By Lornet Turnbull
Special to The Seattle Medium
As affordable housing in Seattle becomes increasingly scarce, a new arrangement is making it easier for some young people, particularly those with roots in the Central Area, to be able to afford to live there.
Youth Green Corp (YGC), Seattle Park and Recreation’s nine-month-long trail repair and maintenance program for unemployed Seattleites, has come onboard as a referral partner to a housing consortium that includes Catholic Housing Services.
The arrangement is in response to concerns raised by former and current residents of the Central Area who are finding themselves priced out of new housing being developed in their old neighborhood.
Village Spirit Center, which operated jointly by Catholic Community Services and Catholic Housing Services, is exploring opportunities to address and mitigate the effects of neighborhood gentrification, said its executive director Evelyn Allen.
“Our organization had been hearing that our young people, our young adults, needed to have an opportunity to live in the city at affordable rents and about how outrageous the rents are in the Central Area,” she said. “We listened to the community.”
And while the focus of its efforts is on displaced families, the center is also looking at ways to address housing affordability for young, single adults, Allen said.
Young people like Taiwan Thompson, who participated in Youth Green Corp three years ago and last month signed the lease on a studio apartment in Seattle’s Central Area.
Thompson, 27, said he had been searching for a place in South King County after realizing he wouldn’t be able to afford to live in Seattle. His apartment building is steps from bus and streetcar stops and minutes from downtown, with easy access to his job with the city.
“Right before I got in here I was staying at a shelter,” Thompson said recently. “I’m on some other waiting lists and I was hoping maybe I could get a roommate, rent a room.”
YGC’s referral arrangement is with the partnership that owns the building where Thompson lives — Catholic Housing Services, Equity Alliance of Washington and the city of Seattle’s Office of Housing.
The organization’s executive director, Chukundi Salisbury, said eliminating the worry over housing for the young people who participate in his program every year allows them to shift their priorities.
Up to a dozen unemployed young people are accepted into the program each fall and for nine months work to maintain and repair sections of 100 miles of trails within Seattle parks.
As part of the program, they learn restoration skills, tool safety, native and invasive plant identification and environmental stewardship.
Now they can get help with housing if they need that, too.
“Frankly it’s hard to focus on work when your housing situation is unstable,” Salisbury said. “This partnership allows participants to have peace of mind so they can focus on larger life issues.”
Over the last decade, demographics in the Central Area have changed dramatically as longtime residents moved out, many into South King County. Seattle’s escalating property values have put the area out of the reach of many.
Allen said her organization has been hearing the growing frustration among former Central Area residents who could no longer afford to live in the city and the neighborhood where they grew up because of high housing costs.
Last year when a building in the Central Area, where Pioneer Human Services had operated for years, went up for sale the partners jumped at the chance to acquire it, Allen said.
“A big part of the reason behind the community exodus is that we don’t own anything other than single family homes and our churches,” she said. “So we understand the lack of ownership and we are trying to address it. The 110 building is part of that turning of the tides.”
Pioneer had used the studio units to house program participants and Allen said it seemed a good fit for young adults just starting out, perhaps just out of college, who didn’t need a lot of space.
“We wanted to keep it in the community….to have something for your young people, especially people of color, who are highly represented among the homeless and low-income,” she said.
The building has shared kitchens and bathrooms on alternate floors – dormitory style. To qualify for one of the 34 units, potential residents must earn between $20,200 and $33,600 per year.
Jabari Cook, who graduated from Green Corp this year, saw it as an opportunity to stay in the city and save a few dollars in the process.
“I knew from what I’d read and heard that if you weren’t making at least $75,000 a year you probably wouldn’t be able to find a decent place in Seattle,” he said.
He was living at home and helping to pay bill anyway, so, “when the opportunity came about to pay about $500 a month, I jumped on that as soon as possible,” he said.
And while Cook and Thompson both say they’ll eventually need to find a bigger place, this gives them a foot in the door in a housing market that has shut many people out.
And that’s key, Allen said.
The partnership provides a link to other properties in the Catholic housing portfolio that people like Thompson and Cook will be able to move into once they become more financially settled.
