A line of King County sheriff’s vehicles pulled up outside the Hillside Motel on Seattle’s Aurora Avenue North just after sunrise. Moments later, deputies pounded on doors and kicked in a couple of them, evicting a handful of squatters who had ignored a court order to vacate.
Over the next hour, gloved volunteers scooped up personal belongings that had been left behind, put them into trash bags and piled them on the curb. A leaf blower, a foot bath and a wheelchair — the letters “HMC” stamped on the back in white, showing it had come from Harborview Medical Center — along with clothes, shoes and children’s school supplies were among the items carted outside.
Several knives and at least one machete were turned over to deputies for safekeeping. Volunteers backed out of one room after finding a bunch of used syringes. Though no drugs were seized, a digital scale and other paraphernalia were handed off to a narcotics detective.
“This has been a very smooth operation,” said sheriff’s Sgt. Bob Lurry, a member of the civil unit responsible for serving eviction notices across the county, as several motorists drove by and tapped their horns and gave a thumbs-up in apparent appreciation for Saturday’s eviction effort.
The Hillside Motel, at 2451 Aurora Ave. N., and the now-vacant apartment building next door, have long been hubs for drug dealing, prostitution and the trafficking of stolen goods, according to police, court records and neighbors. Things got even worse after the owner of the two distressed properties defaulted on his loans following a deadly arson in July 2020 at the apartment building and the 11-unit motel was taken over by pimps and drug dealers, Aaron Cunningham, the co-founder and CEO of Inland Capital, told The Seattle Times in October.
Inland Capital is a Spokane-based, private money-lending company that typically provides short-term loans to real estate investors to rehabilitate and rebrand their properties. The company foreclosed on the properties in July and has been working to ready them for sale.
Beginning in September, the motel’s occupants were notified that they would need to vacate and members of the sheriff’s civil unit went to the property several times and provided people living there with information about services and alternative housing. Several of the occupants were represented in court by an attorney with the Housing Justice Project, a program run by the King County Bar Association.
A voice message left for the occupants’ attorney was not returned, so it’s not known where most of the people ended up. A group of four or five who exited the motel Saturday morning quickly departed.
A King County Superior Court commissioner signed a writ of restitution Nov. 18, upholding Inland’s right to exclusive possession of the motel and giving sheriff’s deputies legal authority to “break and enter” into all but two of the units, court records show. A second order signed by a judge on Thursday could be served as early as this week to force the occupants of the two remaining motel rooms to leave, according to court records and sheriff’s officials.
Jason Delp, Inland’s chief operating officer, and Austyn Cunningham, the CEO’s brother, traveled from Spokane to document the eviction and oversee a team of construction workers, who set up sawhorses in the parking lot and cut plywood that was glued and screwed over the motel’s doorways and windows.
Though many of the units had been previously boarded up, bits of torn plywood and old fasteners in door frames were all that remained of those earlier efforts.
One unit on the end had been all but cleared out by its occupant, save for a smashed jar of grape jelly and cereal that crunched underfoot. Next door, dirty dishes were piled in the bathroom sink and a makeup bag and hot plate had been left behind in a room roughly 10 feet by 15 feet.
A worker used a drill and crowbar to force open the door to what was once the manager’s office, where a hunting knife was embedded in one wall and clothes and trash were piled knee-deep on the floor. The top of a dresser was littered with bits of burned tin foil, which is typically used to heat and smoke fentanyl pills. It did not appear anyone had lived there for some time.
“I don’t think we can stop people from doing what they’re going to do … [but] we’re doing the best we can to deter it,” said Delp, noting that thicker plywood was used this time and concrete blocks were hoisted into a line to stop cars from pulling into the parking lot.
Though an online auction was held at the end of November to sell both properties, none of the bids met the minimum amount at which Inland was willing to sell, said Delp. Because squatters were still occupying the motel at the time of the auction, he said it wasn’t safe for potential buyers to look around the properties or assess the steep hillside that rises behind the motel for possible development.
“A developer will want to come and see what they can and can’t do,” he said of the hill that marks the eastern slope of Queen Anne. “At a minimum, we’ve made progress for the neighborhood.”
Creighton Carroll, a member of the Queen Anne Community Council, was among the volunteers who accompanied deputies to the motel. Despite the hum of power tools, Carroll said Saturday was the quietest he’s ever seen the motel, with only a single vehicle — a newer SUV with an obvious bullet hole in the hood — parked outside.
“This criminal enterprise has really impacted the community,” Carroll said of the drug and prostitution activity many in the neighborhood attribute to the Hillside’s occupants. “Hopefully, they’ll barricade this property once and for all.”