Dog Loans

Banks report that there is little investment interest shown in the commercial area of Empire Way and Othello Street. There is a surplus of commercially zoned land indicated by vacancies and non-retail use of land in prime retail locations.

This was written thirty-four years ago in a study of the same area where the Rainier Valley Community Development Fund, a public institution whose business is to stimulate local investment, now operates. A couple of weeks ago, Martina Guilfoil, the executive director of the RVCDF made a spectacle of that organization with her rather less diplomatic gloss on the same theme in a letter to a loan applicant: "We recognize a dog loan when we see it," she wrote. "We are very interested in how our programs are working to help Rainier Valley businesses who actually operate a business and not a hobby."

In the Rainier Valley the distinction between retail and non-retail use, vacancy and occupancy, hobby and business, has long been a fine one. This clearly vexed Guilfoil, who, on behalf of the RVCDF’s board of directors, also informed the business owner that she is “one crazy ass bitch.” Taking the long view, store fronts here, it seems, are always in the process of becoming something else and the commerce inside exists somewhere in the twilight between hobby, social club, side business, and going concern.

The lettering on the corner awning reads “import-export” next to an Asian name, but the sign above the door a few paces down says the shop is a halal grocery. A cut rate brothel becomes a social service agency which in turn becomes nail shop. The tavern next door to the brothel back in the day is now a church and, who knows, may yet be a tavern someday.

Down by the Rose Petal with its “RESTAU ANT” sign, which to workaday world looks abandoned, roars to life on Saturday night. One afternoon this spring, the proprietor of a gyro restaurant was shaken by my request for a gyro -- whatever people came there for, it wasn’t the only product advertised on the sign outside. A tavern is a social club whose exclusivity is maintained by its dilapidated exterior, plywood-covered windows, the lack of a sign that clearly establishes the nature of the business.

A single family home beside Martin Luther King Jr Way S. is the beach head that builds a steady clientele as a Vietnamese bridal shop. From its side has grown a three story apartment complex whose slow-motion construction moves forward in fits and starts as more funds from the paying business become available. Cottage industry grinds modestly onward inside Craftsman bungalows without the pressure of overhead.

Southeast Seattle, with it’s low, haphazardly collected rents is an incubator for business that could not exist in a higher profile location. Down here, businesses that fulfill different purposes than growth and expansion find safety at the periphery of the city, for a moment at least.

As executive director of the Rainier Valley Community Development Fund, Guilfoil knew all this far better than most. I sat down with her almost two years ago to learn more about what the CDF was up to and found her to be engaged with the neighborhood and sensitive to the local business landscape.

In particular, we talked about two Somali immigrants who were extended one of the first business loans the organization made. In a culturally savvy move that a conventional lender wouldn’t even consider, the CDF worked with the imam of the borrowers’ mosque to set terms that were considered compliant with Islam’s prohibition on interest. The loan allowed the borrowers to successfully branch out from their auto sales business into transportation. Evidently they are still making it happen -- I see Universal Translation & Transportation cars all around the south end.

So what happened? How could a local institution that has proved itself in so many ways an asset to the Rainier Valley and particularly to the MLK business corridor sink to the ugliest kind of condescension?

Here, among the strivers and the poor there exists privilege - it’s one of the things that keeps this place interesting. Though content to dip in and out of the Rainier Valley at will, privilege comes to identify with the “vibrancy” of the place. It considers itself hep enough to bring off a brassy lines like “crazy ass bitch” and street-wise enough to know who it should be applied to.

In this spirit a haughty distinction was made in the name of the board of the RVDCF between “real” business and some other kind run by “broke ass crazies” that is beneath consideration. No doubt the loan applicants who come before the board consider their businesses legitimate and “real,” but how can they be sure now that the staff and the board of the RVCDF feel the same way?