By Alia Sinclair

At its Tuesday, May 13, 2025 meeting, the SeaTac City Council voted unanimously to accept an additional $330,000 in funding from the state to continue the city’s emergency housing program for migrants and asylum seekers.

The city’s initial involvement with Washington State’s Washington Migrant and Asylum-Seeker Support (WA MASS) began in late 2024 when King County contracted with Thrive International to support approximately 100 families in need of emergency housing. Many of the people housed were relocated from Tukwila to the DoubleTree hotel in SeaTac.

At the onset of the program in October 2024, SeaTac was housing 142 individuals. To date, 25 families have been transitioned into permanent housing.

The city initially received a $750,000 grant for the housing project intended to last until June 2025. The additional funding amounts to $330,000, which is intended to keep the remaining families housed in hotels until permanent housing can be secured for them.

Some obstacles to the program have arisen, including start-up delays, new federal immigration policies, and market constraints.

Additionally, Councilmember Peter Kwon raised the concern of continuous funding, stating:

“This sort of funding will eventually run out. I want to be sure we have an exit strategy for putting people in homes. Stable jobs, stable homes, all of that stuff. So we need to have an exit strategy before this money runs out. I was very cautious about this because I didn’t want to end up in a situation where, you know, we just need more money continuously in a never-ending cycle. So I want to make sure that plan is still in place because it sounds like, if we’re asking for more money again, we’re entering that never-ending funding cycle.”

Mayor Mohamed Egal was the last to comment. Voicing his support of accepting the additional funding, he said:

“I remember one day when the [DoubleTree] threw out 40+ [asylum seekers]. It was rainy, it was windy, they were confused, they didn’t know where to go, and the City of SeaTac came through.