by Gary Lee
Seattle CID Public Safety Committee
Co-founder of Friends of Seattle CID
It’s budget time and we know you’re all busy. However, we urge you to initiate or initiate an emergency land use moratorium to allow time to study zoning in and around the Chinatown-International District (CID) boundary in relation to homeless shelters and related services.
CID (Chinatown, Japantown, Little Saigon) residents and businesses recently learned of the proposed expansion of the SODO Homeless Shelter on 6th Avenue South. It doesn’t make sense because at least 15 homeless shelters, and at least that many service providers, are already within walking distance. Since the location of the Navigation Center, and the concentration of other shelters around CID, the community’s quality of life, vitality, and public safety have deteriorated significantly over the past five years.
For example, zoning regulations for homeless shelters do not have any spacing or concentration standards, but transition camps (i.e. small house villages) cannot be within a mile of each other. As Police Chief Diaz said in his September 21, 21 interview with KING 5. “Maybe we should take a step back and really assess the level of service in the area because another (shelter) can really make a difference by permanently destroying that community,” he said.
In light of Chief Diaz’s statement regarding the excessive concentration of homeless shelters/services in and around CID, and the fact that these uses have no density or spacing controls, CID residents and businesses respectfully request that you be within half a mile of the CID boundary Provide all new land use applications for homeless shelters/services within to study the unintended consequences of not establishing spacing or concentration standards for these types of uses and provide some corrections for those uses so this will not Happened here, or any other community in the future.
We desperately need your help in this matter as you have helped others with mobile home parks as described in the linked article below. If you truly care about the CID community, you will urgently take the necessary steps to create an emergency moratorium to study this issue and provide a fair solution to the CID Historic District. This community is on the verge of collapse and will surely die if more shelters are added and expanded. Consider the highest crime statistics in the Seattle neighborhood, with its eighth homicide just last week.
A temporary surge in police activity in the CID does not solve the problem. The problem is the partition code. Your committee can stop the unintended consequences of poor land use planning that is slowly killing CID.
If I’ve missed any procedural steps or requirements, please let me know and have the Land Use Committee consider this request publicly at your committee meeting for consideration and voting by the full City Council.
