‘Food is finished:’ Refugees in Kent call for help as health, food struggles remain

About 170 asylum-seeking refugees living at a camp in Kent have been moved into temporary housing over the course of a week, officials with King County and the Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI) told KIRO Newsradio.

It’s one of the most seismic actions yet to aid a group of refugees who, over the course of the past year, have shuffled from city to city in King County as piecemeal housing assistance efforts ran out.

Jon Grant, the chief strategy officer at LIHI, said the group included primarily women and children.

“These are very young kids — there’s some infants, toddlers, that were sleeping out in this field during the heatwave,” he said. “So we were trying to act as quickly as possible to get as many people on site as we could.”

According to Grant, the vast majority of those given housing were placed into rental units in LIHI-owned properties in King County. Grant said LIHI is also providing rental subsidization.

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State gives $5M for refugee assistance but only partial diverted to those in Kent

In an email to KIRO Newsradio, a King County spokesperson said the state has given the county $5 million in total to address refugee assistance. But it appears only part of that money has been diverted to help the specific refugee camp in Kent.

Grant said the recent move of the 170 refugees was funded with about $1.2 million in funding through King County. He described it as a temporary move meant to fill the gap while LIHI, its partners and refugees wait for a state program to begin this fall.

“We view it as bridge funding for a larger program that is being built at a state level,” Grant said, referring to the Washington State Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs. “(It’s) going to coordinate a statewide effort to get people housing, services and legal aid. That will be stood up sometime in September.”

In the meantime, 40 to 50 refugees – primarily from countries in Africa and Central to South America — remain at the Kent camp on Central Avenue near the State Route 167 on-ramp. Multiple men living in the camp told KIRO Newsradio they are growing concerned the expected help may not come soon enough, as they are running out of food.

Past coverage: Hundreds of asylum-seeking refugees create encampment in Central District park

The camp has primarily relied on donations for the food, but donations have slowed down, the refugees said. Refugees showed KIRO Newsradio reporter Sam Campbell the tent set up as an improvised kitchen, where propane tanks used to cook food have been emptied and supplies of canned goods are dwindling.

NEW: 170 refugees (women and children) in the Kent camp have been moved into temp housing using state funding, but ~50 remain on Central Avenue.

They showed me their improvised kitchen tent, where propane’s run out and canned food is dwindling.

More @Mynorthwest @KIRONewsradio pic.twitter.com/U0YysC3G7Z

— Sam Campbell (@HeySamCampbell) July 23, 2024

Alexander Jimenez of Venezuela spoke to KIRO Newsradio, his comments were translated from Spanish to English.

Refugee asks public to ‘call the city to approve other rooms’

He asked the public to “call the city to approve, through LIHI, other rooms so that those of us who remain here can also leave this camp.”

But even after leaving the camp, Grant said the money funding the 170 refugees’ temporary housing will only cover rent for about six months, at which point, his hope is the statewide program will take the reins.

It’s not permanent, Grant said, but the method is necessary as many of the refugees are still awaiting approval from federal immigration officials on their asylum status.

“One of the challenges is that for a lot of federally subsidized housing, they’ll be ineligible until their asylum status is confirmed by the U.S. (Citizenship and Immigration Services),” he said.

Instead, LIHI and other partners working with them, he said, have targeted temporary housing developments that do not require citizenship.

Disease worries Kent refugees

But housing is just one piece of the issue. Disease and illness worry others inside the camp. M’beka, a man seeking asylum from the Democratic Republic of Congo, told Campbell many need medical care, including himself.

“I’m sick, I have tuberculosis,” he said, adding that he has no choice but to stay in the camp where he is afraid of transmitting the infection to others. “It’s dangerous. There are many people with some sick(ness) … This is a problem.”

Officials with King County Public Health told KIRO Newsradio in an email that mobile medical teams have visited the camp in Kent. Grant told KIRO Newsradio his teams were aware that someone within the camp had tuberculosis, but health officials specified there was no indication of an *active* case of tuberculosis (TB).

Health officials distinguish between active TB disease and inactive infections as they said the latter has no risk of spreading.

“We can’t confirm if individuals at the camp have inactive TB infection, since it’s not a reportable condition to us like TB disease is,” a spokesperson for the public health department wrote in the email. “But since TB is much more common in places where the asylum seekers are coming from, they would be at higher risk for carrying it.”

Health officials said someone must spend hours around a person with active TB in an enclosed environment to be at risk of infection. It remains unclear whether M’beka’s individual case is an inactive infection or a potentially unreported, untested active disease, as the man did not supply any medical records to KIRO Newsradio.

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Teams from Harborview Medical Center and other health care organizations in the region have worked with LIHI to provide care to the refugees, Grant said, though he added there are still people living in the camp with untreated “serious” conditions.

“There’s been outbreaks of COVID-19, we know of at least one case of tuberculosis,” he said. “And we have tried to prioritize people based on their medical needs for the housing assistance that we have, but we know that there are people there that still have pretty serious medical issues that we were not able to serve. Hopefully, we can get more resources martialed to make sure that folks who are sick, people with severe medical issues, can get the housing that they need to be in a stable environment and recuperate.”

Refugees’ futures remain unclear

At the time of publication, it is unclear when the remaining refugees may be placed into housing.

“We would be more than happy to serve those folks and get them housing if the county or state has more funds available,” Grant said. “We’re in conversation with our partners in government to see if that would be possible. But for now, those folks are – they’re outside, and they need to be in housing.”

A Kent city official familiar with the ongoing discussions told KIRO Newsradio that “things are moving,” but could not offer specific details.

KIRO Newsradio has reached out to King County officials for clarification.

You can read more of Sam Campbell’s stories here. Follow Sam Campbell on X or email him here

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