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TI: So let's talk about some of those key issues that you focused on.

BS: Housing was the number one priority. We came into the International District, after the freeways were built, when the Kingdome was being planned, but at the same time there was a major fire in downtown Seattle in the Ozark Hotel, in downtown Seattle. And many lives were lost, so the city came up with a very stringent fire code that included new construction, any residential apartment or hotel in downtown Seattle, the owners had to build in a sprinkler, water sprinkler system, and the existing hotels and apartments in the downtown area, they had to build fire doors, and each hotel room had to be a fire door with, oh, I don't know what the limits on smoke and fire, but it was supposed to be flame resistant material. And there were about twenty-eight to thirty old hotels and apartments in the International District, and fifteen of them were closed because the owners couldn't afford to renovate their buildings to the fire code, bring it up, bring up their buildings to the fire code. So we had just a big glut of empty hotels and apartments.

TI: So, one, it was devastating to the owners.

BS: Yes.

TI: But then the residents, where did they go?

BS: There were displacements of the residents, and the hotels and apartments that were in compliance and were allowed to stay, they were all filled up, no vacancy. When they had vacancies before the new ordinance, then they were filled up to capacity after the ordinance. So it was that time we said we can't afford to lose any more residence in our community because of freeways and stadiums and all that. I mean, those are, fire ordinance was bad enough and this would be, if we were to be, if we were to lose more of a resident base because of the stadium, we would lose the district. So InterIm's number one priority was to preserve, preservation of the district and development of new affordable housing for the residents of the community. And that meant working with the public sector, the city of Seattle, the county, the state, and the federal government, to generate resources to renovate the older buildings that were becoming, they were coming to that point of being substandard. And HUD was just a new agency about that time, so we decided to apply for resources from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to build new housing, what they call Section 8, Section 8 housing where the residents would be provided a voucher and they would pay one third of their income. If they were eligible, if they were low income, they'd pay one third of their income to Housing. So we worked with developers in the International, in the International District, private developers who came in and wanted to build this new housing using the new HUD money, the new HUD set-asides for senior housing. So we worked with developers, and the developers loved InterIm 'cause there were a couple of buildings in the International District where this, right on the verge of closing. One of 'em was the Milwaukee Hotel and, Milwaukee Hotel on Seventh and King, it was the largest hotel in the International District -- well, Milwaukee Hotel and the Bush Hotel.

But Milwaukee Hotel was, was closed by the court when it was petitioned by the fire department in the mid '70s to close the building because of fire code violations. There were sixty fire code violations in the Milwaukee Hotel, so Judge Barbara Yanick with the petition from the fire department closed the building. So InterIm and the Housing Alliance and the International District Emergency Center, we got together and we said, "Listen, we got to save this hotel." We, remember now, we don't want any more displacement of our residents. So we petitioned the court, we all went down to the courtroom, and Judge Yanick looks at it and she says, "It's a fire trap. People will die if there's a fire." We said, "We will promise to eliminate sixty fire code violations. We commit, we have a commitment that we'll eliminate these fire codes." And she said, "I'll give you this weekend to eliminate the ten most pressing concerns that the fire department has. Eliminate those ten, we'll come back Monday and we'll consider whether to close or not." So we got our people together, all the activists, some volunteers, some residents of the Milwaukee Hotel, and I called for help from my buddies from the Civil Rights Movement, Larry Gossett from CAMP and the black, young black folks came down. I called Roberto Maestas at El Centro de la Raza, 'cause that had been up and running now, and they brought their folks. Bernie Whitebear from United Indians of All Tribes, and Tyree Scott from the United Construction Workers. So they all came and we, we took out, in that weekend we took out about forty tons of trash and debris from the hotel. That much tonnage, right? And Tyree Scott and some of the other construction workers, electricians and plumbers, fixed up the plumbing as good as, as well as they could, and installed an electrical system that would meet code. But we had to close up half of the building. We couldn't, in that weekend we couldn't eliminate all the fire codes, but we could eliminate at least ten of the pressing ones. That was done. We went back to the court and the fire department did an inspection, and they petitioned the judge to allow us back into the hotel and keep it open, and they trusted us, they told Judge Yanick, the fire chief told Judge Yanick that they trusted this young group, "That have put in all this labor, they worked twenty-four hours a day to get this hotel up to shape." And the judge said, "Well, but the major, one of the major impediments is a fire alarm system. You can't, there's no way to install a fire alarm system. That'll take a month or two or three months to do that, and do you have the money?" And we said no. So we said, "We're willing to have a twenty-four hour seven day a week fire watch system. We'll have two people every four hours walk through that hotel, twenty-four hours a day." And we committed to do that, and for two years we had this fire watch system. And in the meantime we're installing bit by bit the fire alarm system, so we had people volunteering four hour shifts all through the day, all through the night, all through the weekend, to the week and the weekend. It became sort of a party kind of atmosphere, party up 'til midnight and then, and then shut down and have the people, the fire watch people take over the building. And we would walk the hallways, check all the empty rooms. It was really a very tight controlled environment that we set up.

TI: That's good.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.