Thanks to CHS reader Silver for the picture
The $6.5 million sale of three old apartment buildings on Belmont Ave by Seattle transitional housing provider Pioneer Human Services is part of plans for a new Capitol Hill facility by the Downtown Emergency Service Center, CHS has learned.
A spokesperson for Pioneer confirmed details of the July sale of the Granberg, Benson, and Del Prado buildings and says the DESC is planning a new facility for the parcels home to the more than 110-year-old apartment buildings that have been part of the Pioneer holdings in the neighborhood since the 1990s.
Pioneer says the buildings required either an extensive overhaul or demolition and redevelopment.
“Although we recognize that housing is a vital need for our clients, Pioneer’s mission is about more than just providing a roof. It is about providing a safe, therapeutic environment that promotes a healthy community and empowers justice-involved individuals to live safe, healthy, productive lives,” the spokesperson said. “Unfortunately, the three Belmont facilities did not live up to our standards today as they either needed major renovations or complete destruction with a new facility built.”
“We were not in a financial position to fund this project but DESC was able to take on the project of building a new housing facility,” the spokesperson said.
DESC has not responded to our questions about the deal and its plans for the properties.
UPDATE 12:35 PM: DESC tells us it will be developing “a new Permanent Supportive Housing project” on the properties.
For the coming DESC Belmont project, the vacant buildings will be demolished to make way for a new 120-unit permanent supportive housing project that serves people earning 30% and 50% of Area Median Income who are experiencing chronic homelessness. A spokesperson says DESC tenants usually earn about 9% to 12% of AMI. CORRECTION: When first posted, this update reported DESC Belmont would serve tenants with higher incomes than typical DESC tenants. A spokesperson has clarified that it will serve tenants with a similar level of income to its other facilities. Sorry for the error.
DESC says it will release details of the plans for the new building and with specifics on a neighborhood informational meeting about the planned housing development. DESC says it has been planning to send a letter to notify neighbors about the project in September “to learn more about neighborhood interests.”
DESC operates permanent supportive housing apartments in over 20 project-based programs ranging from 40-190 units, all of which feature 24/7 onsite support staff and integrated clinical services. The DESC Belmont Supportive Housing project will address the growing affordability crisis in Seattle and King County.
Our approach to neighbor relations is grounded in transparency and encouragement of neighborhood feedback. Our projected construction start date will be in Spring 2025.
Pioneer, meanwhile, has already been active with redevelopment in the neighborhood, as its pandemic-delayed low income, 89-bed re-entry facility Aspen Terrace opened nearby on Belmont in 2021.
Increased spending on assisted and low income housing has brought several new projects to Capitol Hill’s densely populated blocks. Continued waves of new housing development here along with access to public transit and proximity to services and medical facilities makes areas of the neighborhood prime candidates for the facilities. This $11.6 million acquisition of a market-rate Capitol Hill apartment to create new affordable, supportive housing for “queer, transgender, two-spirit, Black, Indigenous, people of color” experiencing homelessness is another recent example.
Both Pioneer and DESC will have access to increased funding for behavioral health beds and facilities part of King County’s push to address the fentanyl crisis with new spending to reopen a Seattle sobering center and add new centers across the county.
In 2023, voters approved a $1.25 billion behavioral health levy to create a new “regional network” of emergency mental health care centers.
Both Pioneer Human Services and the DESC have been identified as partners in the county’s plans.
Funding will include a plan for the City of Seattle, the Downtown Emergency Service Center, and the University of Washington to open “a post-overdose recovery center that provides medical follow-up and behavioral health treatment engagement and initiation following an opioid overdose,” officials said earlier this year.
The Belmont properties together make up just under a third of an acre.
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At some point this entire area of Capitol Hill is going to be non-recovering drug addicts and people in mental health crisis and little room for anyone else. That sucks if you bought into this area being a “vibrant, walkable urban neighborhood.” Seattle is creating a slum before our eyes.
These properties were already transitional housing, and are in terrible disrepair. Not sure how you envision this deal making things worse.
Do not underestimate the ability of DESC to make something worse.
Maybe we could create a special rehab neighborhood for this kind of attitude?
That’s a good idea. Sign me up. I’d pay an additional tax (or levy) to fund it. If we aren’t going to build up in the city core, then we might as well continue the sprawl into the desserts to house people.
A bit dramatic, aren’t we? Let’s be real, if addicts don’t have beds to sleep in they’re going to be sleeping on the streets of the neighborhood instead anyway. Facilities like these can at least give those folks a chance at recovery.
A lot of these folks are not only addicts. Is there such a thing? Some addicts don’t steal even from family? Some addicts don’t have mental illnesses? Some addicts are not dangers to themselves and others? Some addicts just don’t give a fu**? They are all victims? No.
How many LIHI new buildings have opened in the last 4 years? By my count it’s at least 4 – all concentrated in the specific area .. Below Broadway between Roy and Olive Way. With more planned. As for this DESC site it will double or triple the count of residents; and they will be “low barrier” people. We already see lots of drug traffic and OD at the LIHI properties. Go to the SFD dashboard and query 225 (or 229) Harvard Ave E or 420 Boylston Ave E. Up to about 5x the OD Aid Response at these properties as surrounding buildings.
My words speak to truth. The Seattle city policy of buying new apartments then giving them to LIHI, Plymouth or DESC to manage is creating a drug dealer target market, with attendant gang warfare over territory and almost weekly shooting incidents. It’s creating a regular drug dealer and purchaser circuit between Broadway and these buildings. It is creating a Tenderloin style neighborhood where a formerly much more quiet, safe, non violent are used to be.
I totally agree. We need workforce housing up here. Instead the city does a bait and switch and we get drug zombie housing. The impacts are not confined to the building and block. The individuals that have free view apartments to do drugs with no rules in these buildings often are still passed out on Broadway with their pants around their ankles and a tent around the corner. To add insult to injury, these projects are displacing neighborhood residents and businesses and filling up the units with the drug migrants from rural areas and states. The amount of overdose deaths in these buildings is astonishing. Housing first and harm reduction is a failure.
They mentioned an Aspen Terrace apartment on Belmont. It’s a place, where no one can be safe. Drug users, alcoholics, people with constant mental breakdowns. Do we need more of those in the neighborhood? I really don’t understand why those types of people should live in Capitol Hill, instead of others, who do need to stay closer to work, to schools or just people, who don’t struggle with severe mental issues and addictions, who can perfectly live in some others area? Plus, building and buying new properties for that category of people will be cheaper beyond Capitol Hill, if they really do care about helping more people. This is weird and concerning.
I hear that “those types of people” and “that category of people” are just as worthy + deserving of help, kindness, and compassion as you and I are. We are all connected.
I hear your compassion and I totally agree that we are all connected but these folks have made some really bad choices and we should have to just shrug our shoulders and say “Oh well.*
I don’t think TL is saying they aren’t worthy of help, just pointing out the reality of concentrating many at risk people in a small area. Doing this has consequences and while it may benefit service providers it also will produce drawbacks for the neighborhood that need to be mitigated.
Well. I am here on Broadway and E Pine. We need housing up here.
This notion it’ll be “a slum” is typical of the uniformed and the plain mean spirited.
One minute we want them off the street and in same kinda treatment. The next it’s some NIMBY garbage that stereotypes in a negative way.
So? You have a solution right? We are gonna get single family homes into the mix too right? Spread the affordable housing and services so it’s like an Easter Egg hunt looking for the closest bus stop. Store and other stuff you need a car for. Most of these folks are not allowed to drive due to a DWI etc.
How would affordable housing solve the open air drug market on broadway and pine? What’s your solution?
Dude..I live on the corner. Literally above the Walgreens sign.
Cal Anderson closed down so they moved. 3rd and Pine as well. They are migrating. Time takes time. Rome was not built overnight.
Circle of life. What once was will be again.
The pearl clutchers will move to the suburbs. The queers, artists, musicians, and other poor people will move in, make the neighborhood cool. Developers will sell the suburbanites a dream of urban living without urban problems. All the people who made it cool will be displaced, leaving only gentrification and the most desperate people who have been there the whole time and have nowhere to go. They hate the boring greedy rich folks who treat them like animals not deserving of compassion or a home. The few remaining artists & cool kids also despise you. Sensing the palpable dislike, you clutch your pearls, and move to the suburbs…
Nice creative writing. Hopefully the cool kids like it, too.
It was cool…and yes…we liked it
Um nope. Here’s a couple queers who have lived in our house in Capitol Hill for over 25 years and thinking of leaving. Leaving the Hill. Leaving the city. Leaving the county. Never ever was the plan but the low life druggies do get tiresome. No pearl clutching. Just tired. You need a new narrative my friend. Maybe you’re the one doing the pearl clutching
Seriously? They just built Pride Place. This temporary issue is just that. Covid was the spark. It is going to take a minute.
I got news for you, the queers have been leaving because of these issues, they are some of the first to be targeted, the artists and musicians don’t want to be there and have developed facilities outside the city where they and their tools are safer, and last the poor that live in or near many of these buildings are some of the people fighting against them. Because they are poor doesn’t mean they have or want to live in crime ridden, drug infested violent areas, they want a safe place to live and raise their kids like everyone else. The real problem though isn’t the addicts and people with mental health issues, it’s the way we treat them or more importantly don’t treat them so they have a chance to overcome their issues. If managed properly they could be good neighbors but they aren’t managed properly and that is what needs to change.
You know of which you speak. Smart comment
Based on some of the replies here and on the FB group, seems many of our neighbors welcome the opportunity to live next to a building that could easily become the next DESC Morrison Hotel or Lyon Building…LIHI’s Frye Hotel. I work in that area and hate walking around there in the mornings and afternoons. …the newer Hill LIHI buildings are not good neighbors. Loud, often trashed, drug dealers, fights and assaults, yelling, SPD/SFD daily.
One possible positive, the market rate rents in the other apt buildings might take a slight dip. The people who can afford to move away from the $hit show, will – ‘cus living next that will be an ongoing, daily, annoyance and nuisance.
Hmm, I’m guessing you’ve never walked down this block before. It, and the same blocks on Summit below it, are nearly entirely transitional housing. It’s been this way since I moved to the Hill in 1991. Nobody has ever been safe walking down these blocks, which is why everyone avoids them! At least this new dev will clean it up a little and perhaps make it somewhat safer to walk through.
Oh geesh. My partner and I would have Friday early dinner at the redwood and sit at the small bar top, where the empty kegs lingered, and have dinner and a show. We would sit and watch all the garbage that happened along this area between the buildings. It was sad and fascinating at the same time. Twitter still had SPD calls at the time and we’d take an over/under on how many ‘fail to register as a sex offender’ stops we’d see while there for a few hours. Good old times.
Tell me you’re not from Seattle without telling me you’re not from Seattle
Wow that area is going to go to absolute shit.
We live on Belmont and there is already another one of these buildings- the EMTs/Paramedics are called DAILY. Such a nuisance for those of us already living here. I love welcoming, new neighbors, and don’t love hearing obnoxious sirens multiple times a day – and now it will get worse.
Capitol Hill has become a dumping ground for the city’s failed “harm reduction” Housing First approach. We don’t need more drug zombies doing the fentanyl fold in front of QFC and gang members shooting each other in turf battles to supply drugs to the ever growing number of addicts concentrated on Capitol and First Hill. It is sucking the life out of the neighborhood. We already have more than our fair share of these buildings. What we need are mandatory drug treatment facilities and inpatient mental health facilities built across the state.
I agree. As a woman who used to walk this neighborhood for health purposes, I no longer can safely. I’ve had sexist comments made to me, men getting too close and a few attempted pictures and a Peeping Tom!! Got pics of him and he knew it and stopped or at least I don’t see him. Reported to the police and they said nothing they can do. Check the Sex Offender Registry for Capitol Hill. It’s out of control. Basic necessity businesses are leaving and criminals being welcomed in. These are the cities plans for this neighborhood. Slum is spot on. It’s been a slow burn but the explosion is coming.
Huh? I walk this neighborhood alone all the time. Are you sure you’re wearing clothes?
Are you seriously trying to slut shame this person.. wow…
Reference to slums – “Cities like Chicago and Detroit are infamous for their slums. These areas tend to have high crime, poor public schools, and they tend to lack grocery stores.” Seattle is on the way.
Yeah you can tell Seattle is slummy because of the low low home prices
Its because seattle is a right to work state. we are all poor
If these buildings become anything like the existing DESC buildings in the neighborhood, we can all expect more drug consumption, dealing, and ambulances for ODs coming soon to Belmont Ave!
Our city officials need to read reports and studies from the federal housing authority, agencies, and nonprofits with long track records with supported out comes and success that work daily to solve this issue.
Building high-density housing and allowing continuing use of alcohol and drugs while they live in them does not help. (The housing First model doesn’t work) They need wrap-around services to support them. The housing impressions vulnerable adults in the same space as predators. If there is no requirement for self-improvement, staff enable continued destructive behavior.
According to the HUD, high-density housing without wrap-around services, inadequate funding for maintenance, poor property management, and not built-in neighborhoods close to adult education programs, parks, recreational centers, mental health services, and churches make residents feel disenfranchised and unconnected to the community.
When a person enters a low-income housing first building, there is no support to improve their quality of life or move on from this kind of environment regardless of age or circumstances. Capacity equals funding, so these programs are incentivized to keep units full.
I live in Capital Hill, and it has become a nightmare. Residents no longer go out at night, they have to walk four blocks out of their way to get to the stores safely or shop outside the area.
The open use of drug sales and use has increased drastically, as well as assaults and crime.
These buildings will become empty and falling down like the ones from the 1990 housing projects built around the country. The federal government’s report explains their failures and why they failed.
The current projects being built follow the failures in the report.
What shame!
Are you sure you live in capitAl hill
“DESC operates permanent supportive housing apartments in over 20 project-based programs ranging from 40-190 units, all of which feature 24/7 onsite support staff and integrated clinical services.”
This sounds good, but is such support actually effective? (in many cases, I think not), Will drug & alcohol abuse be tolerated in this facility, as it is in others? It should be a mandatory sober-living facility (with regular drug testing), both to protect the neighborhood and to assist those with such addictions.
That’s support does nothing. I had an unfortunate experience living in Aspen Terrace on Belmont for one year, because I needed something to temporary. The building was completely new, with the services on the first floor. It was a nightmare. People walking and screaming all night, fights, drugs and alcohol use on premises. Constant police and firetrucks called for disturbances. It didn’t work well. I will never understand why the city has a need to build those supporting houses in Capitol Hill? What they are trying to turn in the neighborhood? There are Northgate, Sodo, other places with access to the light rail and buses. Why Capitol Hill? I don’t understand that. Do they try to invest in the neighborhood, paying more for the properties and construction of the new, ugly ones? I’m sick and tired of that situation and at the city for doing nothing to improve situation.
That stuff IS being built in those places. Like right now or has been.
Umm..okay…cool story
We have enough of these kind of facilities on the Hill. Build it somewhere else.
Tell that to NIMBY.
It’s like “right to work” in that. People are desperate for homes. We have money to build them. But only where we are “allowed” to build. Because we are desperate to build housing anywhere but near the wealthy? Here we are.
I do think it’s cute that capitol hill people think that these things aren’t everywhere in the city.
I don’t pretend to know if this is a good idea or not. All that I can provide is an anecdote. A friend with an addiction problem lived in Capitol Hill for years. He would get clean for a while, then fall back into it. The man has skills and a pleasant disposition up until he goes on a binge. Then he steals and crosses everyone he knows. One day, when clean and thinking clearly, he loaded up a U-Haul and moved to Friday Harbor. I asked him about it and he told that as long as drugs were readily available he didn’t trust himself to stay clean. It’s not that he would seek them out. Rather, people he knew would tempt him. So, he moved to a town where he knew nobody. He has been clean ever since. I’m wondering if it doesn’t make more sense to house people who are working to overcome addictions in a place where they don’t have ready access to the drugs. I think it’s hard enough to stay clean without having the problem right in your face every day
Having gone through rehab you hit on a key point. You have to give up the people you associated with and the environment and sometimes that means moving away. Good for him.
People blame the system for a disease. They just want a cheap instant cure. HOW it happens isn’t a thought to them. They want to claim it’s a waste of time and money to help people. “Certain” people.
It’s a sickness.
I live next to a permanent supportive housing building that everyone on here was doomsaying about when they heard that it was getting built. It’s totally fine. They do have a higher rate of ambulances showing up than the surrounding area, but that seems to be because a lot of the residents are older and in poor health. They actually have *many fewer* people hanging around outside totally out of their minds on drugs than the privately owned, outrageously expensive apartment building on the other side of us.
I, too, live next to a very well run supportive housing complex that has many aid calls, but, the residents seemed cared for and they are good neighbors. Occasionally an issue but it’s not bad. More buildings like this are fine with me.
The LIHI building a street over is a constant disaster and I can only hope it’s dumped from their property portfolio so it can go back to the intended use of work-force, market rate housing.
The community review meetings mentioned housing as affordable for our local school teachers and baristas, lower salaried downtown office workers. So much for newer, nicely kept, affordable housing for the lower- moderate- income workers of Seattle.
I live near one and saw someone throw a fire extinguisher through a window and out on the sidewalk. I emailed Plymouth and they basically said shrug.
It’s all the people w/o any experience projecting. That’s all.