Little Saigon property owner sues Seattle for $30M over homelessness policies

The owner of a struggling shopping center in Seattle’s Little Saigon neighborhoods is suing the city after a deal to transform the mall fell through.

In a lawsuit filed in August, Dennis L. Chinn, whose family owns Asian Plaza at 1032 S. Jackson St., blames the multimillion dollar deal’s failure on Seattle’s homelessness policies and allegedly its lax law enforcement. Chinn seeks at least $30 million in damages.

Chinn claims the city of Seattle pushed homelessness into Little Saigon on purpose and allowed drug use and crime to proliferate there — causing his tenants to flee and rendering the property unmarketable.

“To lose the excitement and vibrancy of the ethnic communities in our City is devastating,” Chinn, an attorney representing himself and his business, wrote in the complaint.

A spokesperson for the city declined to comment on active litigation.

The problems in Little Saigon, a Vietnamese pocket in the Chinatown International District, are known. It’s often described as Seattle’s “forgotten” neighborhood because of its well-documented street crime, drug use, black-market sales and food stamp fraud.

In his complaint, Chinn claims criminal activity and pervasive homelessness caused businesses, including those in Chinn’s Asian Plaza, to shutter their doors.

After five generations of ownership, he put up the parcel of land for sale. In December 2021, Chinn agreed to sell the parcel to Mill Creek Residential Trust for $21 million, Chinn said.

Remaining businesses prepared to move out for a mixed-use development that would include 450 apartments, two to three levels of parking and ground-floor retail. But Chinn said the deal fell through after two years “at the 11th hour” when construction lenders saw how run-down the area was.

In 2022, Chinn’s last remaining major tenant — Viet-Wah Supermarket — closed due to recurring theft, he said.

Most of Asian Plaza was vacant, Chinn said, and he could not find new tenants due to the area’s homeless encampments, drug activity and crime rate. The shopping center went from generating $327,000 in gross annual rents in 2015 to nothing in 2022, Chinn said.

Chinn and his family grappled with property crime and squatters, he said.

Chinn claims the city selectively enforces its laws to keep homelessness and criminal activity concentrated in Little Saigon and away from other areas of Seattle.

“Little Saigon is a wasteland of drug use, homelessness, and squalor, and high personal risk. Why do other neighborhoods appear to be in much better shape, or largely unaffected by these issues?” Chinn wrote.

Chinn also blames the city for choosing Little Saigon for its Navigation Center, a low-barrier supportive shelter. The shelter operated from 2017 to March of this year, when it permanently closed. Chinn claims the shelter brought more drug use and criminal activity to the neighborhood.

“A minority population that was predominantly immigrants had neither the resources or economic and political clout to fight,” Chinn wrote. “This was a blatantly racist decision in violation of existing anti-discrimination laws.”

Chinn alleges the city’s failure to curb illegal activity and encampments in Little Saigon constitutes a de facto taking of his property without just compensation and racial bias.

In addition to the request for $30 million in damages, he also asked the court to prohibit the city from selectively enforcing its ordinances and direct the city to establish a fund to compensate other Little Saigon business owners for any losses they incurred.

The city of Seattle has filed for dismissal.