Built by the community it serves.
Jabooda Cares was founded in 2024 by Kaitlyn Huynh after years of watching the same story repeat itself. Seniors and families across the AANHPI community were quietly reaching out, not to agencies, not to hotlines, but to people they trusted. They needed housing. They did not know where to start. And they were not asking loudly.
Kaitlyn had seen the demand up close. The waitlists at Melody and Symphony Apartments, Jabooda's MFTE properties in Seattle, had grown steadily, reflecting a community with real need and limited options. Apollo Heights in Tacoma was still under construction, and already the same pattern was emerging. The demand was not a projection. It was a list of names.
Robert Luu joined Jabooda Cares in 2025 with a parallel conviction built from the ground up. As a developer, he had converted two hotels into NOAH workforce housing: 145 units in Tacoma, now completed and 95% occupied in under three years, and 120 units in Fife, currently under construction. He had also served on the board of the AREAA Greater Seattle chapter, where he saw firsthand the gap between the community's homeownership aspirations and the structural barriers standing in the way.
Kaitlyn and Robert arrived at the same conclusion from different directions. The AANHPI community needed a developer that understood it from the inside. Not an organization that served this community, but one built by it.
In 2025, Jabooda Cares laid the groundwork, engaging city councilmembers, meeting with mission-aligned lenders including Amazon Housing Equity Fund and Ballmer Group, and building relationships with nonprofit partners, community leaders, and housing advocates across the region.
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