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A Native-led service organization in Seattle became one of the first in Washington state to open an affordable housing project for Native people in 2022. Since the ʔálʔal project went up, Chief Seattle Club has celebrated building hundreds more affordable and supportive housing units. But behind the scenes, some in the Native community are raising concerns about the number of overdoses at ʔálʔal and what they say is a lack of mental health help and other support.
ʔálʔal is a towering 80-unit, nine-floor apartment building in the heart of Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood. There’s also a medical clinic and café tailored to the Native community.
ʔálʔal marked the first Native housing project in the city, a corner that would look and feel like home to urban Indians searching for better economic opportunities. The Seattle Indian Health Board livestreamed the clinic’s opening on Facebook. At the ribbon cutting ceremony, Derrick Belgarde, Chief Seattle Club’s executive director, addressed a small crowd, flanked by Seattle City Council members, senators, and others.
"We know what works for our communities and our relatives, and we know what falls short," Belgarde said, from behind a podium.
This place would be different, Chief Seattle Club staff would recognize the historical wrongs waged against tribes that still echo today. Two years later, on a brisk walk downtown, Belgarde explained that Chief Seattle Club offers Native remedies for mental health and addiction issues.
"Talking circles. Things that help with behavioral health. Things that help with mental health and depression and those things. Getting people out of their units, going to ceremony, going to field trips, going to a sweat lodge," he said.
The Native community faces one of the highest poverty rates of any racial group in King County. Almost 10% of the county’s unsheltered population are American Indian, Alaskan Native, or Indigenous, even though they make up only about 1% of the county population. And that is likely an undercount.
Then there’s the fentanyl crisis. In Washington and Oregon, overdose deaths continued to rise in 2023 by at least 27%, even as they fell by roughly 3% in other parts of the country, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Native people, in particular, are more likely to die from fentanyl use.
Chief Seattle Club is trying to help solve both of these intractable problems with ʔálʔal and the half-dozen other housing projects its built.
"We've also saved countless, and a lot of people would be dead today, that would be under bridges, if we weren't building houses," Belgarde said.
According to King County records, at least 11 Native Americans have died after incidents either inside or outside ʔálʔal and Chief Seattle Club offices next door since 2022. Two other people who listed Chief Seattle Club as their address died at the hospital. The majority are people in their 40s and 50s who have died from drug overdoses. Community members told KNKX there are others who have passed away whom the records fail to capture.

Residents call for more support
Carrietta White Lance, 51, has lived at ʔálʔal on and off for about two years and has personally known some of those who have died there, one who died by suicide.
"We noticed that he was giving away his things," Lance said.
Lance sensed that her 49-year-old neighbor Chester Lee was battling mental illness. Days later she saw him fall from a window on one of ʔálʔal’s higher floors. Others say Lee had an addiction issue. They tried to alert Chief Seattle Club staff.
"We informed front desk staff to reach out to him because he was starting to give away his animals, his clothes and whatnot," she continued.
April Nation used to live at ʔálʔal and also knew Lee for years. She was sitting outside ʔálʔal in February on the day Lee jumped and seemed devastated by what had just happened.
"When I was here, I'd seen a lot, a lot of bad stuff going on. I didn't feel safe," Nation said.
Nation said she had high hopes when ʔálʔal first opened its doors. Finally, she thought, a place specifically for her and others in the community.
"That we're all gonna be at one place. We had our own little place, you know," she said.
As a resident, Lance has confronted management about what she sees as a lack of support for her neighbors. In an interview at the Beacon Hill Library, Lance said she feels she’s largely been ignored.
"It seems like all our relatives are dying, and nobody's doing nothing about it. I'm tired of relatives being wheeled out," she said.
Others emphasize the residents living at ʔálʔal have the same privacy rights as any other tenant and have to choose treatment.
"People have to be ready to be treated," said Esther Lucero, president and CEO of the Seattle Indian Health Board. "There isn't going to be an immediate change."
There's also a shortage of substance and mental health counselors and detox centers, Lucero said. The Seattle Indian Health Board is planning to open a new treatment facility — the Thunderbird Treatment Center — by next year on Vashon Island. That will increase bed capacity in King County for people in treatment for drug addiction by 62%, according to Lucero.
Mourning those lost
In the circular space inside ʔálʔal, Chief Seattle Club holds memorials for residents and other members who they’ve lost. On one side of the entryway is a painting of a Plains native man, an octopus on the other — both visions of the medicine man who came to bless the building.
There are so many deaths, Belgarde said, right now, they hold the memorials on a quarterly basis.
"When I started, when I oversaw them, we were doing them for every individual. Kind of talked about it as a team and thought about, you know, maybe we shouldn't do that because you don't want the members coming in and being traumatized and seeing a memorial every once a week or whatever," Belgarde explained.
A couple of months ago, dozens gathered in front of ʔálʔal for Chief Seattle Club’s annual memorial walk. As they made their way to Occidental Square Park, community members held banners with the names of people they had lost due to fentanyl use or some other cause.
Some believe Chief Seattle Club has relied too heavily on traditional healing practices instead of Western medicine for substance abuse and mental health issues.
A number of employees have also been disappointed with the working conditions at Chief Seattle Club. One former employee, Dominique Zacherle, said part of the reason she left was due to the lack of training. The stress of trying to save people's lives became too much.
"I started having like dreams, like my my kid was like, overdosing, and I'm like trying to Narcan her," she said.
The hope of housing
Nickolaus Lewis is the former vice chair of the National Indian Health Board and a member of the Lummi Nation. Lewis said he sympathizes with Chief Seattle Club leaders.
"I think they're doing the best that they can," he said.
But Lewis also said he hopes the supportive housing he and others are building on the Lummi reservation in Bellingham will set the standard in Washington state and across the country. The Lummi Nation is taking a phased approach to housing people that will be different from ʔálʔal, where people with a substance abuse problem are living next to those who are sober.
"When you have somebody that's using next to somebody that's fighting for their recovery: What good are you doing? Because now you're gonna have two addicts struggling," he said.
The Lummi Nation plans to provide low-cost shelter, or pallet homes, to all of the approximately 60 people on the reservation without housing, some of whom are still in the throes of addiction. There will be a security guard and a vending machine stocked with Narcan. (Chief Seattle Club also has security in place, Belgarde said, and provides Narcan and fentanyl testing strips. There are also three case managers.)
Medical staff will visit the residents. And they’re constructing a treatment facility on the reservation and a tiny home village for people who manage to get clean.
Back at ʔálʔal, resident Lance shows off her tidy studio apartment with a window looking out onto Pioneer Square.
"I fought really hard to get into housing, but I didn’t think I would have to fight to live," she said.
She briefly moved out because of the drug use surrounding her but came back after she couldn’t find housing for both her and her dog. Still, Lance said, she eventually plans to head back to her reservation in South Dakota.
"My long-term goal is to be back at home," she said.
In the meantime, she said, she’ll continue to rely on the housing Chief Seattle Club provides. Without them, she’d have nowhere else to go.