TACOMA — Nearly 200 refugees are being sheltered at a Tacoma hotel after they were asked to leave an encampment on King County property. Many asylum-seeking families had been living in tents there for months with nowhere to go.
On Sept. 24, vans and trucks brought troves of suitcases, strollers and garbage bags full of possessions into the parking lot of Quality Inn on Tacoma’s South Hosmer Street. The items piled across the lot were some of the last possessions of families that had come from as far away as Venezuela and Angola to escape economic instability, political unrest, and for some, violence.
The day before, they were living in tents in a grassy field near a motel in Kent. Many had been there for months, left without a place to go after being asked to leave a shelter at the Riverton Park United Methodist Church, according to reports from The Seattle Times.
According to a King County spokesperson, the county partnered with the City of Kent and a refugee-assistance organization called Thrive International to help move the asylum seekers from the encampment and into “temporary and long-term housing solutions.”
“Many asylum seekers have been asking for improved living conditions and the chance to move into shelter or housing,” King County said in a statement to The News Tribune. “Today’s transition directly responds to these requests, providing safer, more stable environments through shelter and housing solutions with the resources available through the county’s previously awarded contract with Thrive.”
Mark Finney is the executive director of Thrive International. He founded the organization three years ago during the onset of the invasion of Ukraine. He and his partners worked to get Ukrainian refugees in Spokane into temporary shelter at a hotel that Thrive leased. Now, they are following a similar model in Pierce County.
Finney told The News Tribune he and his team showed up around 7 a.m. to tell families and pregnant women at the encampment they could travel to a hotel in Pierce County where they would be given shelter, resources and assistance.
“Everybody woke up in tents and sleeping bags this morning,” Finney said of the transition they would experience that day
With capacity at the hotel limited, Finney said, they had to be secretive and spontaneous about their announcement to prevent additional asylum seekers in need of help in the area from showing up at the encampment.
Amid a refugee crisis, the demand for resources is high, said Finney.
“This is an issue across the state and across the country,” he told The News Tribune.
Thrive International helped transport roughly 191 people from the encampment to the Quality Inn in Tacoma, which it leased to assist the refugees. When they arrived, staff members collected identification and information such as immigration status, whether they had a work permit, the languages they spoke and other details that helped their resource coordinators know what kind of assistance they would need.
According to Thrive International, the refugees would be referred to a new Migrant and Asylum Seeker Support program that is expected to be announced by the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) sometime this fall.
According to Norah West, assistant director of media relations at DSHS, the department’s Office of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance expects to launch the Washington Migrant and Asylum-Seeker Support Pilot Project in early October. West told The News Tribune the project will create a central, coordinated system for people who have recently arrived in Washington from outside of the country to connect to services.
“We are contracting with organizations to provide migrant housing services, immigration-related legal services and culturally responsive case management,” she said in an email. “All referrals and services will be prioritized by each household’s risks for vulnerability; for example, households with pregnant persons or children under age 18.”
Finney said the Quality Inn is set up to offer them a stable place to temporarily live while their resource coordinators help them navigate immigration, obtain work permits and find long-term housing.
“It’s difficult for folks to find accessible housing when they have no credit history, no rental history, much less if they don’t speak English,” Finney told The News Tribune about the assistance Thrive International would offer.
As the families poured into the lobby of the Quality Inn and gave their information to intake staff, they were offered snacks and water. Children played and laughed.
Finney said Thrive International had been planning with local school districts to enroll the children in class. He said they would be bused to school from the hotel.
Finney told The News Tribune many families had endured traumatic journeys on their way to the United States.
“The thing that is most shocking for me to think about is the kids, and what they have experienced,” he said.
Tania Babisala left Angola with her husband and 10-year-old daughter. She told The News Tribune in a translated interview, her husband had defected from the government there, and she and her family were threatened by violence from the government. She said she was victimized by sexual violence.
They traveled to Brazil before making their way to the states after their safety there was threatened. They were in Arizona before hearing about resources in Washington. They had been staying at the encampment in Kent after being told there was no where to go nearby. They have been there since the beginning of August.
After arriving in Tacoma, she told The News Tribune she is hopeful her husband can find work and daughter can now focus on her schooling. Babisala said she hopes to pursue a career in nursing so she can be a caretaker for the elderly.
“We are glad we can play an important part in partnering with the city of Kent and King County to answer the call for dignified affordable housing,” Finney wrote in a statement on Sept. 25. “It was beautiful to hear the cheering and clapping when these families realized today was their last day in the camp.”
