More housing issues involving refugees—this time New York—see ourprevious post this morning on Michigan.
I saw this news the other day, but didn’t find time to post it. As I said in my previous post, look for many housing problems especially this year as federal contractors like Journey’s End in this story are desperate to find housing for the 85,000 refugees Obama is bringing to America.
They will argue that they don’t get enough of a federal hand-out to put them in decent housing, but they will never argue that that means the flow has to be slowed or cut off! Just get them in, get their per head payment and move on! That is how they roll!
From WIVB.com: Karen Andolina Scott is the Executive Director of Journey’s End in Buffalo. No comment on ceiling collapse story. http://www.jersbuffalo.org/index.php/news/entries/journeys_end_refugee_services_announces_new_executive_director
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB)- A refugee family living on Buffalo’s West Side is having a difficult first few weeks in the United States. On Sunday night, the ceiling collapsed in the kitchen of their rental home on Grant St.
“It fell on me and my kids we were all inside,” said Roger, who was visiting a family friend that lives in the home.
Roger told News 4 he was taking a call in the kitchen when the collapse happened.
“It’s really discouraging when someone comes here seeking a house and you find yourself in these conditions, this situation,” he said.
His family friend, Ley Baunda, lives in the house with his wife and seven children. They are refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo.***
They told us they blame local resettlement organizations for placing them in an unsafe house.
“I’m afraid because there is many, many things that is not good in the house,” said Baunda.
Baunda’s landlord wouldn’t talk to News 4.
We reached out to resettlement agency Journey’s End who wouldn’t comment on this case.
Continue reading to learn more as Ms. Scott explains the “federal program.”
From our handy list we learn that Journey’s End(a “Christian based” organization) is a subcontractor of both Church World Service and Episcopal Migration Ministries (two of the nine major federal contractors).
See our very large archive on Buffalo by clicking here.
***Just a reminder, on refugees from the DR Congo, we are in the process of bringing in 50,000, see one of many posts, here.
Over the years we have gotten whiffs of ‘strange doings’ going on between landlords and federal refugee resettlement contractors and this story from Battlecreek, MI gives us a tantalizing peek into how the ‘humanitarian’ Lutheran Social Services of Michigan operates. All I know is that, please watch for housing problems in refugee overloaded cities.
You will see refugees placed in slums, apartments with more residents than local zoning allows, conflicts with neighbors, landlords waking up to what they got into and trying now to get out, cozy relations between refugee contractors and certain landlords, competition between American poor and disabled and refugees for limited housing, and the list goes on. In fact, you will see even more competition this year as the contractors are expected to find places for the 85,000 refugees Obama has promised America. Sam Beals is the CEO of Lutheran Social Services Michigan. Since the article never names who the spokesperson is for LSSM in the housing dispute, the next best thing is to identify the head honcho. https://www.lssm.org/lssm/about-us/leadership
Here is the news from WWMT.com. This is the kind of story some local Michigan activist, concerned with too many refugees coming to the state, should dig into. I bet there is a lot more than is being said here! Emphasis below is mine:
BATTLE CREEK, Mich. (NEWSCHANNEL 3) – Refugees and community organizers say more than 60 refugee families received notices that their apartment leases would not be renewed.
[….]
“At the time the letter was sent, the apartment complexes had received information which caused the complexes to believe that the families/residents who received the latter had too many residents occupying the apartment units,” wrote Campbell’s lawyer, David Zebell.
The article reports that the landlord changed his mind and refugees can stay, but here is more:
Ginger Dowdle, a Battle Creek community organizer said she first became aware of the notices when an middle-eastern refugee approached her with concerns.
She said Lutheran Social Services of Michigan, which helps organize and place the refugees, did not challenge the notices, but instead, told the refugees about an option to buy homes recently acquired by the landlord of River and River Oaks Apartments. [That is the same landlord with whom they are having problems now.—ed]
“I tried to make them [refugees] aware, that if this is happening to them now and there’s no reason for them to be evicted, I would be very careful getting involved with this land contract for a home,” she said. [By the way, one of the things resettlement contractors brag about is that refugees are buying homes, do they get special government funded deals?—ed]
Dowdle said that a representative from Lutheran Social Services of Michigan indicated that LSS told refugees they would have to move out in one year, something refugees say never happened.
A spokesperson for LSSM defended the organization’s response to the notices.
[….]
As for community organizer Ginger Dowdle, she is in the process of making sure all the refugees know about the reversal in policy, and their rights.
“I feel like this has been going on for quite some time,” she said, expressing disappointment with both apartment management and LSSM.
There is more here.
I wondered if LSSM was running out of housing and thus trying to move some previous ‘clients’ into homes so that they could be sure to have apartments in order to keep the flow of new paying clients coming into the city.
Has anyone asked LSSM for its FY2016 R & P Abstracts? Go to the handy list of resettlement contractor officesaround the country, find the one closest to you and ask for their FY2016 R & P Abstract. The Abstract will tell you how many the refugee contractor thinks they can handle this year (from what countries) and what amenities your town is offering (which might be a surprise to you!).
The Mayor, city council and county commissioners of Missoula County Montana have given their blessing to the New York City-based International Rescue Committeeheaded by former British Foreign Secretary and globalist David Miliband (good friend of both George Soros and Hillary Clinton) to begin the colonization of Montana with third world refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia beginning in Missoula. Don’t be fooled, your local Miss Mary will not be choosing refugees for Montana, it will be Brit David Miliband at the IRC. Here Miliband is awarding George Soros the IRC’s highest honor—Freedom Award—in 2013. http://www.rescue.org/blog/freedom-award-honoring-george-soros
I have so much to say, where to begin? First, if you are a new reader, see all of my previous posts on Montana by clicking here. Remember the driver for these new offices (this article says Tallahassee, FL just got a new office) is that Obama has upped the number of refugees to be resettled this year from the recent 70,000 a year to 85,000 for FY2016 (runs from Oct. 1, 2015 to September 30, 2016) and frankly they are running out of ‘capacity’ in existing resettlement cities.
Cities are overloaded and experiencing problems with such things as inadequate housing and not enough jobs for refugees. Tensions are building in overloaded cities and they are looking to get a foothold into fresh territory.
So, since we learn in this article that the approval for the resettlement was granted for this fiscal year, it should happen quickly, AND it also means that the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has already sent a R & P Abstract to the US State Department.
The Abstract is the document that is supposed to have been created with consultation with local elected officials. Did that happen?
Where is the plan?
First thing I would ask is for the Mayor/city council/commissioners to release to the public the R & P Abstract.
See what one looks like byclicking here. You are entitled to this document no matter what they say!
Wiser mayors,like the one (a Democrat!) in Athens, GA, demanded that the IRC present a plan (to the public) that described the housing availability situation in the city, how many children would be added to the school system, was there an adequate public healthcare system available, and where would they work. She wanted a “formal refugee integration plan.” The IRC and the State Department refused to provide a plan and last I checked they had reached a stalemate (could have been resolved by now, that was in 2014).
And, one more thing before this latest news from Montana, be sure to see my “Ten things your town needs to know”when a resettlement agency is about to open in your town.
Here is what the Missoulian says about the decision by the federal government to seed Montana soon!
Now that it’s a reality, there’s much work to be done before a refugee resettlement office is up and running in Missoula.
“There’s a process through the (U.S.) State Department, which is already occurring, but it’s not instant,” Bob Johnson of the Seattle office of the International Rescue Committee said this week.
Coming to Montana once the IRC has a foothold! This is the IRC’s handiwork in Seattle! Somali refugees have gobbled up much of the public housing and are protesting a plan that would require them to pay a little more for that housing when they find a job. Signs in the back say “No Rent Hike.”
The IRC announced last week it had the go-ahead from the State Department to lay the groundwork to establish an office in Missoula for the second time. Johnson was at the ground level when the first one opened in 1979 to help hundreds of people fleeing persecution in Southeast Asia – most of them Hmong from the highlands of Laos – after the Vietnam War.
Today, the IRC is one of nine resettlement agencies in the U.S. The Missoula office will be the 27th in the nation for IRC, the most recent opening in Tallahassee, Florida, in March 2015.
Missoula was the first to announce plans to open this fiscal year, which began in October. The Obama administration raised from 70,000 to 85,000 the number of refugees the nation will accept in fiscal 2016. It also bumped up to 10,000 the number of refugees the U.S. will accept from Syria, an act that has escalated fears of domestic terrorism in the U.S.
Pay attention to this next part! The nine ‘non-profit’ federal contractors sit around a table once a week in Washington and decide where to send each refugee.
“They process the refugees who’ve been accepted and assign them to the nine different agencies that work with them,” said Johnson. “They have an allocations meeting once a week that all the agencies attend. There’s a formula of who gets which cases, and then the agencies will assign them to local offices based on capacity, language capacity, the existing population that’s already there and so on.”
The IRC’s application to the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration for a Missoula office proposed a staff of 2 1/2 positions– an executive director, a caseworker and a half-time finance manager. The latter job is expected to bloom into a full-time position when numbers warrant it.
[….]
The placement of a resettlement office has touched off a barrage of protests from all quarters of the state, many citing security issues. Mayor John Engen, most Missoula City Council members and all three county commissioners have publicly supported it and voiced confidence that the screening process is adequate.
First, concerned citizens of Montana must contact the local elected officials and ask to see the IRC’s “application to the State Department” and the R & P Abstract.
The Mayor, City Council, and Commissioners must have those documents! If those elected officials claim they never saw them and were not involved in their preparation then you can be sure they have let you down! They are not doing their jobs to protect their citizens both financially and security-wise.
Then if you suspect that they do have the documents and are simply not making them public, use whatever Public Information/Freedom of Information law you have in Montana to obtain them.
And, while you are at it, be sure to research the legal structure of Miss Mary’s Soft Landings, get their incorporation papers with the state (usually through the State Attorney General’s Office). IRC will certainly have to incorporate a non-profit in the state as well. See if you can find out if that process is underway.
Find out if Montana has a state refugee coordinator. Tell the public who that is. Some concerned citizens should also be publishing a state-wide blog or website to publish everything you learn about the program in the state and identify all of the elected officials and groups like the Chamber of Commerce (cheap labor!) pushing the resettlement. And, always remember they hide behind the humanitarian mask, but somewhere there are some global business interests looking to assure a steady supply of cheap immigrant labor to the state—find out who they are!
Bottomline is to get your facts and publish them! The only way this program has become so advanced over the last 30 plus years is that it has operated in virtual secrecy. Demand transparency! Photo: See my December 2014 post about the housing proposal being protested by the Somali ‘community.’ Work! Pay more rent!
Ramadon, an Iraqi refugee, convicted in 2014 of brutal rape of Colorado Springs woman. Go here and follow links to Diana West’s indepth reporting: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2014/01/24/iraqi-refugee-rapist-found-guilty-in-colorado-diana-west-reports-the-story-nationally/
Yesterday, within hours of the horrific Islamic terror attack in Brussels—a direct result of decades of “welcoming” immigration policy toward refugees, and migrants generally, from Muslim countries— citizens of Colorado Springs took to the streets to say they welcome Syrian mostly Muslim refugeesto their city.
From The Gazette:
About 120 Colorado Springs residents rallied Tuesday on the steps of City Hall in support of refugees – especially Syrians – about 12 hours after deadly terrorist explosions ripped through the Brussels airport and subway.
Banners and speeches urging compassion and human kindness continued the community’s strong opposition to City Councilman Andres Pico’s March 7 proposal, “A Resolution Declaring Opposition to the Relocation of Refugees from the United States Refugee Resettlement Program to the City of Colorado Springs.”
Continue reading here and see the photos of the those rallying.
See our earlier post on the latest controversy from Colorado Springs, here.
Just four words for the citizens of Colorado Springs with short memories: Jasim Mohammed Hasin Ramadon.
For new readers, visit our refugee crimes category, here (1,940 previous posts archived there!). For all posts on Colorado, click here. Whatever happened to that Uzbek alleged Islamic terrorist arrested in Colorado in 2012? Does anyone know?
Back to our daily grind (after yesterday’s record-breaking day)—working to educate you about the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program…. Annual Report to Congress
The law says that the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement must get their Annual Report to Congress out by January 31st of the year following the close of the fiscal year. The fiscal year closes on September 31st, so the Annual Report for 2104 was over a year overdue when it was released a few days ago. Their flagrant lawbreaking is nothing new and at one point a few years ago they were THREE years behind. Until recently no one in Congress said boo!
Senator Jeff Sessions and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (and others) here in December 2015 did write to the Secretary of the Dept. of Health and Human Services demanding the 2014 report. But, you should know that ORR is now behind (as of January 31, 2016) in producing 2015!
There are only a couple of reasons for the lawbreaking—incompetence, or they are hiding information until it is out of date. Go hereto read about the 2014 Report and follow links to the entire report. (Hat tip: Joanne) If you take the time to review it, you will see it is a treasure-trove of information for anyone wishing to learn more about how the refugee program effects you and your city (and the nation!). That is the Director of ORR Bob Carey (on right and responsible for the report) campaigning on the prevention of refugee suicides. He came over to ORR from a lucrative job as a federal resettlement contractor. Photo: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/orr/resource/national-suicide-prevention-month-social-media-campaign
I haven’t had time to open it, but the best sections are the statistics on refugee welfare use etc. (always shocking!). Go hereto see the list of annual reports going back decades. For energetic researchers: Do you know how the interactive data base, here, only goes back to 2002? Well, using these reports you can go all the way back to the first one for 1980 and get statistics on who came to your state, etc. I wrote this 2008 post on how many Somalis the US admitted every year by going back through those annual reports.
Are you a new reader?
For all of the new readers who arrived here this week, we have a category entitled‘where to find information’with hundreds of posts where we cataloged reports and documents and so forth. I also recommend ourfact sheet (a little out of date) and our Frequently Asked Questionsboth of which are linked in our header. About the photo: Why are refugees committing suicides? They have found out that America’s streets are not paved with gold. Some have a very tough time transitioning to American life and they miss their culture, their homes. I wonder if the do-gooders ever consider that they may not being doing the humanitarian thing by ripping people from their cultures so they can become the cheap labor force, for example, BIG MEAT.
