Snohomish County’s housing authority and the YWCA are hoping to turn a motel near Mill Creek into housing and social service offices for homeless families.
The Housing Authority of Snohomish County is negotiating to buy the 75-room wood and brick Everett Inn just off I-5 at 128th Street SE.
“We’re excited that we’ll be able to provide an affordable, safe, appropriate place for families trying to get back on their feet,” said Rebecca Roby, regional director of the YWCA, which would manage the building. The YWCA runs 17 housing facilities in the Puget Sound area.
It would be the first time a motel in Snohomish County was converted into housing for the homeless.
The YWCA and other nonprofit groups would rent rooms on the second floor for emergency housing of 30 to 90 days for homeless families.
The YWCA would run the third floor, which would be converted into subsidized apartments for families transitioning toward independent living.
“The whole idea is to do everything possible to make a family stable and have a sense of responsibility so they can move into a home or apartment of their own,” said Althea Cawley-Murphree, lead policy analyst with the housing authority, which has its headquarters next door to the motel. “Their lives have had no structure.”
The first floor would be converted into offices for social services and meeting rooms. Residents would have case managers and access to family therapy, job training and classes on parenting and basic life skills such as cooking, cleaning and preparing for job interviews.
Children would have space to work on their homework and use computers, and they would be able to read books in a small library. They would also have tutors. An outdoor pool would be filled in and turned into a play area.
Most of the families would probably be single women and their children, but some would be two-parent households. All tenants would be screened. There would usually be about 30 families at any one time in the building, which would have 24-hour security and desk staff, two on-site managers and a 9 p.m. curfew.
Many of the families likely to live at the inn now rent rooms in area motels with vouchers paid for by the YWCA and other agencies. But there are no on-site services at those motels.
The purchase and conversion of the motel would probably be completed in 2005.
Irene Coffman, who lives in an apartment building behind the motel, said she has mixed feelings about the idea. Coffman was homeless when she was 19 and is still grateful that the YWCA housed her for a week in downtown Seattle.
But she pointed to a nearby casino and taverns, and to the alcohol and drug use that she said occurs near the inn, and said, “I just don’t think it’s a good place to put people who are at risk.”
Dan Mitzel, a Mount Vernon developer who is building a Holiday Inn Express next to the Everett Inn welcomed the proposal. He said he’d be willing to help train some of the residents for jobs at the Holiday Inn, which is scheduled to open in June.
The housing authority has been negotiating with the owners of the Everett Inn, Jong Gil Kim and Hyun Sook Kim, for several months. Jong Kim, who said he has been trying to sell the building, said the housing authority is offering $1.6 million, but he thinks the motel is worth at least $2.4 million.
The housing authority’s director of capital facilities, Ann Schroeder Osterberg, declined to confirm those numbers but said, “We are and have been far apart on price.”
She said the housing authority has already told Kim it may try to take over the property by eminent domain if the two sides can’t reach an agreement.
David Olson is a reporter with The Herald in Everett.
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