Tag Archives: homelessness

First year at Donna Jean’s Place, a Capitol Hill shelter where time is the most important resource

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(Image: Donna Jean’s Place)

By Moa Segerholt, UW News Lab

After being homeless three different times in Seattle, 60-year-old Benev Brandt says that Donna Jean’s Place is the best shelter she’s ever been in.

“Physically, I could find a safe place to sleep. And mentally, I could find a place to rest,” said Brandt.

Brandt says she has been homeless most her life and came to Seattle from California when she was 21. She has stayed at numerous shelters, but Donna Jean’s has provided her the most lasting healing, she says.

Donna Jean’s Place is a women’s emergency shelter that opened on northern Capitol Hill early this year as a collaboration between Operation Nightwatch and St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral.

Deacon Frank DiGirolamo, executive director of Operation Nightwatch, says he hoped that the shelter would help 100 women annually.

Since the opening at St. Mark’s last winter, the number has grown beyond expectations. DiGirolamo said that they’ve already helped more than 230 women at the shelter — named in honor of Donna Jean Palmberg, the widow of Operation Nightwatch’s founder — in the past year.

“This provides 7,000 nights of shelter per year, which sounds small – only 20 people per night, right? – But that’s 7,000 times that someone won’t be subject to being harassed or assaulted. So we think that’s a little seed of effort that can grow a lot,” Digirolamo said.

Donna Jean’s might also show that one of the most important resources a shelter can provide is time.

Continue reading →

After complaints about homelessness and drugs, city planning changes at Capitol Hill parks including ‘potential permanent fencing’

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Fenced-off a decade later, Seven Hills Park debuted in 2015 (Image: Mithun)

Banners mocking the Seven Hills closure briefly went up behind the fences in October

The city will begin a public planning process next week to reshape two Capitol Hill parks where officials say concerns over homeless encampments, drug use, and “bouts of negative park activity” call for new approaches to Seattle public space.

Seattle Parks and Recreation is holding meetings next week to discuss priorities and identify “community activation partners and new potential users” for three District 3 parks where complaints over camping and crime have sparked the planned overhauls. One of the parks — Capitol Hill’s Seven Hills Park — has been fenced-off and closed since September over the issues. The other — Broadway Hill Park — remains open but has been a center of complaints and Seattle Police Department activity, officials say.

“This community-centered initiative invites residents, businesses, and organizations on Capitol Hill to come together to enhance the safety, vitality, and inclusivity of these neighborhood parks,” the parks department announced about Wednesday’s planned session. “This activation strategy seeks to address ongoing challenges such as safety concerns, accessibility barriers, and park misuse by fostering open dialogue and transparent partnerships.”

Thursday night, parks officials will hold a separate meeting to discuss similar issues at the Central District’s Dr. Blanche Lavizzo Park.

CHS reported in September on the surprise closure of Seven Hills after District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth reportedly met with neighbors and the city made an attempt to sweep the park of campers in August.

The city said the shutdown was needed “in order for Seattle Parks and Recreation to assess possible amenity changes and/or upgrades.” Continue reading →

‘ORDER TO REMOVE ALL PERSONAL PROPERTY’: City announces sweep of 15-block area of First Hill — UPDATE

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Seattle officials have quietly ordered a sweep of homeless encampments Thursday from a 15-block area of First Hill surrounding the planned home of the future Broadway Crisis Care Center and just blocks from the sites of two recent deadly Capitol Hill shootings.

“Materials in this area are an obstruction of the intended use of this property, are in a hazardous location or present an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) obstruction,” the boilerplate text for the frequently used City of Seattle clearance order reads.

Unlike most orders that pertain to a specific park or parking strip, the October 30th order covers a wide swath of city streets covering “E Union to Madison St and from Broadway to Minor Ave.” Continue reading →

Sharyn Grayson House — county’s Health Through Housing Capitol Hill apartment building — ready for residents

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Grayson (Image: SF.gov)

As it touts the success of the program in keeping people housed, King County’s “Health Through Housing” Capitol Hill apartment building is ready to welcome its first residents after nearly three years of planning and preparation.

Just off Broadway, the four-story, 35-unit Sharyn Grayson House has been prepared to provide supportive housing for “queer, transgender, two-spirit, Black, Indigenous, people of color” experiencing chronic homelessness as part of the county initiative,

The Lavender Rights Project and Chief Seattle Club residential building is named to honor Grayson, a Transgender advocate and Trans community icon.

The county says the opening of Sharyn Grayson House will add to the success of its Health Through Housing developments in helping to break the cycles of homelessness. Continue reading →

‘Bouts of negative park activity’ — City fences off Capitol Hill’s Seven Hills Park, planning changes in three more over encampment concerns

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(Image: CHS)

Some neighbors and the area’s Seattle City Council member knew it was coming but nobody else was prepared for a Capitol Hill park to suddenly be fenced off over the Labor Day weekend for a 60-day “rest.”

“We recognize that this park has been impacted by bouts of negative park activity and we will continue to work to ensure that all parks are clean, safe, and welcoming,” a Seattle Parks spokesperson tells CHS about the two-month closure of Seven Hills Park at 16th and Howell.

Seattle Parks says the closure is part of a broader discussion involving the future of Seven Hills and three other area parks. Continue reading →

Capitol Hill crystal shop owner and candidate for City Council says launching initiative effort to ban homeless camping in Seattle

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(Image: Savage Citizens)

Rachael Savage, the Capitol Hill business owner and longshot challenger for Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s citywide Seattle City Council Position 8 seat, says she is making her next campaign a citizen initiative “to direct those living on the streets to detox-treatment-shelter or face arrest” and ban camping in the city.

“This is the compassionate way,” Savage said in the announcement of the filing.

To qualify the citizen initiative for the ballot, Savage will need to collect registered voter signatures equal to 10% of the total votes cast for mayor in the most recent mayoral election. That’s around 26,000 signatures.

The initiative is said to be modeled on a similar proposal being pursued for an initiative at the county level. Continue reading →

Seattle Council to consider $9M a year ‘Pathways to Recovery’ program as Trump issues order on homelessness and ‘disorder on America’s streets’

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A recent We Heart Seattle cleanup (Image: We Heart Seattle)

With a week until the August 5th Primary Election, Seattle City Council president Sara Nelson says her $9 million a year “bold plan to break the cycle of addiction and homelessness” with a new sales tax increase to fund addiction treatment services will be decided on Tuesday.

CHS reported here on the proposal to direct 25% of a new tenth of a cent sales tax authorized by the state legislature for cities to pay for public safety services to longtime service providers like Evergreen Treatment Services, the Downtown Emergency Service Center, and newcomers like The More We Love and We Heart Seattle. Continue reading →

Two dead after bus reportedly backs over smoking shelter in First Hill parking lot — UPDATE

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Two people were reported dead after a bus struck a smoking shelter in a parking lot near Broadway and Alder in the First Hill neighborhood Tuesday morning.

According to emergency radio updates, a 911 caller reported the horrific incident and said a bus had backed over the shelter occupied by two victims just after 10:30 AM in the parking lot behind the Hilltop House retirement community.

Original reports described the shelter as a tent but SPD clarified that the structure is a smoking area behind the building.

SPD says a third elderly woman barely escaped without injury. Continue reading →

Toxic politics? ‘Supportive housing’ project targeted by Capitol Hill mayoral candidate in line for state cleanup

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The Capitol Hill business owner turned candidate for mayor fighting a Belmont Ave supportive housing project from the Downtown Emergency Service Center has already cast herself as a Republican.

Now we’ll see if Rachael Savage is also an environmentalist.

Washington’s Department of Ecology may be wandering into a neighborhood hornet’s nest as it begins the public process on the Stewart House Cleanup Site under its affordable housing grant program.

The DESC and the department are entering into an agreement on a state funded cleanup of the site where decades of waste from oil furnaces has accumulated. Continue reading →

Officials celebrate groundbreaking of Constellation Center — and hope for affordable housing and jobs in the heart of Capitol Hill

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The groundbreaking ceremony took place inside the Century Ballroom which is undergoing some change of its own — the space is now the Reverie Ballroom under new ownership

Rendering of the Constellation Center and the new eight-story apartment building

“The next chapter of hope” is beginning at Broadway and Pine where construction is underway on the $37 million $79 million Constellation Center, a first of its kind project combining affordable housing and a youth education, skills training, and employment academy. To come together, the unique project has required the heft of two of Seattle’s most important Public Development Authorities and its leading provider of services to homeless youth.

UPDATE: No, the cost of the project has not soared. The $37 million figure represented a YouthCare fundraising goal for the project. Total construction budget has been established as $79 million — about $60 million of that is the projected cost of the new apartment buidling.

It also needed a champion. Longtime Democratic State Rep. Frank Chopp, who passed away only days before the ceremony, was remembered as officials gathered late last month to celebrate the Constellation Center’s groundbreaking.

“As we honor the indefatigable and moralistic example of Frank Chopp today, we are here to join forces on a project close to his heart,” Vivek Varma of the Schultz Family Foundation said in his remarks at the March 25th groundbreaking ceremony. “Not only join forces, but as Frank would say if he was here, we’ve got to get it done.”

The foundation is just part of the core of Seattle’s social safety net that has been required to get the Constellation Center plan off the ground. Continue reading →