Rainier Vista moves ahead with assurances for poor tenants

Work on the controversial Rainier Vista redevelopment project will resume this week after the Seattle Housing Authority and residents reached an agreement yesterday offering key concessions for the project's poor tenants.

U.S. District Judge John Coughenour temporarily stopped demolition three weeks ago so that a lawsuit by tenants and housing advocates could be heard in court.

Tenants and neighbors fought to stop the redevelopment plan, which got a $35 million federal HOPE VI grant to demolish 481 public housing units in favor of a mixed-income community. They worried that the new housing project would displace poor tenants in favor of people with higher incomes, leaving the former without places to live.

The two sides entered federal mediation on Thursday. After four intense days, they emerged with an agreement that moves the project forward in exchange for, among other promises, allowing all tenants who lived at the old Rainier Vista to return to the redeveloped community.

"I am extremely pleased to settle this lawsuit," Harry Thomas, the housing authority's executive director, said yesterday. "This allows us to invest all of our energy and funding into making this the best neighborhood possible for the residents of Rainier Vista and the surrounding Rainier Valley community."

Residents won assurances yesterday that the housing authority would give priority at the new Rainier Vista to the city's poorest residents, or those who make below 30 percent median income (in 2002, that's $23,350 for a family of four).

"I don't think anybody really wanted this fight," said Carolee Colter, a representative of Friends of Rainier Vista who lives east of the housing project. "We took it into our own hands to hold SHA accountable. The whole lawsuit has succeeded in doing that."

And neighbors won assurances that the agency and the city of Seattle would work to preserve and replace as many trees on the site as possible and install traffic-calming measures as it begins construction on the new 1,010-unit community.

In another victory for low-income renters, the authority said it would hold off raising rents on its senior housing program until the end of September. The agency had planned to raise rents for new residents from $210 to $390 a month starting next month.

That concession wasn't directly related to the Rainier Vista development but had been fought for by the Seattle Displacement Coalition, one of the parties that sued the housing authority.

Two residents, the neighborhood group Friends of Rainier Vista and the Seattle Displacement Coalition filed a lawsuit July 19 to stop the project after the city granted the housing authority the right to rezone the development.

They argue that the city did not take account of how the redevelopment would dislocate residents and lead to the loss of trees and changes in traffic patterns. Some have taken federally subsidized vouchers and found housing elsewhere in the city.

Coughenour dismissed the lawsuit yesterday, and demolition of the World War II-era duplexes in South Seattle will proceed tomorrow.

The three-week delay in demolition cost the agency between $50,000 and $100,000, spokeswoman Virginia Felton said.

The housing authority, an independent public entity, had worried that a continued delay would force it to push back construction and cost it upwards of $3.5 million.

Under yesterday's agreement, the Seattle Housing Authority also agreed to:

Give all tenants who lived at Rainier Vista in August 1999, when the federal HOPE VI award was granted, the right to return to live in the new development.

Keep rent at 30 percent of median income.

Limit the maximum number of units at 1,010.

Create a citizen review panel to work with the housing authority.

Conduct a study of whether it's financially possible to replace all the 481 units of the old housing at the new project.

P-I reporter Phuong Cat Le can be reached at 206-903-0370 or phuongle@seattlepi.com

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