Tag Archives: homelessness

Why the Broadway Center for Youth is coming to the center of Capitol Hill

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Weinstein A+U’s rendering of the now under construction Broadway Center for Youth at Broadway and Pine

By Matt Dowell

A planned two years of construction has begun on the Broadway Center for Youth, an affordable housing and workforce development hub at Broadway and Pine. Why develop the project here near the core of the neighborhood’s entertainment district on one of the most expensive blocks in the city and in an area experiencing some of the deepest pains of the city’s ongoing challenges around addiction and mental health?

Officials at YouthCare, the nonprofit behind the center, say they want to create this resource for the young adults they serve at Broadway and Pine for the same reasons anybody might want to live here — community, culture, transit, and jobs.

YouthCare has worked for 50 years to help address youth homelessness in the Seattle area. Their Constellation Center, a part of the Broadway Center for Youth, will connect to Community Roots Housing’s new eight story building with 84 affordable homes on the busy Capitol Hill corner. Imagined as a hub for young people aged 18 to 24 who need job training, case management, housing, and mental health services, the center will expand programs already offered by YouthCare.

YouthCare CEO Degale Cooper highlighted the advantages of the well-connected location. It is close to two local colleges, employers with jobs, and public transportation. And it’s near the healthcare organizations that provide care to those under YouthCare’s wing.

Plus, it’s close to those who need help.

“More young people who use YouthCare services are moving out of the downtown corridor as more condos and businesses go up. They are moving to Cap Hill,” said Cooper. Continue reading →

Opening in 2027, work begins on eight stories of affordable housing and homeless youth Constellation Center ‘education and employment academy’ at Broadway and Pine

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(Image: Community Roots Housing)

A rendering of YouthCare’s planned Constellation Center

By Matt Dowell

Construction is beginning on the Constellation Center, an affordable housing and homeless youth education and employment academy project planned for Broadway and Pine.

The development will bring months of heavy demolition and construction work to the core of Capitol Hill — and add what officials say will be a vital resource for addressing the city’s homelessness crisis while also creating new affordable homes above this busy intersection.

Meanwhile, Community Roots Housing, the Public Development Authority and local affordable housing provider behind the project, has also announced its plans to sell one of its most celebrated new projects — the mass-timber Heartwood building at 14th and Union — as it continues a multiyear process of paring down its holdings.

A spokesperson for Community Roots reported that construction of theConstellation Center began Monday, January 6 at Broadway and Pine. Continue reading →

Donna Jean’s Place — hope for helping 100 women a year rise from homelessness on Capitol Hill

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(Image: Operation Nightwatch)

The plan for growing a Capitol Hill women’s shelter began when Frank DiGirolamo of Operation Nightwatch and Rev. Steve Thomason, dean and rector of 10th Ave E’s St. Mark’s, met at a clergy dinner and shared their work with one another.

Operation Nightwatch has been active for 57 years and began through street canvassing efforts, which they continue to this day on Capitol Hill.

“We spend a lot of time listening and reminding people that they’re loved,” DiGirolamo told CHS. “We’re always responding to the needs we hear about from the people we visit.”

Thomason said St. Marks had been a site for women’s emergency shelter for over two decades, but then COVID-19 hit.

“It seemed the natural thing for us to consider again, even if it’s not a long-term solution for that location. We’re hoping that the City of Seattle and King County, all of the organizations that are committed to addressing the housing crisis, will be in a very different place three to four years from now than we currently are,” Thomason told CHS. Continue reading →

With 10,000 living without shelter, Seattle and King County have new plan for Regional Homelessness Authority

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(Image: YouthCare)

The City of Seattle and King County have agreed on restructuring the King County Regional Homelessness Authority in a move hoped to streamline the $250 million a year effort that will also likely undercut the organization’s ability to develop new solutions to the area’s ongoing homelessness crisis.

Last month, the Seattle City Council approved the plan already signed-off on by the county to transition the RHA “to a single oversight board to improve the agency’s coordination, accountability, and transparency.”

The new agreement creates a Governing Board “responsible for setting strategic policy direction, providing fiscal oversight, monitoring performance metrics, and ensuring the authority is making progress to fulfill its mission,” according to the city’s announcement.

The new 12-member board will include the King County Executive, the Seattle Mayor, two members of the King County Council, one representing a district in Seattle and one representing a district outside of Seattle, two members of the Seattle City Council, three elected officials from the Sound Cities Association, and three members representing individuals with lived experience each individually appointed by the City of Seattle, King County, and Sound Cities Association. Continue reading →

Operation Nightwatch a growing Capitol Hill presence with Broadway Street Ministry, plans for new emergency shelter at St. Mark’s

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An Operation Nightwatch volunteer (Image: Operation Nightwatch)

Capitol Hill’s St. Mark’s will add a new women’s emergency shelter facility from Operation Nightwatch as it moves forward with a plan for new affordable housing to be developed on its North Capitol Hill campus.

Plans filed with the city describe construction of a “limited use emergency shelter with 20 beds and limited hours of operation” in the 1950s-era addition to the 10th Ave E property’s landmarks-protected St. Nicholas building.

CHS reported here earlier this year on a planned development and adaptive reuse project envisioned to create more than 100 affordable homes in a transformation of the nearly 100-year-old building.

In the meantime, the new shelter from Operation Nightwatch will call the St. Nicholas addition home. Continue reading →

Downtown Emergency Service Center to hold open house on plans for new ‘supportive housing’ apartment building on Capitol Hill

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DESC’s North Star on N 143rd St

The Downtown Emergency Service Center is holding a community open house Wednesday on its planned project to build a new 120-unit “supportive housing” apartment building with onsite services for its residents on Capitol Hill’s Belmont Ave. There will be more than questions about the planned building’s height and unit count.

CHS reported this summer on the $6.5 million property deal that put a trio of former transitional housing building from Pioneer Human Services on Belmont Ave in the hands of DESC where the organization is planning to build  “a new Permanent Supportive Housing project” on the parcels.

The strip of properties planned for the new housing and services facility is a few blocks west of the new Capitol Hill Stay out of Drug Area approved by the Seattle City Council.

King County’s program to fund this type of project says permanent supportive housing is housing “for a household that is homeless on entry, where the individual or a household member has a condition of disability, such as mental illness, substance abuse, chronic health issues, or other conditions that create multiple and serious ongoing barriers to housing stability.”

The buildings represent some of the most needed housing in the region that continues to be rocked by an ongoing homelessness crisis. They also can face extreme challenges. Continue reading →

Proposal for new Seattle ‘Stay out of Drug Areas’ including Capitol Hill zone moves forward

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The Seattle City Council’s public safety committee Tuesday approved a plan to create new exclusion zones in Seattle targeting drug related crime and prostitution in multiple areas of the city including a new zone on Capitol Hill.

The legislation will now go to the full council for a final vote expected next week.

CHS reported here on District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth’s addition of a new Capitol Hill “Stay out of Drug Area” stretching from Harvard to 11th Ave including Cal Anderson Park to the proposal.

The committee approved Hollingsworth’s amendment along with proposals to add four more zones in Belltown, Pioneer Square, the International District, and the University District along with the legislation calling for new zones downtown and along Aurora hoped to curb prostitution-related crimes. Continue reading →

$6.5M deal for trio of Capitol Hill transitional housing apartment buildings part of plans for new DESC facility — UPDATE

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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.” Continue reading →

Seattle City Council makes tweaks to $970M housing levy spending plan ‘with focus on homelessness prevention’

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In business wrapped up before the Independence Day holiday, the Seattle City Council heard updates on spending powered by the $970 million voter-approved housing levy and signed-off on adjustments that council members say will increase spending on “homelessness prevention.”

Councilmember Cathy Moore, (District 5, North Seattle) and chair of the House and Human Services Committee, says the changes will allow the city build the 3,000 “desperately-needed affordable homes” initially promised under the 2023 levy, while also growing opportunities for first-time home ownership, and “vastly” expanding rental assistance “to proactively prevent homelessness.” Continue reading →

As Capitol Hill business group eyes ‘ambassadors,’ We Deliver Care says it needs $2.6M for 3rd Ave in 2025

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A non-profit company formed to provide “community ambassadors” to provide “non-violent de-escalation” along Seattle’s troubled 3rd Ave says it needs $640,000 to continue its work through the end of the year and another $2.6 million for 2025.

We Deliver Care is asking the Seattle City Council to consider the funding as it says its work with “people experiencing homelessness, poverty, or criminal activity” is working on the challenged downtown street.

The ambassadors “reverse opioid overdoses, reduce loitering, help get unhoused people indoors, and provide non-emergency responses to public safety concerns,” a city council brief on the program reads. Continue reading →