The ‘again’ doesn’t just mean the Lutherans, but many of the federal refugee contractors* have over the years been caught doing the same thing.  I don’t know if it’s because they are cheap or lazy or have some backroom deal with certain landlords, but it’s an on-going problem and mystery to me.  It usually takes a good investigative reporter or even a private citizen hounding the contractors to bring about any relief for the confused and unhappy refugees.

We haven’t posted recently on the refugee abuse stories, so for new readers this is nothing new.  A couple of cases that come immediately to mind are the Waterbury, CT case where the contractor was actually shut down for abusing Burmese refugees.  In that case it was the dogged work of an investigative reporter that brought attention to the refugees’ plight.  Another case was the Bowling Green, Kentucky case—again Burmese living in squalor under the thumb of unscrupulous landlords and sneaky resettlement workers.  Oh, and I almost forgot, but just saw it again, a Lutheran agency was given the heave-ho in Greensboro, NC for neglecting refugees.

Calling all Lutherans, please get after your fellow churchmen who are behind these human rights abuses!  They lobby for more refugees (as they did at the State Department hearing on May 12th) , but then don’t give a rats rear-end about where they place them.

Now, back to Milwaukee.  I wouldn’t have seen this lengthy investigation of the refugee/landlord slum problem if I hadn’t been looking for more information on Pulitzer-prize-winning reporter Mark Johnson.  I was told that Mr. Johnson was on a US State Department press conference call on Tuesday and asked some very hard questions of the Refugee head honchos.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Dozens of Burmese refugees who fled persecution in their homeland have landed in recent years in cockroach-infested Milwaukee apartments, some thick with the smell of leaking sewage and almost all unprotected by working smoke or carbon monoxide detectors.

Many of the refugees were placed in the squalid conditions by Lutheran Social Services of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, which acknowledges it never conducted a background check on the complex’s owner, Daniel Bruckner, a Fox Point lawyer.

State and city records reviewed by the Journal Sentinel show Bruckner faces hundreds of city building code violations and four city lawsuits, owes nearly a half-million dollars in delinquent property taxes and has seven felony convictions for importing child pornography.

Lutheran Social Services was unaware of Bruckner’s code violations and legal troubles, said Natascha Malkemes, a spokeswoman for the agency.

“We should know these things,” she conceded, adding,”We have our clients’ best interests at heart for sure.”

On Friday, the agency – which is paid federal dollars to settle refugees – released a statement saying, “The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has recently made our organization aware of litigation against and a criminal record of a landlord we have worked with in the past. Because of this development, Lutheran Social Services will immediately begin looking into ways to put procedures in place to apply background check standards on all of the landlords we work with.”

In addition, the agency pledged to contact the refugees who rent from Bruckner and assist any who wish to move.

Landlord puts the blame on primitive refugees:

Bruckner placed the blame for most of his 443 building-code infractions at Wilson Park Garden Apartments on his tenants, especially the Burmese refugees.

“These are very primitive people,” said Bruckner, 64, who charges them about $700 a month in rent. “When they come here, a lot of them don’t even know how to flush a toilet. One of the first things they do is they go in the Dumpster and eat, OK? That’s the type of people you have there.”

Lutheran agency employee: they are used to bugs!

When asked about the cockroach infestation at the apartments, Malkemes said by email: “New arrivals come from refugee camps where they had no electricity or running water, and sometimes are not accustomed to general upkeep or how to properly store food. In these camps, refugees are often exposed to insects and this is their everyday (life).”

I’ve just selected a few snippets from a very thorough investigative report and I encourage all of you to read it.  One part that particularly intrigued me was the section about how the landlord worked through a currency exchange business to collect the rent.  I have long thought there is some funny money business going on in some cities that involve immigrants, money going overseas and lawyers, but not being literate on financial matters I can’t figure it out.

*For new readers, federal refugee contractors are called volags.  That stands for voluntary agencies which is a really funny name because they are largely funded by taxpayers dollars and the voluntary part is minimal.  Originally there was supposed to be a public-private partnership that anticipated the non-profit groups, many of which are church-affiliated, would find private money to supplement the federal payments.  That is not happening to any great degree with the agencies increasingly reliant on the federal dole.   Here are the major federal contractors  (six are affiliated with religious groups) and each has subcontractors making it even harder to monitor them or follow the money.