Seattle RV safe lot finally opens after a year of delays

SEATTLE – Seattle’s only recreational vehicle safe lot opened this week on a narrow patch of land in Interbay, 12 months later than planned.

The lot will house up to 26 RVs plus nine tiny houses. The initial $1.9 million contract, awarded in June 2022, is being spent to both stand up the property and manage its daily operations.

The Low Income Housing Institute was the only homeless service provider to apply for the job, and it predicted the site would be operating by the end of 2022.

In May, the housing institute secured a lot and later estimated it would open in August. Seven months after that, the first residents arrived.

“This is a super necessary resource,” Jen Manlief said. She’s the manager of the Vehicle Resident program for University Heights Center, which is in charge of referrals to the program. “And people are struggling.”

At least one person, who had been interviewed and approved as a suitable candidate, died after waiting months for the site to open and another client had their vehicle towed waiting to get in, according to Manlief.

This site, called Salmon Bay Village, is the first contract issued by the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to help people living in RVs, intended to provide them a safe place to live without fear of their vehicle being towed. Its launch comes more than a year and a half since the city of Seattle returned to its prepandemic practice of ticketing and towing vehicles parked on the same street for three days or more – and as the nation and Washington reported the highest levels of homelessness recorded.

More than 2,700 homeless people were found to be living in their vehicles across King County in 2020, which was the last time this population was counted.

In addition to a parking spot, people who stay there get access to staff 24/7, case workers, a kitchen, a hygiene trailer and laundry facilities.

“Every new opening of housing, shelter and safe parking is a concrete step toward solving homelessness, and thanks to Salmon Bay Village there are more people who are on that path to housing today,” said Anne Martens, spokesperson for the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

The village welcomed its first guests Monday. Six people are living there. People whose RVs are determined unfit to live in are in one of the tiny houses on the property, while others drove their RV to the lot and parked it. More will continue to arrive.

Because some vehicle dwellers are couples or live doubled up, Jon Grant, chief strategy officer for the Low Income Housing Institute, expects 45 to 50 people will live there at one time.

“We don’t want people to view this as a parking lot,” Grant said. “We want this program to be viewed as a service-rich environment, where people get housed.”

To ensure vehicle resident safety, all RVs at Salmon Bay are being drained of fuel and pumped of gray water. Holes are being drilled in every RV to create an electrical conduit, Grant said, so people don’t have to use propane tanks for heat. Instead, they’ll use electric heaters to reduce fire hazards.

Even if the lot had opened on schedule, some vehicle advocates criticized it for being too slow.

“It’s really disappointing that it took this long,” said Dee Powers, who is on the Vehicle Residency work group for the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, “but I’m very grateful that it’s finally happening.”

The project has faced serious challenges from the beginning with the Low Income Housing Institute blowing past its own deadlines.

The housing institute said it looked at nearly 60 properties before finding an amenable property owner. Ginny Gilder, co-owner of the Seattle Storm, agreed in May to lease a lot along 15th Avenue West, just south of the Ballard bridge. It was previously home to a car wash and a small drive-thru coffee shop.

Then, said Sharon Lee, executive director of the housing institute, the city and nonprofit organization debated whether the RV safe lot should be treated as a permanent building, something long term that would require more scrutiny, versus treating it as a temporary site.

Lee said her organization argued it should be the latter and eventually “we compromised and they compromised.”

“We basically had to ask the mayor’s office, and we had to ask the head of (Seattle’s Department of Construction and Inspection) for help,” Lee said.

But according to Wendy Shark, a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Construction and Inspection, some of their concerns centered on the slope of the property and placing the weight of the RVs near the slope.

“While permits to shelter unhoused (people) are a priority, there was a need to balance some life-safety concerns with the intended use of the property,” Shark said.

Manlief, who leads the vehicle outreach team referring clients to the site, told the Seattle Times this summer that medically vulnerable and elderly RV dwellers will be prioritized for placement in the village in addition to vehicle residents living in the Interbay area.

Manlief said her team has a full list of people ready to move into the safe lot, then eventually give up their RV when a housing opportunity comes.