每日跟讀#553: Part Office Building,Part Homeless Shelter

A year ago, when Amazon let a homeless shelter for families move into a former motel it owned, it was viewed as a nice but fleeting gesture.

The motel was on a chunk of downtown property where Amazon planned to eventually erect yet another set of sparkling buildings to meet its insatiable need for office space in this city. The hotel would be torn down and the shelter kicked out when that time came.

一年前，亞馬遜公司讓一個遊民（無處可住）家庭收容所遷進該公司所有，曾為汽車旅館的一棟建築，當時被認為是好心，但僅屬暫時性的善舉。

這家汽車旅館位於市中心的一大片地產上，亞馬遜最終計畫在這塊土地上興建另一批閃閃發光的建築，以因應該公司在這個城市對辦公室空間永難滿足的需求。當重建的時刻降臨時，旅館會被拆除，收容所也會被掃地出門。

Instead, Amazon has decided to let the shelter stay. In an unusual arrangement, the company has agreed to give the shelter, Mary’s Place, a permanent home inside one of the new office buildings for which it will break ground in the fall.

Amazon will give roughly half of the six-story building to the shelter, providing it with 47,000 square feet of space with private rooms that can hold 65 families, or about 220 people and their pets. The facility, expected to open in early 2020, will have its own entrance and elevators.

然而事非如此，亞馬遜已決定讓收容所留下。在一項不尋常的安排下，該公司已同意在預定秋天動工興建的新辦公大樓中的某一棟裡，讓收容所「瑪麗之家」擁有一個永遠的家。

亞馬遜準備大約將這棟六層樓大樓的一半提供給收容所，讓收容所擁有4萬7000平方英尺地坪，計有足可容納65戶家庭，或約220人和他們的寵物的私人房間。這項設施預計2020年年初啟用，將有自己的大門和電梯。

“I see it as this huge gift because everywhere we go, we end up leaving,” said Marty Hartman, the executive director of Mary’s Place, which runs seven transitional shelters around the Seattle area meant to house families until they can find permanent homes. “You come in and become a fabric of the neighborhood you’re in, and then you say goodbye. That’s a hard thing for a lot of people to do.”

In an interview at the current Mary’s Place site owned by Amazon, which was bustling with families returning to the shelter for the evening, John Schoettler, Amazon’s vice president for global real estate and facilities, said the company would spend “tens of millions of dollars” on the design and construction of the shelter’s portion of the building. Amazon will pay the utilities for Mary’s Place, which will occupy the space rent free, although the organization will continue to pay its own staff.

「瑪麗之家」執行長馬蒂．哈特曼說：「我把它看成天大的一份禮物，因為無論我們到那裏，最終都得離開。」「瑪麗之家」在西雅圖地區經營七個中途之家性質的收容所，收容一些尚未找到固定住所的家庭。她說：「你住進來，成為你所加入鄰里的一份子，然後又得說再見。這對很多人來說是件困難的事。」

「瑪麗之家」目前所在地產權為亞馬遜所擁有，此刻正因一些家庭返回過夜而顯得頗為熱鬧，亞馬遜主管全球房地產和設施的副總裁約翰．舒特勒在此處接受訪問表示，該公司將花費「數千萬美元」設計和建造這棟建築內的收容所部分。亞馬遜將支付「瑪麗之家」的水電費、讓「瑪麗之家」免租金使用空間，不過「瑪麗之家」將繼續支付他們自己員工的薪水。

Schoettler said Amazon originally allowed the shelter to stay in the motel because of the severity of Seattle’s homelessness crisis, which had prompted the city’s mayor to declare a state of emergency in 2015. Schoettler said Amazon was impressed by Mary’s Place, and he described its plan to give the shelter a permanent home as an investment in the neighborhood.

In San Francisco, Google, Salesforce.com and others have funded a campaign to find permanent housing for homeless people. But Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington, D.C., said she was unaware of any other private corporation integrating a homeless shelter into its building.

舒特勒說，亞馬遜最初允許收容所搬進汽車旅館，是因西雅圖遊民危機十分嚴重。遊民危機2015年時促使西雅圖市長宣布進入緊急狀態。舒特勒說， 亞馬遜被瑪麗之家給打動了，他把亞馬遜計畫給收容所一個長久的家這件事，稱為該公司對當地社區的一項投資。

在舊金山，谷歌、Salesforce.com 和其他公司都在資助替無家可歸者尋找固定住處的一項運動。不過，華盛頓特區非營利宣導團體「終結無家可歸全國聯盟」總裁南恩．羅曼說，據她所知，沒有任何其他私人公司讓遊民收容所進住他們的大樓。

Source article: https://paper.udn.com/udnpaper/POH0067/314016/web/