Spokane nonprofit breaks ground on 48-unit affordable housing project for refugees

By Cody Wendt | FāVS News Reporter

“Refugees deserve more than shelter,” reads a banner headline on the homepage for the Spokane-based nonprofit Thrive International. “They deserve a future.”

The charity seeks to help provide that future, and its efforts have gained literal and figurative ground in recent weeks.

Making Spokane hospitable

Thrive was founded close to three-and-a-half years ago by Mark Finney, a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary and pastor at Emmaus Church in Spokane’s Perry District. Intending to “help Spokane be the most hospitable city in the country” through housing for the displaced, Finney established the Thrive Center on East 4th Avenue, which quickly became a hotspot due to an influx of more than a thousand refugees from the Ukraine war.

The organization, which lists close to 30 total staffers on its website between the original location and a branch site in Tacoma, has since expanded its services to include education and “empowerment” programs for disadvantaged youth and women. According to its 2024 Annual Report, last year Thrive  “became the largest provider of supportive housing for refugees and immigrants in the state of Washington, with 550+ residents in Spokane and Tacoma.”

Project B

Now the group is taking another major step in pursuit of its mission.

A groundbreaking ceremony was held on May 22 for the beginning of a new venture, titled simply “B,” in which Thrive  will transform former Spokane Public Library property at 6980 N. Nevada Street into a large transitional housing project. 

Mayor Lisa Brown was among those in attendance.

“This collab will result in much-needed affordable housing and support our refugee community,” Brown announced on her X feed the day after the ceremony including a short clip of her and others officially breaking ground.

“We’re really excited to partner with Spokane Public Library and a number of other partners to turn what was a vacant piece of land into 48 apartments,” Finney said. “It came through this innovative, creative process with the public library, which has owned the land for several decades.”

The library already had public amenities in place on the grounds, such as library kiosks, a dome, a greenhouse and garden spaces, which Finney believes will expedite the process of transforming them into a quality residential block. He said the plan is for roughly half of the housing units to be open to “anybody who wants to apply,” and half delegated specifically to the refugees and immigrants who are his organization’s core clientele.

First of its kind

Finney noted several elements of this project that set it apart from the norms in the world of low-income housing initiatives — not least among them, the manner in which it is funded.

Thrive’s  model for Project B is based on “local grants from the state or city and investment capital from private individuals who are committed to seeing this project happen.” Finney explained that the more common federally funded low-income housing “ironically often costs more to build than market-rate housing because of all the regulations.” He also emphasized the impressive speed with which the project has gotten off the ground, being set to go from “initial concept to leasing in under 36 months,” where a span of closer to five years is more standard for such efforts due to the aforementioned federal red tape.

Also less-common is that this project is geared toward the “forgotten middle” of individuals who are coming out of the very lowest income brackets — in which they would have qualified for various benefits and subsidies — but have not yet reached income levels sufficient to comfortably maintain mainstream market-rate housing. 

Finney believes the model he is implementing in Spokane can be applied elsewhere, and influential backers are interested in seeing it done. Days before the recent groundbreaking ceremony, it was announced that Thrive would be the recipient of a $2 million grant from the state capital budget as it seeks to complete the purchase of its Tacoma building, a former Quality Inn, which currently provides housing and programs for close to 400 people.

“People aren’t intended simply to survive,” Finney said in a video posted to thriveint.org. “We want to see our whole community thrive, and as individuals from different cultures and different experiences have a chance to live their best life, it creates a thriving community.”

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