Hotels could become home for many Afghan refugees in Seattle area

Relief organizations in the Seattle area are having to get creative to find housing for an expected influx of refugees from Afghanistan.

With affordable housing in scarce supply, they're asking King County to make some county-owned hotels available for arriving refugees.

“I’m saying this as an Afghan American with family in Kabul right now trying to evacuate,” said Aneelah Afzali with the Muslim Association of Puget Sound. “The very least we can do is welcome with open arms, the few who actually make it over here and integrate them into our society.”

Afzali’s group and others say some hotels purchased by King County could help meet an urgent demand for people who fled a war zone with little more than the clothes on their backs.

“We see them also as homeless because when they get here, get off the airplane, they don’t have a place to stay, and so they fit under that same definition,” said Medard Ngueita with World Relief Seattle.

A refugee lacking a job, credit, rental history, or even a social security number has little chance of landing a place to live on their own.

“It’s a super-hot market, and the competition is super high,” Ngueita said.

That’s true even in the lower-priced parts of the region like south King County, where refugees often settle.

Many individuals have offered to help, but their offers can be unwieldy.

“People open up their doors, they have one bedroom or two bedrooms to offer, but the families coming from Afghanistan, it’s like a family of five or eight,” Nikhat Sheriff with the Muslim Association of Puget Sound. “So it’s really tough to accommodate so many family members under one roof.”

Another housing option for refugees are hotels. The relief groups say some hotels set aside for Covid quarantine or homeless shelters are not currently being used.

King County has been buying hotels to turn into homeless shelters under its Health Through Housing program, most recently a former Silver Cloud Inn in Redmond.

But those shelters won't be ready in time for the Afghan refugees arriving now and in the coming weeks.

“The shelters are not ready yet,” said Nicky Smith with the International Rescue Committee in Seattle. “They’re not going to be stood up until December or January.”

Using the hotels temporarily to help refugees would not detract from the county’s plans for them, the advocates say.

“There would be an end date,” Smith said. “It would not be, 'Forever! These could be hotels for Afghan refugees!', though I would very much like that.”

A spokesperson for King County Executive Dow Constantine says the county is committed to doing whatever it can to help Afghan refugees.

That includes using “any property we have that could be repurposed while we line up the housing providers for our Health Through Housing initiative," spokesperson Chase Gallagher said in an email.

Since October, Washington state has welcomed at least 588 refugees from Afghanistan, with 240 or more in just the past three weeks.

The U.S. government anticipates taking in 25,000 to 50,000 Afghan refugees by Sept. 1.

The Washington Department of Social and Health Services estimates that 8% of refugees taken in by the United States typically settle in Washington state.

“This could mean that 2,000 to 4,000 humanitarian parolees could resettle in Washington state over the coming weeks and months,” according to an update from the department.

According to the Washington Department of Social and Health Services, refugee resettlement agencies typically get at least 10 days’ notice before a new refugee arrives.

With the chaos in Afghanistan, refugees are often turning up with less than 24 hours’ notice.

The relief groups are also urging the Washington state government to provide more funding for refugee services, especially with funding for the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement slashed during the Trump administration.

“Washington remains ready to provide aid to Afghans who find themselves in peril after these last 20 years of conflict,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee wrote to President Joe Biden on Thursday.

Since 1975, Washington has welcomed nearly 150,000 refugees from 70 countries, according to Gov. Inslee.

When asked what the state is doing to help provide housing for Afghan refugees, a spokesperson for Gov. Inslee said the state is reviewing its options.

“Due to the evolving nature of the crisis, we will not have further details until we receive a more definitive outline of the federal strategy,” spokesperson Mike Faulk wrote.