28-05-2025
WA gives $2M towards group's effort to buy Tacoma motel for refugee housing
An organization working to assist asylum-seeking refugees will receive $2 million from the Washington State Housing Trust Fund to help purchase a permanent home in Tacoma. However, the organization still is looking to fill a multi-million dollar funding gap over the next couple of years.
In September, Thrive International brought nearly 200 refugees to a Quality Inn on Tacoma's South Hosmer Street. On Sept. 24, vans and trucks brought troves of suitcases, strollers and garbage bags full of possessions into the parking lot.
The refugee families previously lived in an encampment on a field next to a motel in Kent. Some of them had been living there for months, coming from as far away as Venezuela and Angola to escape economic instability, political unrest, and, for some, violence.
Thrive International leased the Quality Inn to serve as temporary shelter for the families while they worked to find permanent housing solutions.
Since then, the former Quality Inn has hosted more than 350 refugees and asylum seekers. The organization reported dozens of residents have successfully transitioned into permanent housing in recent months from the Hosmer location.
On May 20, Thrive International announced it would receive $2 million from Washington state's budget to help complete a $10.7 million purchase and renovation of the 115-unit hotel, now called Thrive Center Tacoma, to become a permanent transitional housing site.
Thrive International executive director Mark Finney told The News Tribune the organization is fund raising to close the roughly $7 million gap needed to purchase the hotel. He said even though they have secured some funding from donors, the organization still has a lot of work to do before they are able to purchase the hotel at the end of their three-year lease.
Finney said the hotel will cost roughly $9.8 million to purchase, with an additional $900,000 needed to maintain and renovate the building.
During a Jan. 16 House Capitol Budget Committee hearing, Jim CastroLang, director of policy and advocacy for Thrive International, requested $2.1 million from the legislature to purchase and 'stabilize' the Tacoma Thrive Center.
'Our Thrive Center model in hotel-type spaces is the lowest cost, highest impact way to support refugees from surviving to thriving,' he told the committee.
At the beginning of 2025, CastroLang said a transitional housing site in Spokane assisted 965 residents into permanent housing since it opened in 2022.
Along with providing a safe place for refugee and asylum-seeking families to stay, Thrive International provides wrap-around services.
It hosts clinics with lawyers to advise families through the immigration process. Local hospitals provide vaccination clinics. It helps parents build resumes and apply for jobs. Local school districts like Clover Park and Franklin Pierce send buses to transport children staying at the hotel to school.
In January, Finney told The News Tribune his organization wants to establish a 'pipeline' for those fleeing their countries for a better life here.
Thrive International reported an average stay of six to nine months under the hotel model used in Tacoma and Spokane.
Finney told The News Tribune it usually takes a few months before families start to gain momentum.
Since the families arrived at Thrive Center Tacoma, the former hotel has hosted more than a dozen weddings, and several babies have been born.
'The people living here are not just passing through — they're becoming part of the fabric of this neighborhood,' said Anna Bondarenko, Director of Thrive Center Tacoma, wrote in a statement. 'We've seen a sense of belonging emerge, not just inside Thrive, but across Hosmer.'
