Kent asylum-seeker camp grows as calls for help go unanswered

King County moved 170 asylum-seekers living in a large encampment on county-owned property in Kent into temporary housing last month, but some people were left behind.

And since then, the site has become a new hub for migrants coming to the region as Tukwila’s Riverton Park United Methodist Church, which has helped more than 2,000 migrants over the last two years, faces pressure from its city leaders to lessen its shelter population. The church has turned away many new arrivals, and some migrants say that after they found no help in Tukwila, they moved farther south to the encampment in Kent.

More than $30 million in state funding was released on July 1 to allow the state to create a more centralized response to Washington’s growing asylum-seeker crisis. But so far, the state hasn’t opened new shelter with that money, leaving nearly 200 people living at the Kent encampment to survive with little support outside.

They rely on state food assistance benefits and donations provided through mutual-aid workers. The county provides them with fencing, portable restrooms, three garden hoses, a dumpster and hand-washing stations, but tensions have risen recently as residents there say that living conditions have continued to worsen and King County has not responded to their recent calls for help.

“We’re here at this encampment, and there’s a lot of people suffering,” said Paulin Kihambu, who lives there with his four daughters and pregnant wife.

Residents are surviving off donated jugs of water; they cook on a few propane-fueled burners and shower in a muddy pit using the three garden hoses that only blast cold water. There are more than a dozen children and babies, and at least two pregnant women. Residents say they’ve had to kill multiple snakes recently and people are continually getting sick.

King County officials say they have run out of money to help, and said that residents will have wait for the state’s coordinated model to come online, expected sometime next month.

But Sarah Peterson, head of the state’s Office of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance, warned that state funding won’t be enough to get temporary housing and support for every migrant who has arrived in King County and across the state.

This means that local governments, including King County, could still see migrants forming encampments like the one in Kent.

Many people living at the Kent encampment attended this week’s Metropolitan King County Council meeting to voice their concerns. But the group – many are from Angola, Congo and Venezuela – weren’t allowed to speak during the public comment period because their issue wasn’t on the agenda. Instead, some council members stayed after the meeting to talk with them, but no new investments came out of the meeting.

During the council meeting, Councilmember Girmay Zahilay read to them a letter from County Executive Dow Constantine listing the actions the county has already taken to help this population.

In early July, King County paid the Low Income Housing Institute $1.2 million using recently allocated state funding to move 170 people living on the vacant Econo Lodge property into housing units. This was about a month after migrants first moved there after running out of public and private funding to stay at the Kent Quality Inn and in private rentals.

The county executive’s letter said Tuesday “the county successfully housed all 170 people originally at the site in mid-July.”

But Frank Izaze and Saleh Papy said that’s not true. Both men say they moved to the camp in early June, around the time it formed. And both were present when Low Income Housing Institute staff showed up and started moving people off the property. They were left outside with more than a dozen others, they say, after the majority of the group – many women, children and medically vulnerable people – were moved indoors.

“The condition is not nice here,” Papy said.

Jon Grant, chief strategy officer for the homeless services nonprofit, said his team worked with volunteers from Harborview Medical Center to ensure people with the highest needs were moved inside first.

“By the time we left, 20 to 30 people remained,” Grant said.

People living at the encampment say that after the institute moved people from the site, county-funded security guards started blocking them from bringing additional tents, mattresses and other sleeping supplies into the site, so as to prevent more people from moving in.

Rosario Lopez, who is helping to lead mutual-aid efforts to support this population, said volunteers were recently not allowed to bring in a cooler to help residents store meat safely.

“It’s very difficult to keep serving folks,” Lopez said.

In his remarks, Constantine alluded to preventing people from bringing in supplies as well.

“Since this continues to be an unsanctioned encampment, the county does not plan to allow new infrastructure on the site (infrastructure remains in place from the last encampment). Food and water continue to be allowed into the location. There are no resources and no capacity to have this unsanctioned encampment grow on the property,” Zahilay read from Constantine’s letter.

So far, King County has spent more than $37,000 to provide basic services to the Kent site, said county spokesperson Amy Enbysk.

The former Econo Lodge motel was bought by King County early in the pandemic to create a quarantine and isolation facility. It is empty today because pushback from Kent led the county to sign an agreement giving the city some power over how the motel is used.

Enbysk said the county recently began a “preapplication” process with Kent, the first step in what it expects will take months to get city leaders’ approval to open the site. But she warned that it would require significant investments to get the building in livable condition again.

And even if the county gets the motel into operating shape, and has Kent’s approval to open it, “that facility would not be used for addressing the needs at the encampment,” Enbysk said. She said the county also has a responsibility to address the needs of the more than 16,000 homeless people already living in King County.

Mutual-aid workers are dropping off food and water every day, Lopez said, but Kihambu and his wife, Graça Kihambu, said some days they and their children go hungry most of the day.

“We need help,” Graça Kihambu said. “If somebody would help us with a home, it would be a lot better.” She’s worried about how she’ll get her four daughters to and from school. She’s thinking about holding off on enrolling them until they find a more stable place to live.

Her 10-year-old daughter Rebecca said she entertains herself in the camp by playing tag or hide-and-seek.

“We don’t like it here,” Rebecca said.