Tag Archives: BIPOC

Here’s why the Lavender Rights Project, county officials, and Seattle’s mayor think this Capitol Hill apartment building is the right place to start a new approach to creating supportive housing and putting a real dent in the homelessness crisis

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The 35-unit building is part of a neighborhood that includes small to midsize apartment buildings and single family style homes like the famous pink house next door (Image: CHS)

An $11.6 million acquisition is turning a market-rate Capitol Hill apartment building into affordable, supportive housing for “queer, transgender, two-spirit, Black, Indigenous, people of color” experiencing chronic homelessness as county and city officials pin their hopes on a new approach to creating housing facilities better integrated into neighborhoods and communities.

King County Executive Dow Constantine and Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell squeezed into an E Republican studio apartment just off Broadway Monday morning to explain why the housing is being created here — and to introduce the Lavender Rights Project, the organization that will operate the soon to open building and make it the black and trans community resource and advocacy group’s new home with help from the American Indian and Alaska Native people-dedicated Chief Seattle Club,

“We’re working to have Health Through Housing facilities in every community, particularly communities where there’s need,” Constantine told CHS Monday about the program that powered the purchase of the newly constructed 35-unit apartment building using funding including $6 million allocated from unneeded jail spending during the pandemic.

“This building is really focused on two aspects of overrepresentation in the homeless community. Black indigenous population is massively overrepresented in homelessness,” the county executive said. “This population intersects with gender diverse communities which are also overrepresented. So this is a place where we can meet those who most need the help and get them into safe housing with services and remaining connected to community.”

The new building will be a test of the concept as previous acquisitions of hotel properties in commercial areas of the county haven’t worked out.

CHS broke the news earlier this month on the supportive housing project’s plans to join this Capitol Hill neighborhood just off Broadway near Broadway Hill Park as the county program moved beyond its earlier unsuccessful acquisitions of hotels. The Capitol Hill deal comes under the Health Through Housing measure passed by the King County Council in 2021 which aims to house up to 1,600 people experiencing chronic homelessness by using hundreds of millions of dollars raised from a sales tax on properties in Seattle and five nearby cities. The E Republican apartment building started construction more than five years ago in a process that was delayed and then brought to a standstill during the pandemic. The development’s marketing name for the project still hangs in blue letters on the building.

The county says All Health Through Housing properties will include 24/7 staffing and on-site supports “to help vulnerable people regain health and stability.”

In the project, the Lavender Rights Project and Chief Seattle Club are taking on the challenge of developing new social housing. Continue reading →

Community leaders address gentrification in Seattle’s queer landscape

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By Elizabeth Turnbull

In addition to celebrations in honor of Pride, Real Change and KVRU 105.7 FM hosted a panel this week to explore why queer Seattle also feels gentrified and why BIPOC queer people are not always protected and safe.

Several queer BIPOC community leaders spoke at the panel including Aleksa Manila, Leinani Lucas, LC, and Moni Tep while Luzviminda Uzuri Carpenter, the station manager at KVRU, and Guy Oron, staff reporter at Real Change, co-moderated the event.

Gentrification was a center of conversation and panelists talked about how the queer neighborhoods in the city have shifted, moving from Renton Hill and Pioneer Square to Capitol Hill where ongoing changes and gentrification have taken place.

“I no longer see a sea of family-owned queer-owned brown-owned businesses,” Aleksa Manila, the founder of Pride Asia said at the panel. “… I can only think of two very specific queer POC owned businesses, or a handful [that are still there].”

In their place, Aleksa said she sees corporate-owned businesses—surrounded by housing that many queer BIPOC people can no longer afford. Continue reading →

Seattle announces plan for no-cop response to some 911 calls, $10.4M in grants for BIPOC public safety

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The first big outlay from Mayor Jenny Durkan’s $30 million Equitable Communities Initiative will address public safety in BIPOC communities. Meanwhile, the mayor’s office says Durkan is set to unveil a new plan for how it responds to some 911 calls in the city as part of efforts to “reimagine policing and community safety.”

Friday, Durkan is set to unveil the planned creation of “a new specialized triage response program” to provide “an alternative model for some 911 calls.”

“Analyzing the data of 9-1-1 calls and recognizing the hiring challenges of sworn officers facing the Seattle Police Department, Mayor Durkan, SPD, SFD, and CSCC are proposing a series of plans to maintain 9-1-1 response while reducing the need for a sworn officer response in some calls,” the Durkan administration announcement reads.

Earlier this week, Durkan’s office announced $10.4 million in one-time funding for 18 months for 33 organizations “working toward community-led solutions to end violence and increase safety in Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities.”

“These investments will support organizations providing an array of programs, services, and upstream investments meant to improve outcomes and contribute to overall community safety and wellbeing,” the Durkan administration announcement reads. Continue reading →

Seattle Central will make new home for Intiman Theater on Capitol Hill — and new opportunities for diverse crews to work behind the scenes

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(Image: Broadway Performance Hall)

Someday, actors will again put Seattle Central’s Capitol Hill theater spaces back to work. When the lights come up, the spotlight will fall on a new partnership for the Broadway school that will shine light on social justice — and equity in the vital theater roles behind the scenes.

Last week, the college announced it is making a new home for longtime Seattle arts group the Intiman Theater that will create a new associate degree program emphasis in Technical Theatre for Social Justice at the school — and help to provide training and roles for diverse designers, lighting techs, and theater crews.

“We look forward to working with Intiman to provide students with a pathway into the world of technical theater. This partnership is a vivid model of how to better serve our students and how to close the opportunity gaps in our community,” college president Dr. Sheila Edwards Lange said in a statement. Continue reading →

Black-led organizers, Sawant at odds with mayor over community’s role in how City of Seattle spends

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By Ben Adlin

After a summer marked by protests over police racism and brutality, Seattle officials and community organizers seem to agree that vulnerable communities deserve a greater say in the city’s budget process. But with little more than a month before the City Council adopts its 2021 budget, stakeholders still differ sharply over what that involvement will look like.

There are competing visions. Some focus on a $100 million fund proposed by Mayor Jenny Durkan to support initiatives aimed at benefiting Black, brown, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) communities. A task force made up of representatives from local equity organizations, selected by the mayor, would guide the process by issuing recommendations on how the money might be spent. Durkan’s office last week announced an initial list of more than two dozen members.

Others see another way — put forward by King County Equity Now, a Black-led coalition of community groups and businesses, alongside the group Decriminalize Seattle — and are skeptical of the mayor’s proposal. Little about Durkan’s plan, they say, would put sufficient power in the hands of BIPOC communities, particularly Black people, to undo generations of racist policies in the city.

Instead, KCEN and its partner groups are hard at work on the first phase of a grander budget scheme aimed at giving Seattleites a more direct say in issues that affect their daily lives. That process could eventually control up to $200 million, some organizers say—twice the mayor’s proposed BIPOC fund.

The two views represent contrasting visions of the growing push for participatory budgeting centered on the principle that the people most affected by public policies deserve a voice in how they’re made. Continue reading →

Durkan names 28 to Equitable Communities Initiative Task Force to set course for $100M in Seattle BIPOC spending

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Mayor Durkan’s $100 million pledge came as the city set about dismantling CHOP this summer

Mayor Jenny Durkan has announced the members selected for the 28-person Equitable Communities Initiative Task Force, a group her office says will “spearhead a community-led process” to allocate “a historic $100 million new investment in Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities” and “address the deep disparities caused by systemic racism and institutionalized oppression.”

The task force will include District 3 connections in the pastor of 14th Ave’s First AME Church, the president of Capitol Hill’s Seattle Central College, the head of Central District nonprofit Byrd Barr Place, and Ray Williams of the Black Farmers Collective, the urban farming group active in the Yesler neighborhood and the Central District. Continue reading →

Capitol Hill’s Northwest Film Forum centers 2020 Local Sightings festival on underrepresented BIPOC and LGBTQ+ artists

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From Danny Denial’s CONDITIONER

By Lena Mercer

Though its home screens at 12th Ave’s Northwest Film Forum remain dark, the Local Sightings Film Festival will feature over 135 short films from the Pacific Northwest from September 18th to the 27th. The ten-day event will be fully online this year to accommodate COVID-19 pandemic gathering restrictions. In an effort to maintain affordability during the economic woes of the pandemic all festival passes and programs are available on a sliding scale.

In 2020, Local Sightings has a theme that will resonate after a summer of protests and the nearby CHOP as it “centers BIPOC and LGBTQ+ artists” and examines “how film and mediamakers traditionally underrepresented in mainstream media hold perspectives which are vital to furthering the important conversations of the current moment.”

Local filmmaker Danny Denial says that kind of space is something that BIPOC and LGBTQ+ have been fighting for.

“It feels like each movement or wave such as this gets us one step closer. I love that NWFF is committing to that initiative and elevating the artists in that ‘othered’ category.” Continue reading →