is “an extreme deficit of effective culturally responsive services and resources.”

After giving a presentation about best practices and culturally responsive care during the first meeting, Janice Lee, the project manager, came back during the second meeting and said she had an MBA in health care management.

Most of the community comments, however, involved worries about the potential for increased danger to the community, drug use, trash, and the spread of the coronavirus.

Emiko Mizuki said there is heightened criminal activity in the area already.

“What measures will be taken to reduce this?” she asked.

“What assurances do we have about residents so they won’t exacerbate drug use?” asked Patty Fong, a community activist, who said there was an enormous amount of drug-related activity in the neighborhood already. Fong, along with others, also lamented about the trash problem and worried there would be an increase.

Others asked if people living in cars across the street from the property would be eligible to move in.

The format of the meeting involved Africatown recording questions and concerns then responding to them either during the first session or the second. A third session, scheduled for Sep. 30, is slated to offer specific solutions.

Africatown leaders and partners offered some preliminary responses.

Garrett said that traditional measures, such as security cameras and patrols, were under discussion. But he said that community safety is based on mutual trust and building strong relationships, and he referenced block parties that the organization had been putting on for years.

One supporter said that drug use emerged from homelessness and was not its cause.

Lee, the project manager, said Africatown would be following CDC guidelines to prevent transmission of COVID-19.

The ACLT Community Home is slated to open mid-October.

The final community engagement session will be on Thursday, Sep. 30, 6-8 p.m. To register, go to: https://bit.ly/3E5j7B5. 

An open house will be held on Oct. 14 from 1-4 pm.

Mahlon can be contacted at info@nwasianweekly.com.