By James Tabafunda
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Tanya Woo
Standing before a crowd of business owners, residents, and community advocates in front of Hoa Mai Park on May 9, former Seattle City Councilmember Tanya Woo called for urgent action on Little Saigon’s future.
“Little Saigon is not just a cultural destination—it’s a living, breathing community that deserves to be seen, heard, and protected. We’ve lost too many lives, and we cannot afford to lose more.”
The press conference, billed as a five-month “report card” on the neighborhood’s struggle for safety and stability, underscored what Woo and others described as a crisis of public safety, economic instability, and cultural displacement in the historic Vietnamese American district. Woo, joined by a Lam’s Seafood Market representative and other small business owners, public safety advocates, and community volunteers, called for city intervention and a coordinated response from all levels of government.
Five demands, little progress
In January, Little Saigon leaders circulated a petition outlining five key demands. At the news conference, Woo’s message was clear: incremental progress, but little substantive change as described in the petition.
“This was a follow-up press conference to the petition that we had sent out earlier in January, asking for five specific things,” Woo said in a post-conference phone interview. “The first was community meetings with the mayor, city council, county executive, and governor. We really haven’t seen our public officials walk through Little Saigon recently to talk to business owners about the issues.” Despite repeated invitations, Woo says, high-level officials have not visited the neighborhood in recent months, leaving residents feeling overlooked.
A proposed multi-agency task force—including business owners, residents, and representatives from city, county, and state agencies—has yet to materialize.
“We wanted to get everyone together and talk about long-term solutions and partnerships and how to restore the neighborhood to how it used to be. And we haven’t gotten that,” Woo said.
Crime and displacement continue
The neighborhood’s core challenges remain unchanged: open-air drug use, violent crime, business closures, and visible signs of neglect, such as barbed wire and shuttered storefronts. “The community of folks who are there doing addiction, drugs, and EBT card fraud—they’re not going away. They’re here. So let’s try to find solutions that we haven’t tried yet to get our community back to how it used to be seven years ago,” Woo said.
Business owner Nina Dang echoed those views in a Jan. 13 KING-TV interview, saying, “It’s just ridiculous that I can’t walk down to the supermarket or deli without feeling unsafe.” Recent city efforts—including the closure of the Navigation Center homeless shelter in March and the launch of the Phố Đẹp (Beautiful Neighborhood) initiative with “care and safety ambassadors”—have brought some visible changes. But Woo and others say the problems have simply shifted.
“While Charles Street and Jackson have gotten better, everyone moved to Weller or Lane. So while the situation has gotten better for some, it has made it much worse for others,” Woo said.
The closure of the Navigation Center, which relocated clients to a facility farther from Little Saigon, has not reduced transient activity or open-air drug use.”
A sign on south Jackson Street marks the heart of Little Saigon. (Photo by George Liu/NWAW)
Laws on the books, but little enforcement
Seattle’s “SODA” (Stay Out of Drug Area) ordinance, enacted in late 2024, was intended to allow judges to ban individuals convicted of drug-related misdemeanors from returning to designated zones, including Jackson Street. But as of May, only a handful of orders have been issued.
“When the city council passed that, it’s basically if you get arrested as a misdemeanor in that zone and there was evidence you were engaged in some kind of behavior regarding drugs, the judge could slap a SODA order on you. According to the Seattle Times, only one or two orders have been placed,” Woo said, calling the policy’s impact minimal.
Other laws, such as those intended to keep school zones drug-free and prevent loitering, also go unenforced due to chronic shortage of police officers. “You have a school that’s supposed to be a drug-free area. We have a lot of other legal things happening, like the sit-lie law. But of course, it’s unenforceable because we don’t have enough officers,” Woo said.
Slight gains, uncertain future
There has been a modest increase in police presence and cleanups since March, but residents worry these efforts may be temporary.
“We would love to see that continue. There’s a lot of anxiety around, is this going to leave us? What’s this going to look like coming up in the summer months? And a lot of the businesses are underwater,” Woo said. “Many of the businesses are leaving, not only in Little Saigon, but in Chinatown as well. That’s because people don’t feel safe coming to this neighborhood. How do we work together to change our reputation and turn that around?”
Funding for social workers and outreach teams has been allocated, but resources remain limited and are only secured through October. “We need more social workers out here—people who are doing constant outreach, building trust. We see the repair team out there, but there’s only one. The park rangers don’t come out there as often. The care team—we need them the most in that area, but they don’t even go there because they’re afraid. The crime rate’s too high there,” Woo said.
Economic and cultural turnaround at risk
Community leaders are also pushing for investment in cultural and economic development, including the Landmark Project and other initiatives to activate public spaces and support small businesses. The former Navigation Center site remains a focal point for redevelopment, but the Seattle Indian Services Commission lost federal funding, and new sources are needed.
“The owners of that property have plans for that building, but they lost their federal funding. Hoping to get funding to help develop those plans so it’s not just an empty building that could potentially burn down,” Woo said.
Beautification projects, including murals and culturally relevant fencing, are under way but hampered by vandalism and high maintenance costs.
“You walk around Little Saigon, and it’s fencing and barbed wire and razor wire. It’s not an inviting area. It’s not home,” Woo said. “Phố Đẹp (Beautiful Neighborhood) has these plans where they want to turn these stark black gates into art, do fencing that pays homage to the past or the culture, add murals. But every time a mural goes up, it gets vandalized. That costs money. We have to put protective coating over it,” she said.
Advocacy and the near-term plan
Woo said she is leveraging her experience on the city council to push for early and sustained advocacy as city and county officials begin budget planning for 2026.
“I wanted to have this press conference to get on everyone’s radar that we need resources. Please don’t forget about us. A lot of people think that the budget starts in August, but that’s already too late. So we have to start now,” she said.
Despite the challenges, Woo remains committed to grassroots advocacy and has decided not to run for city council in 2025.
“I find that I feel most effective on the ground level, and I’m not going anywhere. I will continue to fight and really make this my priority this year,” she said.
Woo ended the interview with a call for urgency and unity.
“We shoulder a lot of the burden of the city in terms of homelessness and addiction. It feels like the city pushes a lot of that into our community, and we are constantly forgotten. We honestly don’t have, I believe, the political power because there’s not a lot of Asian Americans represented in government.”
She said, “We’re going to be the squeaky wheel this year. That’s the goal.”