About 170 asylum-seeking refugees living in a Kent camp were moved into temporary housing over the course of a week, officials with King County and the Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI) told KIRO Newsradio.
It’s one of the largest efforts yet to help a group of refugees who have been moving from town to town in King County over the past year as housing efforts have dried up.
Jon Grant, LIHI’s director of strategy, said the group consisted mainly of women and children.
“These are very young children, including infants and toddlers, who were sleeping in this field during the heatwave,” he said. “So we tried to act as quickly as possible to get as many people there as possible.”
According to Grant, the vast majority of people who received housing were placed in LIHI-owned rental units in King County. Grant said LIHI also provides rental subsidies.
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State Gives $5 Million to Refugees, But Only Part of It Goes to Kent Refugees
In an email to KIRO Newsradio, a King County spokesperson said the state gave the county $5 million in total to help refugees. But it appears only a portion of that money was diverted to help the specific Kent refugee camp.
Grant said the recent move of 170 refugees was funded with about $1.2 million from King County. He described the move as a temporary move to fill the gap while LIHI, its partners and the refugees wait for a state program to begin this fall.
“We see this as bridge funding for a larger program that’s being built at the state level,” Grant said, referring to Washington State’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs. “(It) will coordinate a statewide effort to provide people with housing, services and legal assistance. That project will be up and running in September.”
Meanwhile, 40 to 50 refugees — mostly from countries in Africa and Central and South America — remain in the Kent camp on Central Avenue near the State Route 167 entrance ramp. Several men living in the camp told KIRO Newsradio they are increasingly concerned that the expected aid is not coming fast enough as they run out of food.
Past coverage:Hundreds of asylum-seeking refugees set up camp in Central District Park
The camp used to rely mostly on donations for food, but donations have dwindled, refugees said. Refugees showed KIRO Newsradio reporter Sam Campbell the tent set up as a makeshift kitchen, where propane tanks used to cook food have been emptied and supplies of canned goods are dwindling.
Alexander Jimenez of Venezuela spoke to KIRO Newsradio, his comments translated from Spanish to English.
Refugee Asks Public to ‘Call City to Approve More Rooms’
He asked the public to “contact the city to approve, through LIHI, other rooms so that those of us who remain here can also leave this camp.”
But even after they leave the camp, Grant said, the money funding temporary housing for the 170 refugees will only cover rent for about six months, after which he hopes the statewide program will take over.
It’s not permanent, Grant said, but the method is necessary because many refugees are still waiting for approval from federal immigration authorities regarding their asylum status.
“One of the challenges is that for many federally subsidized housing units, they will not be eligible until their asylum status is confirmed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services,” he said.
Instead, LIHI and other partners working with them, he said, have targeted temporary housing projects that do not require citizenship.
Disease worries Kent refugees as TB case confirmed
But housing is only part of the problem. Illness and disease are worrying others inside the camp. M’beka, an asylum seeker from the Democratic Republic of Congo, told Campbell that many of them need medical care, including himself.
“I am sick, I have tuberculosis,” he said, adding that he had no choice but to stay in the camp where he was afraid of passing the infection on to others. “It is dangerous. There are many people who are sick… It is a problem.”
King County Public Health officials told KIRO Newsradio in an email that mobile medical teams visited the Kent camp. Grant told KIRO Newsradio that his teams were aware of one person in the camp with tuberculosis, but health officials said there was no indication of an *active* case of tuberculosis (TB).
Health officials distinguish between active TB and inactive infections, saying the latter poses no risk of spreading.
“We cannot confirm whether people in the camp have inactive TB because it is not a notifiable disease like tuberculosis,” a public health department spokesperson wrote in the email. “But because TB is much more common in the places where asylum seekers come from, they are at higher risk of carrying it.”
Health officials said it takes hours of being in close proximity to someone with active TB in a closed environment to be at risk of infection. It is not yet known whether M’beka’s case is an inactive infection or potentially unreported and untested active disease, as the man did not provide any medical records to KIRO Newsradio.
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Teams from Harborview Medical Center and other area health care organizations have been working with LIHI to provide care to the refugees, Grant said, though he added that there are still people living in the camp with “serious” untreated illnesses.
“There have been outbreaks of COVID-19, we know of at least one case of tuberculosis,” he said. “We have tried to prioritize people based on their medical needs for the housing assistance that we have, but we know there are still people who have pretty serious medical issues that we haven’t been able to help. We hope to be able to mobilize more resources to make sure that people who are sick, people who have serious medical issues, can get the housing they need to live in a stable environment and recover.”
Future of refugees remains uncertain
At the time of publication, it is not yet known when the remaining refugees will be able to be placed in housing.
“We would be more than happy to help these people and find them housing if the county or state has additional funding,” Grant said. “We are in discussions with our government partners to see if that would be possible. But right now, these people are on the outside and need to be housed.”
A Kent city official familiar with the ongoing discussions told KIRO Newsradio that “things are moving,” but could not provide specific details.
KIRO Newsradio has reached out to King County officials for clarification.
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