SEATTLE (AP) – After becoming homeless, Connie Wade realized that she was missing out on something critical in caring for her daughter.
She and Emilyanne, 12, couldn’t camp in a car or on the street because they need to plug in a machine that helps the girl breathe easier. Emilyanne has Down syndrome and her breathing is interrupted every six minutes without a CPAP device.
A typical open-air homeless shelter promised them a place by an electrical outlet, but Wade felt they would be too vulnerable.
They then received an offer from Mary’s Place, a homeless family shelter that recently opened a facility inside a gleaming new building on the Amazon campus in Seattle. Believed to be the first homeless shelter built inside a corporate building in the U.S., the nonprofit’s Popsicle Place shelter program helps homeless children with health conditions that threaten lifetime.
“Without Popsicle Place, these children would die,” said Marty Hartman, executive director of Mary’s Place.
Amazon’s modern eight-story building allowed the unique program to triple its capacity. The shelter’s $ 100 million commitment is the tech giant’s largest philanthropic contribution to his hometown, which he transformed with tens of thousands of high-paying tech jobs that some blame for exacerbating income inequality and affordable housing problems.
Critics also say Amazon’s explosive growth in the past decade helped fuel a growing Seattle homeless crisis. The online retailer faced a backlash two years ago after getting city leaders to rescind a tax on large companies that would have funded services for the homeless. That year, CEO Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, announced that his long-awaited private charity fund would address homelessness.
The City Council is about to pass a new payroll tax that would again raise money from big business to address homelessness, affordable housing, and other priorities, including the coronavirus pandemic.
John Schoettler, the head of Amazon real estate who spearheaded the partnership with Mary’s Place, said the company is not fully opposed to taxes and called his new refuge “an initial step.” Amazon asked the nonprofit to help design the building because it has the space permanently, he said.
“Every inch was designed for the families they were going to serve,” Schoettler said.
The nonprofit occupies half of a glass-clad building, with workers in the company’s cloud computing unit at the other end. It opened in March just as the pandemic closed public life in Seattle.
Outside is a hauntingly quiet and perfectly manicured tech campus that is usually full of workers and food trucks.
Inside, families get 175-square-foot (16-square-meter) private rooms with bunk beds. They wear masks, control the temperature and practice social distancing in shared spaces, such as the cafeteria, the outdoor patio, the children’s playroom and the laundry room. There’s a distinctly “Amazonian” aesthetic everywhere: exposed pipes, citrus-colored walls smashing into concrete floors, even signs inscribed in the tech giant’s office fountain.
Two floors are reserved for families facing debilitating health problems, many with immune systems compromised by chronic illness or chemotherapy. Although the bathrooms are shared, families have private toilets for medical needs, such as feeding tubes.
A different program at the shelter also welcomes homeless mothers with newborns, including premature babies, for whom bathtubs, a rarity in homeless shelters, are especially appreciated.
Experts from the National Alliance to End Homelessness and the National Council on Homeless Health Care said the Popsicle Place program is a model they have not seen before.
The initiative is critical because medical bills have consistently been the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States for the past 40 years, and homeless children are much more likely to have chronic health conditions, said Bobby Watts, executive director of the council. .
Most families who come to Popsicle Place had some semblance of work and stability at home before a child’s health problem contributed to their homelessness, either because parents were no longer able to work while caring for their child. child or because the cost of care prevented them from paying for housing.
Watts said how many families struggling with such homeless people is unknown because the US Department of Housing and Urban Development only tracks the health conditions of homeless adults. He never met Bezos, but was an advisor to the Amazon boss’s private “Day 1 Families Fund,” which offers donations to groups that host young families.
Cindy Manginelli, who visits Tennessee shelter families as coordinator of the TennCare Shelter Enrollment Project, said the instability of homeless people is at odds with the needs of sick children.
Being homeless means moving frequently, disrupting continuity of care. Parents dealing with a child’s diagnosis should also be concerned with providing basic items like food. And children lack the comforts of home, often something as simple as a family bed.
“If you are told to lie down and rest, which is a big part of improving, how can you do it?” Manginelli said.
Families generally come to Popsicle Place through a referral from Seattle Children’s Hospital, often when a social worker discovers that a child has nowhere to go to recover.
Wade appreciates Amazon’s facilities and says it feels almost like a luxury hotel rather than a homeless haven. His tentative smile turns to tears as he describes how much his daughter loves the many child-friendly spaces built into the walls of the shelter.
“She won’t remember being homeless,” Wade said, his voice cracking. “But I know she will remember this place.”
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