By Patty Fong
The city’s escalating problems with public safety, larceny, mental illness and drug addiction continue to be felt in the Chinatown-International District (CID).
The marketing of stolen goods for drugs continues in the 12th and Jackson area.
It has resulted in an unclean, unsafe environment, the loss of goods and services to residents and the loss of public community image.
It’s curious and probably no coincidence that this locus of activity is within a mere block or two from the DESC Navigation Center where drugs are available and ‘harm reduction’ is practiced.
These problems post date the siting of the Navigation Center in Little Saigon/CID.
Advocates for the community must demand that the city investigate whether or not the DESC Navigation Center—located in Little Saigon—has been a ‘good neighbor.’
Accountability is overdue. Trust and passivity have run their course.
The deterioration of Little Saigon and the CID—despite a few new, bright businesses—is unmistakable.
The CID is Seattle’s only surviving immigrant community and Chinatown is supposed to be a protected area.
Nevertheless, King County and Sound Transit have taken nearly successful turns at destroying the CID—the county with its attempt to site a huge homeless project next door, and Sound Transit with its proposed 4th Avenue rail station, a 10-year-long construction project that will kill the CID.
The city had its turn with the imposition of the Navigation Center.
The Navigation Center was easily sited in the CID. The city successfully quashed any community concerns and opposition.
Why was the proximity of a school, Summit Sierra, not considered during the proposed siting of the Navigation Center?
The concerns it seems now were prescient and the consequences highly suspect, yet the question remains—has the location of the Navigation Center helped or hurt its neighbors in the CID and Little Saigon?
I want the DESC Navigation Center to be relocated if Little Saigon and the CID is to ever recover and thrive.
It’s time for the city to demonstrate sincerity, commitment, effective action, to address anti-Asian sentiment, violence, and indifference.
The CID, where city-wide problems are magnified and threaten its survival, is the best place to start.