on November 4, 2025. Behind, Leschi House is visible through the tree branches. Photo by Chetanya
Robinson.
In the near future, someone traversing the Jose Rizal Bridge from Beacon Hill to Little Saigon might be greeted by the sight of carved monumental figures representing Coast Salish cultures, welcoming visitors to a new housing development.
In fact, they would likely be entering a new hub for housing, services and community spaces in Little Saigon, built by Native-led agencies, for Native people. Three new housing projects led by the Seattle Indian Services Commission (SISC) and the Seattle Indian Health Board (SIHB) are planned for around 12th Avenue and South Weller Street, with another in nearby Yesler Terrace.
A burgeoning of new resources in Little Saigon
Indigenous people have been in what is now called Seattle for time immemorial; archeology attests that all of this region was the homeland and meeting place of Coast Salish people, including the Duwamish, for some 10,000 years. Key Native service providers, such as the SIHB, the Seattle Indian Center, and the SISC, have been in the area for over 50 years.
But the burgeoning plans for new housing and services for Native people lead some to wonder if this part of Little Saigon will become a new Native American neighborhood in its own right, providing the Native community with much-desired opportunities for connection and economic empowerment.
The new housing developments are mostly planned around 12th Avenue and S Weller Street, just a step away from the heart of Little Saigon.
The SISC plans to demolish the Pearl Warren building, located on 12th Ave., which contained the controversial Navigation Center shelter from 2017 to 2025. In its place, they will build the Native Gateway & Village, a 162-unit project.
Designed for Native American working families, most units would be priced at or below 80% of Area Median Income, which is $88,000 for a household of one, $100,560 for a family of two, and $113,120 for a family of three. The project will include a mix of single and multi-bedroom units, commercial space, an affordable and culturally-relevant childcare center, a community gathering space, economic empowerment center, and public art such as Coast Salish welcome poles and totem poles.
Across the street, the SIHB plans to demolish the Leschi Building which currently contains its main clinic. According to Esther Lucero, who is Diné (Navajo) and President and CEO of the SIHB, the organization will rebuild and expand the clinic and add workforce housing, including units that low-income people can buy and own in the model of Habitat for Humanity.
And kitty-corner from the Pearl Warren Building, the SIHB purchased the vacant building formerly belonging to McPhearson Leather. It will housing for seniors in line with the Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) model, and include a drop-in center and other services for elderly people, according to Lucero.
Not far away, the Pioneer Square-based Chief Seattle Club will soon open Sweetgrass Flats, a permanent supportive housing project in Yesler Terrace.
The SICS’s Native Gateway & Village Project plans to break ground in 2027; the other projects are in early stages.
“Native communities haven’t historically had Native neighborhoods, and that was really intentional around urban relocation,” said Lucero. “Attempts at colonization and ultimately genocide, [were] to spread us out so that we couldn’t band together and create our own villages or neighborhoods. And so I think that this is a real opportunity to sort of reclaim that place.”
Potential shared goals for Indigenous and Southeast Asian communities
The possibility of a new nexus for urban Native people in Little Saigon comes at a turning point for the neighborhood. The Little Saigon community is engaged in Herculean, coordinated efforts to protect and revitalize a neighborhood that has been a vital commercial and cultural center for Vietnamese and Southeast Asian families for 50 years, yet has suffered neglect, violence, petty crime, and crises of homelessness, drug consumption and trafficking.
Revitalizing Little Saigon is a shared vision for Native-led organizations and Vietnamese American advocates like Friends of Little Saigon (FLS), which works to protect and preserve Little Saigon’s culture and economic vitality.
One of FLS’s recent initiatives include “Phố Đẹp” (Beautiful Neighborhood), a coordinated, place-based approach to creating long-term public safety. Little Saigon’s first park, Hoa Mai, was opened last year, and the Little Saigon Landmark Project at 1001 S Jackson Street has almost finished design and fundraising.
FLS Executive Director Quynh Pham is inspired by the planned Native-led projects on 12th and Weller, and she believes they will add vibrancy to the neighborhood.
“Right now, we have so much vacancy that it’s hard to envision what a lively, really culturally rich neighborhood could be,” she said. “We just have to figure out a way to make sure that we’re all kind of working together as these projects are coming to life, and that we’re collaborating in various ways to help our communities come back into the CID.”
Solutions for long-lasting historical harms to Indigenous people
The four new projects are intended to meet the needs of Seattle and King County’s roughly 45,600 Native people, who come from Washington, Alaska, and all over North America.
The project in the Pearl Warren building was envisioned based on the SISC’s 2019 housing needs assessment surveying 447 Native people in King County. Respondents said their top priorities were affordable housing, child care and economic development services. Half of the participants who were surveyed about housing said they were cost-burdened, spending more than 30% of their income on rent or a mortgage.
Native people are overrepresented among the homeless population in King County, and many Native working families struggle to afford King County’s high rents, said Demarus Tevuk, who is Inupiaq and Development Manager with the SISC.
Native people surveyed in the 2019 housing needs assessment also reported that culture shock is common when Native people move from tribal communities to cities, as well as isolation from community and culture. But many urban Native people in King County are not recent arrivals. Many came to Seattle during the Indian Relocation Act of 1956, which had traumatic long-term impacts on them—or are their descendants, who experience the after-effects of their parents’ and grandparents’ traumas.
Native Americans in Puget Sound had their lands taken under the Treaty of Point Elliott in 1855, after which white settlers and the government broke the treaty promises of federal protection, designated reservations, and permanent rights to fishing and hunting. Under Ordinance No. 5 in 1865, Native Americans were expelled and banned from living in Seattle unless employed by a white person. The expulsion was followed by other anti-Indigenous government measures, and the burning of the last Duwamish longhouse by settlers in 1894. Until Congress passed the Fair Housing Act banning racial discrimination in housing, Native Americans, along with other non-white people, were subject to racial segregation policies forbidding them from living in much of Seattle other than Chinatown and the Central District.
After the Indian Relocation Act of 1956 encouraged and coerced Native Americans to move to cities and assimilate into white society, Native Americans from around the country started moving to Seattle—more than doubling their population between 1970 and 1980, when it stood at 17,286. In cities, Native people faced discrimination and were tracked into low-paying jobs, suffering poverty, poor health, and isolation.
In 1958, Pearl Warren, a member of the Makah Tribe, co-founded the American Indian Women’s Service League in response to poor living conditions for Native Americans in Seattle and lack of accessibility to culture and community.
The work of Warren, Bernie Whitebear, and other activists in this period blazed a trail for Native Americans to start organizations serving their community, including the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation, the Seattle Indian Center, SIHB, and the SISC.
The Seattle Indian Center and SIHB’s move into Little Saigon was not without tension. Doug Chin, activist, historian and author of Seattle’s International District: The Making of a Pan-Asian American Community, noted that in the 1980s, CID business leaders and the former International District Economic Association tried to stop the Seattle Indian Center and SIHB from acquiring the site and building what is now Leschi House senior housing and the main SIHB clinic in the 80s. They believed the area should not have more low-income housing and services and feared a hot meal program would bring “transients” from downtown.
But tensions dissipated after these fears were not realized, and the organizations were endorsed by CID social service agencies, reported Ron Chew, then editor of the International Examiner. Both agencies started to see an increase in Asian clients, not in small part due to the fact that Native service providers who receive federal funding must serve all people.
The SISC notes on its website that historic redlining and current gentrification continue to “limit access to housing, services, and community connection” for Native Americans to this day.
Community surveys and studies to inform change
The Native Neighborhood Community Study of 2022 asked 768 Native people what they hope a new Native American neighborhood in Seattle would look like. Respondents said they wanted places where “everyday community connection” can take place outside of larger cultural gatherings like powwows. They wanted places that are safe and near existing services, gathering spaces, and access to food and transportation.
Tevuk of SISC was the lead researcher of the Native Neighborhood Community Study for the Na’ah Illahee Fund, which was funded by the City of Seattle Equitable Development Initiative and produced with the sləp̓ iləbəxʷ (Rising Tides) Indigenous Planning Group. This group convened since 2018 met to envision a Native Neighborhood in Seattle “where urban Native People feel a sense of community and belonging to live happy, healthy, self-determined lives.”
“The community gathering spaces where we can come together, be ourselves and make friends—that is missing for us, and that is a big goal, one of the driving forces for the vision of the Native Village & Gateway project,” said Tevuk. “Safe, culturally-attuned housing can really provide healing and care and show that we are important and we matter.”
There is no current official effort to designate part of Little Saigon as a new Native Neighborhood. And respondents to the Native Neighborhood Community Study differed on whether they wanted several smaller Native neighborhoods (48% of respondents) or one central one (28%), with 24% being unsure or supporting both. For location, 34% favored downtown Seattle, 27% the North End, and 24% “everywhere.”
Still, Lucero of SIHB believes it makes sense to think of the area around 12th and Weller as a future Native neighborhood, which is also located near Red Eagle Soaring Native Youth Theatre in King Street Station and Chief Seattle Club in Pioneer Square and Yesler Terrace.
Holistic thinking to heal the future
SISC’s housing needs assessment report notes that SIHB and SISC could work together on programs such as youth services, nutrition, family services and WIC.
And staff at SIHB would greatly benefit from childcare at the Native Gateway building across the street, Lucero said. “If our doctors had childcare across the street, that would be phenomenal.”
Workforce housing is crucial for patients (who SIHB calls relatives), Lucero said. “We need to have our relatives have opportunities to live closer so that we can provide them wraparound services,” she said. But also for staff; 70% of SIHB’s staff said they can’t afford to live in Seattle. She said the opportunities for tenants to purchase their housing can build generational wealth, and the projects will allow clinic patients to live closer, so they can be provided with wraparound services.
“The kinds of things that the Seattle Indian Health Board wants to build is the same vision that we have, where you provide all of these services from birth to retirement,” said Tevuk. “That’s because [the way] our culture is, we like to take care of each other, and we’re very holistic thinking.”
Tevuk and Lucero believe the Native Gateway project and others will make the neighborhood safer as well.
“It’s going to be a real sign that we believe in the neighborhood, we believe in the area, we’re building for the future,” said Tevuk.
Lucero emphasized that the city must take accountability for the crime, drug crisis and lack of resources in the neighborhood, and has hope for Seattle’s new Community Assisted Response & Engagement (CARE) mental and behavioral health responders. She also trusts that a “bustling neighborhood” with families will have less open substance use and drug trafficking.
Pham of FLS looks forward to collaborating with SIHB and SISC on public art projects that showcase Native and Southeast Asian cultures, and sharing resources.
The CID has experienced “territorial issues and tensions amongst all of the identities and cultures,” Pham said. “But there’s a way for us to acknowledge the past and also work towards a future, so we’re not always fighting for scraps… we can collaborate better and work together, and build something where everyone feels like they they have a piece of the CID and can feel like they’re welcome, and there are services and businesses that serve them.”
Lucero believes this vision requires bringing back the sense of connection among the Gang of Four activists such as Bob Santos and Bernie Whitebear, key individuals in the history of the Asian American and Native American communities, respectively, who worked closely together.
“Part of what it’s going to take to make that happen is to really become friends, to be in community together,” Lucero said. “And it’s not going to take a city bringing us together, not city government….The city’s responsibility is to respond to that by providing resources and transferring the power.”
