Seattle Church To Tear Down Homeless Cottages To Make Room For Parking

A Seattle church is tearing down cottages that house the homeless in order to make room for parking.

As The Pueblo Chieftan writer Scott Greenstone writes, you can generally count on a Unitarian Universalist congregation to have a liberal bent. When the topic of building or expansion comes up, questions from the congregation are likely to include the use of alternative energy, gender-inclusive bathrooms, and the use of sustainable materials in building. And in the case of Seattle’s decades-old Unitarian Universalist Church in the historic Ravenna neighborhood, you would think that the topic of the cottages next door, which house the homeless, would have been a topic of conversation.

But in this case, only one member of the congregation asked what would be done with the three cottages next door, which house about 10 people who would otherwise be homeless. And unfortunately for the residents of those cottages, the answer was a short and direct one: they’re being torn down to make room for parking spaces.

Specifically, renovating them and bringing them up to code would cost upwards of a million bucks. So instead, the congregation is just leveling them, replacing them with 17 parking additional parking spaces.

Brendi London, who lives in one of the cottages, says that she and the other residents were called into the church for a meeting in 2016. There, she says, she and the other residents were told that the congregation’s commitment to social justice is based more on advocacy rather than direct action. In other words, the church wasn’t going to be able to allow and pay for the cottages on their property.

In Seattle, finding a place to live is difficult for those who aren’t homeless. Sky-high rents are squeezing low-income individuals out of the marketplace. And in the case of the people who are trying to transition out of homelessness, the high rents are a huge barrier. Darcell Slovek-Walker, who works with the homeless, says that her agency not only has to convince landlords to take on her clients, many of whom have mental health and substance abuse issues, she also has to apply for federal subsidies to cover the rent. And it’s not always enough.

For London, the cottage on the grounds of the Unitarian Universalist Church remains her only option, other than going back to the streets.

“It’s a big waste. When do churches stop caring about people more than SUVs?”

[Featured Image by Srdjan Randjelovic/Shutterstock]