Low-barrier homeless shelter in Seattle shut down, community claimed it led to crime

A homeless shelter located within the Chinatown-International District (CID) in Seattle has officially closed its doors. It’s been boarded up with a chain-link fence surrounding it. Many residents and community leaders have claimed that increased crime in the neighborhood is a direct consequence of the shelter, though the shelter vehemently disagrees.

According to the Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC), the facility, located on 12th Avenue and Weller Street, officially closed on March 18. The closure comes a year after it was initially planned to be shuttered.

Dubbed the “Navigation Center,” the homeless shelter first opened in 2017. According to DESC, the Navigation Center was a “low-barrier, service-enriched shelter” that housed homeless adults previously living in encampments who have high needs or behavioral health issues. The shelter was meant to house those who typically wouldn’t have the option to stay in a regular shelter.

Services at the Navigation Center are expected to move to a new facility—the Stability Through Access and Resources (STAR) Center, which is located at the corner of Third Ave and Cherry Street. Waiting for the STAR Center to open was one of the reasons for the delay in shutting down the Navigation Center.

Is the Navigation Center to blame for increased crime?

Due to being a “low-barrier shelter,” the Navigation Center did not require criminal background checks, credit checks, income verification, program participation, or sobriety from clients, according to the King County Regional Homeless Authority.

“The CID is not opposed to shelter,” community activist and former Seattle City Councilmember Tanya Woo told Northwest Asian Weekly. “We need the resources and money to help people heal and for the community to thrive. Business owners and residents should not have to live in fear, apprehensive, perhaps, of a day when they will have to leave altogether, as some have already done. Little Saigon has suffered from the lack of city, county, and state investment and resources.”

Woo added that she hopes “to get our neighborhood back to what it was like before 2020 and the rise of illegal drug trade and fentanyl use.”

A Stay Out of Drug Area (SODA)/Stay Out of Area Prostitution (SOAP) zone was established in CID to help combat rising crime rates in the neighborhood. These zone designations allow a judge to bar drug or prostitution law offenders busted in a zone from reentering the area for up to two years.

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