Seattle Times staff reporter
Rainier Vista, the low-income housing project where the young single mother lived, was being demolished as part of a $750 million makeover of public housing in Seattle. Her landlord, the Seattle Housing Authority (SHA), offered Ngo two options for relocating, but she rejected both because they required her to move from Rainier Valley. Her job, her child's day care, her mother, her friends were all there.
"Who would want to change all of that, right?" she said.
But change has been necessary for about 1,600 low-income households in Seattle that have had to move since 1996 to accommodate the redevelopment of Holly Park (now NewHolly), Rainier Vista and High Point.
Each is being transformed from a sprawl of public housing into a new neighborhood where poor people live side by side with market-rate renters and homeowners.
Ngo's decision on where to move became easier after she switched jobs. Although her stubbornness had made life difficult on her relocation counselors at Rainier Vista, the Housing Authority recruited her to counsel residents at High Point in West Seattle.
She brought to the job an intimate appreciation for the disruption that an imposed move can have on a family. When her duties ended last month, she left convinced that SHA is making the best of a tough situation.
A recent city audit of SHA's completed relocation effort at Holly Park, where 832 households had to move, concluded the same thing. Auditors gave SHA good marks for keeping residents informed and helping them find satisfactory new homes.
But those who urged the City Council to order the audit dismiss it as cursory and misleading.
John Fox, head of the Seattle Displacement Coalition, said the audit failed to address whether displaced residents received all relocation benefits they were entitled to under federal law.
He also said the coalition has evidence SHA broke promises, including a guarantee that residents could return to NewHolly after construction and that their new rent would not exceed 30 percent of their income for four years after their move.
The audit is based on SHA case files of 59 uprooted households. The auditor queried only four families, however — a laughably small sample from which to draw conclusions, Fox said.
Councilman Nick Licata, who requested the audit, did not respond to several phone messages for this story.
Each relocation experience is a unique story, with residents choosing from several options.
Many leaped at the opportunity to take a Section 8 voucher, which allows low-income people to rent in the open market with the government picking up a share of the expenses.
Others chose to stay in the same housing project, moving to areas not under construction, which has been possible because the work is occurring in phases.
A few accepted lump sums of about $1,500. Some seniors accepted a similar payment and moved into private facilities or in with family.
Ngo, like several residents, moved to West Seattle, to one of the many SHA-run properties scattered throughout the city.
Ngo said a lot of her job at High Point was trying to allay anxieties, understanding that people in public housing already have plenty of stresses in their lives. "Some residents had lived there 10 years or more," she said. "The older folks, especially, didn't like having to move."
They bemoaned the loss of longtime neighbors and worried about moving farther from doctors and bus lines. Some expressed fears of becoming homeless.
For SHA, relocation has been like solving a puzzle, matching available public housing with residents while trying to grant their first preferences. According to the audit:
• At Holly Park, 70 percent of 832 relocated households received their first preferences for new housing. The number rises to 85 percent when circumstances not the fault of SHA are taken into account, such as a family being unable to buy a house as hoped.
• At Rainier Vista, where demolition west of Martin Luther King Jr. Way South is almost done, the first phase of relocation ended last spring, said Virginia Felton, SHA's communications director. Of the 471 households at Rainier Vista at the time it began, 376 have moved. Of those, 100 took Section 8 vouchers, 99 moved to the eastern section not under construction, 57 moved to other SHA housing across the city, and four bought homes. The circumstances of the remaining residents who left varied.
• At High Point, where the first phase of relocation finished in April but construction does not begin until this summer, 516 of the 702 eligible households have moved, Felton said. Of those, 421 moved off-site, and 95 moved to the section of High Point not slated for demolition right away.
"Not to downplay the disruption the redevelopments have caused, but in any public-housing environment about half of the residents move during a five-year period anyway," Felton said.
As the SHA refines its relocation process, the King County Housing Authority is taking note. At its Park Lake Homes in White Center, 569 units for low-income tenants will be demolished starting in 2005, to be replaced by a mixed-income neighborhood of 900 to 1,100 new homes.
Relocation trends have changed since the process began in 1996, said Willard Brown, SHA's redevelopment property manager. At Holly Park, few residents expressed interest in moving back into the development after it became NewHolly, while at Rainier Vista and High Point, many residents wanted in when the redevelopments are completed.
"What we didn't fully understand at Holly Park was the general stigma and negativity attached to living there," he said.
Residents doubted NewHolly would offer them a better life, Brown said. But now that SHA can point to the completed phases of NewHolly as a model, Rainier Vista and High Point residents are more interested in SHA's redeveloped neighborhoods.
