Vulnerable women living at a nonprofit housing provider in downtown Seattle are afraid for their safety and well-being in the facility. They say staff have either contributed to or are unwilling to address their concerns.
Seven residents and one former employee of the YWCA facility at Seneca Street and Fifth Avenue approached Real Change to tell their stories, most on the condition of anonymity.
They describe violence, theft, drug use and unsafe conditions at the site, with little help coming from the facility’s management, which has implemented restrictions on their activities and movements they find punitive.
Most are afraid to speak out or follow a formal grievance policy for fear of losing their housing.
Managers say that they try to address residents’ concerns, but that the management structure of the facility has been in a state of constant flux for almost a year. The building has changed on-site managers three times in the past 12 months. The director of housing, who oversees multiple buildings in the YWCA network, is new in her position as well.
The result is a tense living environment with staff finding their sea legs and residents struggling to cope with what they see as danger from neighbors and a crackdown from above.
Diane Ehlinger moved to Seattle from the East Coast two years ago. She went in and out of homeless shelters and tent cities for a year before landing at the YWCA.
“Where I come from, I thought I would be safe here,” Ehlinger said. “This is just the total opposite.”
After she moved in, Ehlinger alleged that her identity was stolen, a crime she reported to the police department. Now she carries her important documents with her when she leaves her room, which isn’t often. Ehlinger is afraid of some of the women in the building. She played a recording that she took from inside her closed room of yelling and screaming coming through the wall. She doesn’t have a bathroom in her unit or a kitchen, but residents are allowed a hot plate in their rooms, so she avoids the kitchen whenever possible.
Sometimes, to stay away from the restrooms, she just uses a coffee can.
“Staff is not doing anything about it,” Ehlinger said.
Other residents, who asked to remain anonymous, have lived at the facility longer, in some cases up to a decade. Many are middle-aged or older, some living with disabilities. Their descriptions of living conditions at the site are similar: bullying by other residents, theft of money or possessions, a lack of response to grievances filed and a feeling that their complaints are dismissed.
Residents used to communicate with staff through the Resident Council, but it is no longer operative. Activities and programs, such as two clothing resources that held space in the basement of the building, are no longer there.
As concerned as residents are about their physical safety, they also feel that their rights are being violated through intrusive policies that they say invade their privacy and restrict their movements in the building that is supposed to be their home.
When residents receive a visitor at the facility, they take the elevator down from their floors — the 125 rooms are on floors four through seven — to meet their guest in the lobby. If the guest is male, they can visit in the lobby. If not, they can visit in the lobby.
In recent months, the policy changed. Now, residents must fill out a guest list in advance, and only those people may go upstairs. To some, it feels like they’re being spied on and kept from seeing spontaneous visitors or those that haven’t yet been put on the list.
The policy has been on the books for some time, it just wasn’t enforced, said Anna Preyapongpisan, the Housing Director for the YWCA. She has been in her position for a year. Prior to that, she worked in asset management for the YWCA.
“It’s really just so we know who’s in the building,” she said.
Management also changed the keycard policy, restricting women to the lobby and the floor on which they reside.
That policy is temporary, Preyapongpisan said.
“In the past few months, there have been a number of issues with residents going to other floors they didn’t live on, and having a number of altercations between residents,” Preyapongpisan said. “Our ability for front desk staff to go up and address issues happening in the hallways, and there’s a lot of tension, is limited.”
The policy, residents say, is not helping.
Although women can’t use the elevators to move between floors, fire code requires a stairwell that opens in at least one direction, from the floor to the stairs. It’s locked from the inside, so that a person on the stairwell can’t open the door to another floor.
That’s effective, as long as no one on the destination floor is willing to open the door. Otherwise, there’s no stopping a person capable of using the stairs from navigating throughout the building.
One woman who spoke to Real Change cannot move through the building freely. She provides caregiving services to other women in the building, fetching medications for people on different floors and taking care of them when they are unwilling or unable to leave their rooms. The policy has cut her off from those friends within the building, she said.
That could be problematic, said Elliott Bronstein, a spokesperson for the Seattle Office of Civil Rights.
Although he could not speak directly to the situation at the YWCA because the office has had no complaints filed about it in recent years, he said that the situation could be “potentially discriminatory.”
“We would urge them to call our office,” Bronstein said. “The law requires housing providers to accommodate people with disabilities to the extent possible so people can enjoy the premises to the same extent as someone without a disability.”
The office offers technical assistance to landlords and property managers to address such issues, Bronstein said.
Women who’ve lived at the facility for many years have reason to worry about lack of access to friends. Three women were found dead in their rooms between 2009 and 2010, some days after the fact. One woman, India Valdez, wasn’t discovered for seven weeks.
Although the flow of entrants is controlled through the front doors to the lobby and the elevators, there is another point of entry to the building that is less secure that concerns residents.
The bottom floor of the building has a Subway sandwich restaurant accessible from the street. Walking through the restaurant past the sandwich counter is a short hall that Subway patrons can use to reach restrooms. It also leads to a door that goes directly into the YWCA lobby. That door is supposed to be locked and residents say it often is. When this reporter tried it at the beginning of March, it was not.
Some women fear that it’s a way for people to enter the building who should not.
Preyapongpisan is aware of most of these concerns about the facility. She and staff have tried to put measures in place that would address the problems that women there have lifted up.
They plan on reconstituting the Resident Council to give the women at the facility a larger voice and are installing security cameras so that front desk staff can be aware of confrontations on other floors.
The manager moved from the third floor, which is predominately office space, to an office just behind the lobby to give residents greater access.
The allegations made her visibly distressed.
“I’m not the previous director, and the manager is not the previous manager,” Preyapongpisan said, tears in her eyes. “Still, with all that change, I don’t like to hear that people are feeling unsafe in their homes.”
Mostly, staff is working to get stable and forge a sense of comfort and unity in the building, Preyapongpisan said.