SEATTLE — Wearing Brooks tennis shoes and workout pants on a late June morning, the Rev. Jan Bolerjack moves through her crowded church from one problem to the next.
Her office manager informs her they need a bassinet today if they want to place a mom and newborn into one of the church’s tiny houses. “Put it on the credit card,” Bolerjack tells her.
A dad waits patiently to have a word. He’s lived on the property for more than a year after escaping Angola for fear of being killed. His family is finally moving into their own apartment.
“Pastor is big heart,” he tells Bolerjack, looking into her eyes.
“Yes,” she admits, “it gets me in trouble.”
When migrants started regularly arriving at Tukwila’s Riverton Park United Methodist Church with a copy of Bolerjack’s business card in early 2023, she knew she had a crisis on her hands.
One man said he heard about her goodwill in a U.S. detention center a thousand miles away. A family from Venezuela said they learned about her on a migrant trail in Mexico. Others walked 3 miles from Sea-Tac Airport, carrying their belongings on their back, with the hope this stranger could help.
Bolerjack has sheltered more than 2,000 people at some point, bearing the weight of a broken immigration system and compensating for a local response that, so far, has been piecemeal at best.
Hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers have arrived in the U.S. over the past two years to escape poverty, war and other turmoil in their home countries — creating the newest wave of homelessness in places already inundated with residents unable to afford rent.
In Denver, city leaders temporarily opened seven hotels last year. In New York City, billions have been spent on shelter and food. But in Seattle and King County, the first, and for a long time only, emergency response came from a 68-year-old pastor, who has gone from serving the spiritual and economic needs of her South King County community to leading Washington’s largest migrant-assistance hub.
“She probably doesn’t actually have the authority to say ‘yes’ to people, but she unabashedly does,” said Jennifer Tenorio, who works at the church. Tenorio helped make the first call to Bolerjack in late summer 2022, asking if she could shelter a family from Venezuela found on Seattle’s streets.
Bolerjack isn’t a trained social worker and doesn’t have a background in immigration or homelessness services. But she’s stubborn, likes to work fast and her past pushes her to say “yes.”
She couldn’t wait to act while government agencies created a plan, Bolerjack said. “But that’s really uncomfortable for a lot of people.”
It’s especially uncomfortable for Tukwila’s leaders.
“Pastor Jan continues to say ‘yes’ beyond her resources,” Tukwila Mayor Tom McLeod said in August.
He wants Bolerjack to set firm limits on the number of people living on church property to a level their fire marshal deems appropriate, with that analysis now underway.
To appease Tukwila’s leaders and receive their financial support, Bolerjack doesn’t accept everyone anymore. She’s already turned away hundreds of new arrivals. Her property has about 135 residents and migrants are scattered across the region now. But her church still plays a significant role, and it needs the city’s help. Donations are falling and she recently put $8,000 in air conditioning repairs on a credit card.
Still, a low-simmering tension remains between Bolerjack and city leaders.
“Because I’m not saying I’m going to do what they’re asking me to do, “ Bolerjack said.
Welcome to Tukwila
Tukwila is a working-class community, more diverse than Seattle, with a long history of welcoming newcomers.
In the 1990s, refugee resettlement agencies placed families there for its affordability. Today, nearly 40% of its residents were born outside of the U.S., according to census data.
After arriving at Riverton Park in 2008, Bolerjack said she began to understand her new community’s needs by seeing who showed up to the church’s food bank. There were a lot of kids in line and parents wearing airport or hotel uniforms.
“She’s always been really proud of how welcoming Tukwila is,” said Kristy Maddux, Bolerjack’s daughter.
“Now, she has pushed Tukwila to its limits on that. Let’s be clear.”
Bolerjack volunteered at Tukwila schools. She joined its School Board. Eventually, school leaders and police started calling her for assistance. Plaques and prizes are scattered on her office walls and tables, recognitions of her contributions.
She often lets people camp in tents or live in the church’s extra houses. Some have lived there for years.
“She’s just characterized by this sort of fundamental openness,” Maddux said. “She’s going to take risks in trying to solve problems and know that sometimes she’s going to fail.”
Faith, Bolerjack said, is responding to the need she sees without fear of consequences.
When asylum-seekers started showing up en masse, public officials were aware — emails show Bolerjack asking Seattle for assistance starting in January 2023.
Desperate for help, she waited to call The Seattle Times until September 2023, Bolerjack said, because “I’ve been trying to give everybody the chance to step up.”
While many in the community reached out to laud her or offer private support, government dollars didn’t appear until November.
Bolerjack would send people to family shelters when she could, but those spots are in high demand. So, Bolerjack squeezed more into her social hall, tiny houses and front yard. By December 2023, about 500 people lived on church property, most in tents outside.
Her congregation is small — she counts 12 who show up and about 40 on the books. But she’s not worried about Riverton closing because through its social services — cars line up at 5 a.m. for their food bank that opens at 10 — she’s been able to maintain relevance.
In seminary school — after trying careers in physical education and nursing — Bolerjack was taught ways to get more people in the pews on Sundays.
“That is not my interest,” Bolerjack said. “My interest is being the heart and voice of God in the world.”
Her church bosses describe her as “strong-willed” and “focused” and say they support the risks she’s taken.
“If anything, this is really Jan’s ministry,” said the Rev. Derek Nakano, who oversees Bolerjack’s district for the United Methodist Church.
When King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay heard about the migrant camp last year, it reminded him of a Bible verse he learned as a child.
Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Zahilay named Bolerjack a Hometown Hero this year.
But after two long messy years of responding to this crisis, she is facing more anger than applause. She has a dent on her front door to show for it, made by a rock thrown in frustration by a migrant she was forced to turn away.
Sometimes, Bolerjack said, it feels like no one is happy with her.
Her crowded sanctuary
Every Wednesday evening at the church, as families huddle around pots of rice and meat and mothers nurse their babies, Bolerjack meets with residents. On one warm May day, she told them, through multiple translators, that one person won his asylum case. They clapped.
Don’t forget to wear your badges, she reminded residents. It’s how church staff identify who lives there and who doesn’t.
And she can help sign their kids up for football, but it’s the kind you throw (mainly).
Then, it was residents’ turn to share.
People have the church’s address, a man sitting in the back stood up and shared in Portuguese.
“And those people are being turned away. How can we overcome this?”
It’s Bolerjack’s heaviest weight.
“Someone else said we hit our limits,” Bolerjack said later.
Tukwila officials had become frustrated with the huge encampment at the church.
They gained a footing on the property after declaring a state of emergency in October 2023. Over the ensuing months, the city installed fencing, hired contractors to manage the grounds and stood up a large temperature-controlled tent to more safely shelter people outside. In return, Bolerjack agreed to stop handing out tents to new arrivals.
“We wanted to use that [large tent] to help control the site,” Tukwila Mayor McLeod said. “And it worked.”
But Bolerjack wasn’t going to limit herself to just the heated tent. She squeezed more people into her worn-down church. It strained the plumbing and increased the chance of fire. Rats proliferated outside, crawling across residents at night, breaking into their food.
“So many churches are empty throughout the week,” said the Rev. Hannah Andres, Bolerjack’s former associate pastor. “The church is meant to be lived in.”
Before she hired security guards, Bolerjack would wake up every hour to scan the property from her bedroom window, looking for emergency lights.
“Sometimes I feel like we’re just a time bomb,” she said. “When is this positive thing that we’re doing suddenly gonna make the negative press?”
By this spring, her floors became a quilt of stained mattresses. Cockroaches multiplied, even inside the printer. Single adults slept next to strangers in the downstairs hallway, some on the stairs — a few of the many fire-code violations.
“We’re not doing well here,” one man sleeping downstairs said in May.
A woman nearby agreed. “For a single person here, it’s really hard,” she said. Most government aid has gone to families and pregnant women.
After the meeting that May night, Bolerjack stood guard outside, fighting against her own instincts by trying to block a dozen newcomers from entering her rundown sanctuary.
“It’s terrible,” she said.
Why Jan says “yes”
Most of the seats in the sanctuary were empty for Bolerjack’s Mother’s Day service this year.
She spoke about her mom to six parishioners like they were old friends.
“I can’t figure out whether she was a good mother or not. I mean maybe nobody is totally one way or the other,” she said. “But I still struggle with how she raised me and the shame that was a part of our household.”
From a young age, Bolerjack remembers not fitting the person her mom wanted her to be.
Her mom wanted her to dress nice and be clean and act like a lady, and said she would die if Bolerjack ever came out as gay. And yet she was.
For decades, the shame followed Bolerjack around in a question: “Do I deserve to have a place in this world?”
And for a long time, she didn’t believe that she did.
By her mid-30s, after ending her marriage, Bolerjack came out to her daughter. But for a decade after that, she hid it at work for fear of losing her job. The United Methodist Church did not allow gay clergy.
Eventually, she would speak out against that, too, but she never told her mom the truth. “She was doing the best she could,” Bolerjack said, “with the biases she was taught.”
It isn’t her faith in God, really, that calls Bolerjack to keep saying “yes” to families who’ve traveled thousands of miles to reach her door. It’s the feeling she had for decades that she wasn’t enough.
“Everyone deserves the help to move forward,” she said.
She also spoke during the Mother’s Day service about her residents, about seeing moms care for their children in a new place, a new country.
“It’s amazing what they are able to keep of their value system in a place that doesn’t necessarily value them,” Bolerjack said. “We value them. Our systems don’t.”
Girls biked outside during the sermon, while adults mopped the social hall and cooked in the kitchen. Residents aren’t required to attend church to receive aid.
“I’m not about saving souls for Jesus,” Bolerjack said.
Fighting to stay in it
Every week, Bolerjack sits at a table with Tukwila’s chief of police and the mayor’s staff and braces for the questions she knows will come.
“What are your numbers?” they ask. “Why are they up?”
“These are people,” she replies. “These are not numbers.”
Until recently, the reminder has been enough to get them off her back. Still, most weeks, she drives away in tears.
Tukwila’s found new leverage in its battle with the headstrong pastor. On July 1, Washington released more than $30 million in asylum-seeker aid. The state will use most of it to add shelter beds, case management and legal aid — replacing Bolerjack’s makeshift hub. It hopes to launch Nov. 1, according to Norah West, spokesperson for Washington’s Department of Social and Health Services.
Bolerjack will receive $750,000, Tukwila $2.5 million. City officials say they want to use some of the money to help residents move off church property and help Bolerjack make improvements there.
But first, they want Bolerjack to sign a funding agreement, giving them greater control over what she does on her property.
Bolerjack hasn’t signed anything yet.
If her mom were still alive, Bolerjack’s certain she’d be embarrassed by her actions in this two-year crisis.
“She thought there was a problem with being seen,” Bolerjack said.
But Bolerjack doesn’t care about that.
She wants the people staying at her church to be the main focus. To be seen as deserving.
