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THURSDAY, JULY 9, 2020
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Joseph Robello prepares food at Mary’s Place
Connie Wade with her daughter Emilyanne in their room at Mary’s Place, a family homeless shelter located inside an Amazon corporate building on the tech giant’s Seattle campus; and Emilyanne
looks on as Tricia Nora, a paediatric nurse practitioner, examines Sophia, Wade’s baby doll. PHOTOS: AP
Amazon homeless shelter boosts unique
programme for sick kids
SEATTLE (AP) - After becoming homeless,
Connie Wade realised she’d be missing
something critical to care for her daughter.
She and 12-year-old Emilyanne couldn’t
camp in a car or on the streets 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-space homeless shelter
promised them a spot by an electrical outlet,
but Wade felt they’d be too vulnerable.
Then they got an offer fromMary’s Place, a
family homeless shelter that recently opened
a facility inside a gleaming new building on
Amazon’s Seattle campus. Believed to be the
irst homeless shelter built inside a corporate
building in the United States (US), the
nonpro it’s Popsicle Place shelter programme
helps homeless children with life-threatening
health conditions.
“Without Popsicle Place, these kids would
die,” said Executive Director of Mary’s Place
Marty Hartman.
Amazon’s state-of-the-art, eight-storey
building allowed the unique programme
to triple its capacity. The USD100 million
commitment to the shelter is the tech giant’s
single largest philanthropic contribution
to its hometown, which it transformed with
tens of thousands of high-paid tech jobs
that some blame for exacerbating income
inequality and affordable housing problems.
Critics also said Amazon’s explosive growth
over the past decade helped fuel a growing
homelessness crisis in Seattle. The online
retailer faced backlash two years ago after
getting city leaders to rescind a tax on large
companies that would have funded homeless
services. That year, CEO Jeff Bezos - the
world’s richest man - announced that his
long-awaited, private charitable fund would
tackle homelessness.
The City Council is on the cusp of
approving a new payroll tax that again
would collect money from big businesses
to address homelessness, affordable
housing and other priorities, including the
coronavirus pandemic.
John Schoettler, Amazon’s real estate
chief who spearheaded the partnership with
Mary’s Place, said the company isn’t totally
opposed to taxes and called its new shelter
“an initial step.” Amazon asked the nonpro it
to help design the building because it has the
space permanently, he said.
“Every inch of it was designed for
the families they were going to serve,”
Schoettler said.
The nonpro it takes up half of a glass-
encased building, with workers in the
company’s cloud computing unit on the other
end. It opened in March just as the pandemic
shuttered public life in Seattle.
Outside is now an eerily quiet, perfectly
manicured tech campus that normally bustles
with workers and food trucks. Inside, families
get private 175-square-foot rooms with bunk
beds. They wear masks, get temperature
checks and practise socially distancing
in shared spaces, including the cafeteria,
outdoor patio, kids playroom and laundry
room.
There’s a starkly “Amazonia” aesthetic
throughout: exposed pipes, citrus-coloured
walls popping against concrete loors, even
signs inscribed in the tech giant’s signature
of ice font.
Two loors are reserved for families
dealing with debilitating health issues, many
of them with compromised immune systems
from chronic illnesses or chemotherapy.
Though bathrooms are shared, families
have private sinks for medical needs such as
feeding tubes.
A different programme at the shelter also
takes in homeless mothers with newborns,
including prematurely born babies, for whom
the bathtubs - a rarity in homeless shelters -
are especially appreciated.
Experts with the National Alliance to End
Homelessness and the National Health Care
for the Homeless Council said the Popsicle
Place programme is a model they haven’t
seen before.
The initiative is critical because medi-
cal bills have consistently been the top
cause of bankruptcy in the US for the past
40 years, and homeless children are much
more likely to have chronic health condi-
tions, said Bobby Watts, chief executive
of the council.Most families who come
to Popsicle Place had some semblance of
work and home stability before a child’s
health issue contributed to their home-
lessness, either because parents could no
longer work while they cared for their child
or because the cost of care left them un-
able to afford housing.
Watts said it’s unknown howmany families
struggle with that type of homelessness
because the US Department of Housing and
Urban Development only tracks the health
conditions of homeless adults.
He has never met Bezos but was an
adviser for the Amazon boss’s private “Day
1 Families Fund,” which offers donations to
groups sheltering young families.
Cindy Manginelli, who visits families in
shelters across Tennessee as coordinator for
the TennCare Shelter Enrollment Project, said
the instability of homelessness is at odds with
the needs of sick children.
Being homeless means moving often,
which disrupts the continuity of care. Parents
dealing with a child’s diagnosis also must
worry about providing basics like food.
And kids lack the comforts of home, often
something as simple as a familiar bed.
“If you are told to lay down and rest -
which is a big part of getting better - how can
you?” Manginelli said.
Families usually come to Popsicle Place
through a referral from Seattle Children’s
Hospital, oftenwhen a social worker discovers
a child has nowhere to go to recover.