(Image: Allied8)
(Image: King County)
A project to build 37 new affordable Central District homes — and new space for a nonprofit dedicated to the area’s Black communities — will further equitable development efforts in the neighborhood and is ready to take shape at 23rd and Yesler.
Officials say after years of advocacy, planning is underway for the groundbreaking of the four-story project that will replace the Central Area Youth Association center on the busy corner. The 1920-era building will be demolished to make way for the new development but the project will create a new street-level community space for the organization below 37 new homes above.
A person familiar with the project that pairs the longtime nonprofit CAYA with market-rate developer Shelter Homes and the Allied8 architecture firm says the long-planned development is committed to furthering real opportunities for home ownership in the neighborhood with a financing plan that will make the 37 units available for purchase.
The project partners say the development will create “much needed affordable homeownership condominiums for families that had been impacted by gentrification to come back home.”
CAYA, meanwhile, has grown from its days decades ago as a sponsor for Central District youth sports into a community organization with a focus on academic programs, summer enrichment, and social behavior programs that the organization says “gives voices to young scholars.” Its new facility will be “bigger, better, brighter,” a person familiar with the project says.
The development will also help give CAYA a firmer financial base. Current filings show the small nonprofit receives around $240,000 a year in grants and donations but its 2018 land deal with Shelter Homes for the 23rd and Yesler property boosted its assets to the $1.5 million value.
The current 106-year-old building has not gone through the city’s landmark process.
The project is a new centerpiece of the city’s Equitable Development Initiative. As of 2025, the City of Seattle had invested approximately $2.8 million in pre-development and planning funds specifically for the CAYA project. Last year, Seattle’s Equitable Development Initiative was funding more than $22 million across 42 projects as part of the city’s effort to support property ownership in neighborhoods at high risk of displacement.
CHS reported here on the 2024 opening of Africatown Plaza, a new $66.5 million 126-unit affordable apartment building on the 23rd and Union Midtown block, opened to residents after two years of construction that included what its developers said was an unprecedented number of Black families who worked on the project. Africatown partnered with Community Roots Housing for the Plaza’s development.
Not all of the EDI grants are directly tied to housing. Examples include $365,000 supporting a project from Black Star Farmers to complete its Dakota Place project, a farming effort it has grown since the removal of the Black Lives Memorial Garden from Capitol Hill’s Cal Anderson Park.
The EDI is administered by the Office of Planning and Community Development and was created in 2016 “to respond to the needs of marginalized communities, reduce disparities, and support organizational capacity building, property acquisition, and capital expenses.”
District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth, a lifetime Central District resident, has voiced support for the initiative while supporting campaigns to preserve and increase Black ownership in the city.
The new condo project would share a block where another ownership-focused development took place more than 20 years ago as the Covenant Housing Association opened the Yesler Houses, three historic, Queen Anne-style Victorian homes turned into market-rate units, in 2003.
The 23rd and Yesler CAYA development could be part of a small ripple of new affordable housing projects emphasizing ownership on the edges of Capitol Hill. CHS reported here on plans for the development of below-market rate condos, townhomes, or other affordable options that emphasize ownership on WSDOT surplus land near 520 in Montlake.
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