With Lunar New Year around the corner, it’s a frantic time of cleaning, decluttering, and resetting the home. It’s also the new year by the Gregorian calendar, and I am tired of the labels being thrown at my neighborhood. Let’s all take a collective breath and start with new energy.
The Chinatown International District (CID) is universally recognized as a distinct neighborhood, yet the City of Seattle continues to consider it part of Downtown. This means there’s no residential zoned parking like they have in Capitol Hill, where I previously lived before moving to the CID in 2019. This also means that trash, recycling, and compost pick-up in the alleyways occurs at all hours of the night, which is detrimental to sleep and mental health of those living in the neighborhood.
I used to live in the Bush Hotel (the yellow building with the Post Office). This beautiful historical building, like all the other old buildings in the CID, unfortunately had the thinnest windows — through which you could hear the conversations on the sidewalk, sirens, and pick-ups that often woke me up.
While for most people in Seattle, this neighborhood may be a stop to grab food, a parking spot for gamers, or a pass-through for SPD, we have the highest concentration of elderly residents and the most low-income housing in the City. The CID has social services that were built and fought for by the people of this neighborhood. This place is for the people, not the soon-to-arrive tourists that want to take a photo with a planned ridiculously-not-to-scale soon-to-be Bruce Lee statue (fyi he was not 7’ tall). Also, we don’t need the ugly wrong shade of red lights that is rumored to cost $70,000 on trees that look like blood vines, and which displace our residential birds.
Most of what we hear about the neighborhood is the crime and the impact on businesses. The reality of living in this neighborhood and community isn’t talked about—not really.
On 12th and Jackson, the visible community of drug users, item sellers, and presumed unhoused folks are often slapped with terrible labels by the conservative news outlets and by city residents. A swap meet is a more accurate term for what we should be calling the activities. Let’s decriminalize street economics and recognize that the communities gathering in Little Saigon are also a form of activation.
I’ve picked up trash and given out survival items on that corner for years as part of Eggrolls Mutual Aid on Sundays and witnessed a few things. Most noticeably, when a volunteer almost got arrested by SPD for trying to administer intramuscular syringe Narcon to a person overdosing by a now-removed bus stop. We need public health to open up a clinic there to address overdoses and not depend on volunteers in their 20s to intervene in this massive public health crisis.
What this neighborhood needs is more investment from the City and King County. While power washing of the streets is needed, I often see this weaponized against street people, who get splashed with water. Let’s not vilify this community. Let’s give them and the aunties and uncles selling veggies on the corner by Hing Hay Park similar support.
My friend Suesue remembers when I-5 was built and remembers when Japantown expanded down to 23rd and Jackson. Back in 2017, when Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) legislation was rushed through by then Council President Bruce Harrell, CID advocates were pushing for return of Charles Street Station to the CID. In response to the uproar of resistance to MHA, the City created five workgroups—one of them on Charles Street Station—with no results to speak of to this day. With the Sound Transit 3 expansion, GREAT Coalition (greatforallcid.com) organizers are advocating for a South Station on Dearborn, where the Shell station currently resides, with the exciting potential of expanding the CID through Equitable Transit Oriented Development (ETOD). With so much that has already been taken, this neighborhood should expand. What other neighborhood has I-5 driving across it? While we’re at it, we have one of the smallest libraries in the city. Let’s expand the CID and get a larger library!
– Sincerely your CID neighbor with all the tea, Yin英
