OPINION | Little Saigon Needs Relief Now

by the Board of Friends of Little Sài Gòn

If you are visiting or passing through Little Saigon, it is impossible not to feel concern or distress over what is visible on the blocks around 12th Avenue and Jackson Street, the heart of our neighborhood. Little Saigon is a mostly immigrant and refugee Vietnamese community of small family-owned businesses. This neighborhood is composed of highly diverse low-income and workforce housing residents, immigrant/refugee limited English-speaking restaurants, and grocery retailers and shoppers who come from across Puget Sound. The neighborhood has suffered decades of failing infrastructure and high displacement and gentrification due to its local conditions (close to downtown, bisected by a freeway, serves as a transit hub, and has a history of racial discrimination and redlining). The Chinatown-International District, Little Saigon in particular, is neglected while millions of dollars in pandemic recovery funds are directed toward the rest of downtown’s economic recovery, safety, infrastructure, and cultural investments for white-collar workers, tourists, and those with direct lines to City Hall. We’re often the last on the priority list, but the first to experience the impacts.

In the span of two weeks in late summer 2024, our community experienced three shootings, an armed robbery, a fire, and a stabbing in the new Hoa Mai Park along with countless smashed storefront and car windows. This isn’t an anomaly but a snapshot of the ongoing conditions and deterioration of the neighborhood: visible fentanyl and other drug sales; open drug use obstructing bus stops, sidewalks, and other public spaces our elders and youth access for daily routines; daily drug overdoses; repeated sweeps of homeless encampments; and numbers of these individuals experiencing mental health crises and/or substance use disorders. When King County Metro closed a bus stop at 12th and Jackson in July 2023 as a way to disrupt these activities, with no ongoing services offered for individuals or adequate sanitation resources and hygiene support, people simply moved one block away and onto adjacent side streets. These sorts of actions only displace people and have little or no evidence of working to address livability challenges. The recent violence has our community feeling desperate and angry because of apathy and lip service from our elected officials and enforcement agencies.

Friends of Little Sài Gòn (FLS) is working closely with the community to do our part in addressing the many challenges occurring in the neighborhood. Phố Đẹp (A Beautiful Neighborhood) project uses a place-based strategies framework to develop a safety plan. We believe this work is necessary and thus far it has improved social cohesion. And we have other big dreams for this neighborhood like the future Little Saigon Landmark Project, which is poised to house more than 70 multi-generational families and be a nationally-recognized Vietnamese American cultural space and business accelerator hub.

But all of these efforts will be in vain without immediate interventions without which this immigrant and refugee community will once again leave a place they call home in order to survive. We have reached a breaking point with the daily harm and violence residents and business owners are witnessing or being victim to.

Executive Dow Constantine, Mayor Bruce Harrell, and our City Councilmembers, you and your staff continually ask for our community support, time, and expertise, and now we demand you assess your investments and level of care in tending to this community that has been struck with challenge after challenge. How are your dollars and resources being used to end this vicious cycle of harm to our community? Decades of fragmented decisions by the City and County have contributed to the decline of the neighborhood’s health. On behalf of the people of Little Saigon, we are asking for immediate, as well as long-term, effective, and targeted solutions that will help those suffering on our streets and remedy the effects on our small businesses and organizations.

Learn more about the Friends of Little Sài Gòn and our efforts at www.flsseattle.org. 

This op-ed was originally published in The Seattle Times.

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