U.S. housing shortage presents new challenge for refugee resettlement
When the White House announced earlier this month that it would increase the number of refugees granted admission into the United States this fiscal year by four times the previous target, to 62,500 people, reversing course from President Biden’s initial plan, immigrant advocates applauded the decision. Yet groups working to help resettle refugees are now facing another new challenge: finding housing for new migrants.
Rajbhandari — hmmm! a little dissension in the ‘humanitarian’ industry?
Sheryl Rajbhandari, the founder of Heartfelt Tidbits, a Cincinnati-based organization that has helped resettle over 50,000 [their website says 40,000 but who is counting!–ed] people in western Ohio since 2008, worries that refugees will be pushed into inappropriate housing.
The government-approved resettlement agencies*** that sponsor refugees and provide services for the first 90 days will often place them in public housing with high crime rates.
Those agencies “want the money for each individual they resettle. So it’s like ‘We don’t really care if we move people,’” she said.
[….]
Once refugees are in the United States, a resettlement agency is responsible for finding and paying for housing for them for an initial period. In a real estate market driven to new highs by the pandemic, finding that housing has become increasingly difficult.
To be clear, the “resettlement agency,” one of the nine federal contractors*** doesn’t use its own money to pay for the initial housing, it uses your money that is passed through federal grants and contracts to their coffers.
Low-income and potentially dangerous housing may expose already vulnerable families to crime, and it can also restrict those families from getting the resources they need, Rajbhandari argued.
“If it’s a high-crime area, folks don’t want to go into that area,” she said. “So folks who might be able to provide assistance don’t feel comfortable driving into places where there are people being shot at and drugs are being dealt.”
Not so subtle pitch for more of your tax dollars to go to refugee resettlement.
The concerns over housing come as organizations working with refugees deal with two challenges: a sudden increase in the cap for people eligible for resettlement and limited government resources in place to help them.
[….]
…there are currently 35,000 refugees who have already passed security checks and have been cleared for entry into the U.S., and there are another 100,000 in the pipeline.
Independent resettlement organizations around the country are optimistic about reaching the 62,500 target, however difficult to achieve. The challenge now will be finding them appropriate housing.
Miry Whitehill, the founder of Miry’s List, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that assists families with the resettlement process, said this is a problem that goes deeper than just housing.
The cost of resettlement loans and plane tickets means many refugees enter the United States already owing money they must repay.
“Something that I think is really important to mention here is that refugees are starting out in debt,” Whitehill said. “Every refugee, they’re required to sign a financial contract agreeing to reimburse the resettlement agency for the cost of their flights.”
Whitehill isn’t telling the whole story on those airfare loans.
IOM bags at airports are the tip-off! Refugees Arriving!
The resettlement agency does collect the loan money from the refugees (when they can get it!), but it was your money, your tax dollars flowing through the United Nation’s International Organization for Migration that shelled out the money in the first place.
When one of the big nine does collect the airfare loan reimbursements, they get to keep a quarter of it for themselves, some years resulting in over a million in extra petty cash. Judicial Watchattempted to find out exactly how much was collected, but got the runaround.
I digress….the takeaway from this story is that Biden’s promised high number of refugees will be placed in crime ridden slums adding to the tensions already evident in most US cities unless you, the taxpayers of America stop being so greedy and spend more money on nicer housing for New Americans (because the US has run out of our own poor people).
Of course,the other option, but never discussed, is to not ‘welcome’ more refugees at this challenging time.
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the nine contractors that have monopolized all refugee distribution in the US for decades.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris andlobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
Two of the contractors, the USCCB and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service are alsopaid to find locations for the Unaccompanied Alien Children.
At this very moment they are all out scouting for new, fresh territory in which to place their refugee clients. See Winchester, VA.
“It is absolutely unacceptable if the Biden Administration is facilitating a mass migration without any input or oversight from Tennesseans and the affected communities.”
(Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn)
***Update***Governor Lee comments and incredibly a media outlet reminds its audience that Lee had welcomed more refugees when President Trump was trying to get immigration under control a couple of years ago. Is it any wonder that the Biden gang figured Tennessee was a soft target?
For years, readers would contact me to say that planes with “refugees” or migrants of some sort were being flown into small airports in small cities and rural areas. I would tell them to go film the arrivals because I couldn’t just post something without proof.
Well, finally some citizens are being proactive and doing just that.
The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (in Health and Human Services) is reportedly behind such flights arriving after dark in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
You may recall that Tennessee Governor Bill Lee was one of twenty governors who earlier this month wrote to Biden to say: NOT in my state!
But, shamefully, he was one of many Republican governors who did not support President Trump when Trump attempted to give governors a greater say in whether their states would receive refugees the federal government had chosen for the state.
FIRST ON 3: Late-night flights carrying migrant children arrive in Chattanooga
Chattanooga’s Wilson Air Center is receiving planes carrying migrant children who are being bused to multiple southeastern cities during overnight hours.
Channel 3 obtained video of one of those planes arriving Friday, May 14 shortly before 1:30 a.m.
A second video, shared with Channel 3, shows more children arriving late Saturday night. According to the source who provided the video, a third plane carrying children arrived Friday afternoon. Flight records confirm that a fourth plane arrived early Wednesday morning, May 19.
[….]
A source with direct knowledge of the operation asked to remain anonymous but tells Channel 3 that approximately 30 to 50 minors are transported at a time, some to reunite with family members and others to go to group homes. He says the operation started in Dallas, Texas, but moved to small airports recently to avoid attention.
In April, HHS confirmed a group of unaccompanied minors is being housed at a former Tennessee Temple dormitory in Highland Park. It is not clear how many of the children who have arrived in Chattanooga in recent days have been transported to that facility, but multiple sources say at least ten boys from the group were taken to the facility.
Quotes from US Senators, but what does Governor Lee say?
U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty said he was not aware of the flights into Chattanooga, but said, “It is time for President Biden to be transparent with Tennesseans and the American people regarding where the hundreds of thousands of migrants being resettled in the United States are being sent because they deserve to know.”
U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn shared a statement Wednesday afternoon, saying she was unaware of the operation in Tennessee.
“Our office has received no information from the Biden Administration informing us of a mass transportation of migrants to Tennessee,” said Blackburn. “It is absolutely unacceptable if the Biden Administration is facilitating a mass migration without any input or oversight from Tennesseans and the affected communities.”
By the way, for all of you contemplating a move to Tennessee because you might be thinking you can escape to a conservative nirvana, check it out carefully in advance. They have a lot of problems with refugees there as especially Nashville is a longtime target resettlement site.
Note that I have an entire category titled Nashville which includes over 100 posts on refugees there and in Tennessee generally.
….It is just a matter of time because out of control immigration is changing America.
Some towns and cities will change more rapidly than others, but with no brakes on an invasion from every quarter (including from the Refugee Admissions Program being accelerated by Joe Biden), you could be facing what the Coney Island area of Brooklyn is now facing.
I was shocked to see the videos of Muslim migrants, mostly Pakistanis, celebrating in an intimidating fashion the terrorist organization Hamas’ attack on Israel a few days ago.
Check out the horrifying scenes published by theRAIR Foundation:
NYC: Muslims Drive Through the Streets of ‘Little Pakistan’ Intimidating Jews (Video)
This is not Gaza. This is Brooklyn a few days ago. (Screenshot from the embedded video.)
Now that Donald Trump is no longer in office, Joe Biden to restore $235m in US aid to Palestinians. The Palestinian government no longer has to worry about losing hundreds of millions of dollars in handouts from the American government and can attack Israel without consequence. [Update: Biden is sending even more payola to Hamas/Palestinians as they attack Israel.—ed]
New York Jews Under Threat
Throughout New York City, Muslim migrants have been leading threatening demonstrations, attacking and intimidating Jews, and celebrating Hamas’ rocket attacks on innocent Israelis.
In the latest display of Islamic jubilation over the attacks by Hamas on Israelis, Muslims drove through the streets of Coney Island, New York, waving the Pakistani flag and honking their horns.
The celebration took place on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, an area flooded with Pakistani immigrants since the ’80s. The area became informally known as “Little Pakistan” among residents. A once Jewish neighborhood has been converted to a home for followers of Islam.
Just last year, the Coney Island Avenue strip was officially co-named by the city as “Muhammad Ali Jinnah Way,” after the “founder” of Pakistan.
I continue to be amazed that Jews like Ed Shapiro and those running the refugee agency HIAS(formerly Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society)and its fellow liberal Jewish organizations persist in thinking that Muslim migration on steroids will not negatively affect them, their children and their grandchildren at some point.
Now, this will really get me in trouble: Are some Jewish people missing a gene that drives a survival instinct, or do they think that if they are so very very nice to Muslims they will win them over and Muslims worldwide will recognize their kindness and give up their multi-generational hatred for Jews?
Of course Church World Service will give them rosy responses to their request for more information, but at least they can make a more informed decision before changing Winchester forever.
As I said at the time, this is likely happening in many locations around America as the nine federal refugee contractors*** scour the country for new fresh territory in which to place the tidal wave of 125,000 refugees from Asia, Africa and the Middle East that Biden says he is welcoming in Fiscal Year 2022 which begins on October first.
Winchester City Council wants more info before voting on refugees
WINCHESTER — City officials say they need more information before deciding whether to welcome international refugees to Winchester.
Councilor Bell
Councilor Richard Bell, chairman of City Council’s Planning and Economic Development Committee, told the full council on Tuesday night the proposal to allow refugees to live in Winchester needs more vetting at the committee level before a final vote is taken.
“We have requested that it be placed on a future Planning and Economic Development Committee agenda for a more in-depth presentation by the organization and for further consideration,” Bell told the nine-member council.
The organization Bell referred to is Church World Service (CWS), a global nonprofit that hopes to open an office in Winchester to serve people who have been forced from their homelands due to political, social or religious persecution.
Susannah Lepley, Virginia’s director of Immigration and Refugee Resettlement for CWS, told the Planning and Economic Development Committee at its meeting on April 29 the bulk of the refugees, at least initially, would come from Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
They will be invited to settle in the United States by the U.S. State Department after proving they have a credible fear of persecution, or have already been persecuted, because of their heritage, social status or religious beliefs.
CWS, Lepley said, would find housing in Winchester for the refugees, help them learn English and pursue U.S. citizenship, assist them with applying for public assistance until they find employment, enroll their children in school and so on.
The committee recommended council approve the request, even though member Kim Herbstritt said at the time that Winchester has a severe shortage of affordable housing so it may be difficult to find homes for the 100 or so refugees per year that want to resettle within city limits.
Bell did not say when Lepley would be invited to make a second presentation to the committee, which is next scheduled to meet on May 19. An agenda for that session has not yet been published.
What to ask…..
When, and if, Church World Service’s Lepley is invited back, it is vitally important that concerned members of the public, not just those in the city, but county residents as well, be present to hear what she has to say.
First, we must assume, that since the city government is even contemplating saying yes, that Winchester doesn’t have any homeless or needy Americans to care for and that the city is flush with funds for educating children who don’t speak English, has ample affordable housing, is prepared to deal with health issues and is in need of low-skilled workers.
Questions I would ask in no particular order are these:
How long does Church World Service take care of the newcomers they place in the city or county (yes, they can spread refugees out for a hundred miles of Winchester once the office is established)?
Since CWS supports an open southern border, will CWS also facilitate any movement of illegal aliens/unaccompanied children into the area?
Are the refugees screened in advance for diseases such as TB, HIV, and Covid-19? Who will pay for medical needs and for how long?
Does CWS have employers lined up?
Who pays for additional ESL teachers going forward?
What religions will be represented in the group of refugees? And, what other nationalities might be added later?
Who pays for translators when the refugees have a problem with the legal system or educational system? Or, if they have a medical issue? Local taxpayers?
In what neighborhoods will the refugees be placed? If Winchester has a minority neighborhood already, care must be taken not to place third worlders into those established areas especially African American neighborhoods. Cultural conflicts have been known to occur. Back in 2008 there was just such a rough period in Roanoke.
If, for instance, Winchester welcomes a hundred this year and another hundred the next year and finds it is straining local resources or causing tensions, can Winchester shut down the flow?
There are probably plenty more, but a beautiful day outside beckons….
One last thing!
R & P Abstracts
The Winchester council, in advance of another meeting with Lepley, must ask if an R & P Abstract has already been prepared for the city by CWS.
These documents, prepared at the level of your local resettlement contractor with the help and guidance of one of the major nine federal contractors, are the blueprints for what is being planned for your town for the upcoming fiscal year.
The R & P Abstracts must be submitted to the US State Department in Washington in advance of placing refugees in any target location.
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the nine contractors that have monopolized all refugee distribution in the US for decades.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris andlobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
Two of the contractors, the USCCB and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service are also paid to find locations for the Unaccompanied Alien Children.
***Update***Breitbart reporter JohnBinder reported just yesterday that Shapiro is helping move illegal aliens into the US interior too.
In 2016, with the big push to resettle tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in America, the Shapiro Foundation patriarch Ed Shapiro got the idea to increase the number of refugees that resettlement contractors were bringing into the US by pushing for an expansion of the government-run refugee resettlement model used in the US to a system similar to Canada’s.
Canada has a government program and in addition allows for private groups to sponsor refugees outside of the government program.
Now I might argue for private sponsorship if that was how our entire system was run, with no taxpayer funding permitted, purely private money for private charity. But this “new era,” as they are calling it, is simply to make more places available for third world refugees.
By the way, family foundations are a way for very wealthy people to shelter their wealth from taxes, but still use it for pet (often political!) projects.
We are Ed & Barbara Shapiro, and along with our two young-adult children, we make up The Shapiro Family. Our philanthropic work through the Foundation is an incredible labor of love and each one of us invests considerable time into the meaningful projects that we get involved with.
We are inspired by Nelson Mandela’s quote: “History will judge us by the difference we make in the everyday lives of children.”And for the first 15 years of our Foundation, we did so largely passively, through our initial significant grantees: Boston Children’s Hospital, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Horizons for Homeless Children and scholarships to The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and UCLA Anderson School.
I guess helping America’s children just wasn’t satisfying enough, or woke enough, for Ed. so…..
2016 marked a turning point for our Foundation. Ed and Barbara led a successful community-wide effort–including local, regional and national partners—to sponsor Syrian refugee families being resettled in Greater Boston. This program convinced Ed to start his next chapter, retiring from his 27-year investment management career in order to devote himself full-time to tackling the global refugee crisis.
Ed carried the highly focused approach he used during his investment career to the family’s philanthropy and decided to concentrate almost exclusively on refugees and immigration.
NPR is on it!
NPR’s Amos
And, so now here we are with NPR Refugee Reporter-in-Chief, Deborah Amos, telling us all about how Shapiro is not only using his own money for refugees, but is soliciting funds elsewhere in order to move more money into the hands of mostly federal resettlement contractors to find more community sponsors for refugee families because America has run out of poor children and families in need of help.
One of the funders of Shapiro’s new gig is none other than George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.
By the way, these Leftie movers and shakers are masters at public relations and media manipulation. A big part of what they are doing with this is to generate warm and fuzzy stories as churches, synagogues and mosques join hands to “sponsor” poor refugee families.
‘New Era In Resettlement’: U.S. Refugee Advocates Count On More Community-Based Help
When President Biden announced this week that his administration would raise the cap on refugee admissions to 62,500 for this fiscal year, refugee advocates breathed a collective sigh of relief. The number is far above the historically low limit of 15,000 refugees set by the Trump administration. Biden’s announcement was a stark turnaround after weeks of pushback from refugee advocates, outraged by a previous order keeping the 15,000 limit.
Biden is calling on communities to do more, to put foreigners first!
One of those most elated by this week’s announcement is Ed Shapiro, a Boston-based philanthropist and advocate for reimagining the U.S. refugee resettlement system to enable a lot more community-based efforts.
“It is the start of a new era in resettlement,” he says.
Biden’s goal, laid out in a key phrase in a February executive order, introduces “community and private sponsorship” as an innovation that allows local groups of volunteers to become part of the circuitry of resettlement, including the day-to-day tasks of helping newcomers find housing, jobs, health care and a sense of community.
Just so you know, libertarian think tank, the CATO Institute, has been pushing this concept for the last five or so years as they say here.
The goal is to not simply take better care of the refugees the government admits, as Shapiro and Amos imply, but to expand the number admitted.
As I’ve argued before, the United States could accept more refugees using private money and private sponsors without needing Congress’s sign-off.
Amos continues at NPR….
The U.S. usually resettles refugees in a different way: The State Department contracts with nine large resettlement organizations. Volunteers play a role, but the program is centered around professional caseworkers.
Here is my favorite line from Amos. She is saying what we have been saying for over a decade—the program operates in secret!
It’s all done quietly so communities don’t reject the newcomers.
Now, the higher cap on refugee admissions means Shapiro can finally accelerate a project that has consumed him for four years. His aim is to fund pilot programs to kick-start an addition to the traditional resettlement infrastructure. “There is pent-up demand and interest,” he says. “These are people, families, who want to help.”
He partnered with the Open Society Foundation and other funders to tap a pool of donors and raised $800,000 for grants awarded in March to eight U.S. community groups in seven states. Another round of grantees will be announced this month.
The proposals are moving testimonies, says Shapiro. One, from New Orleans, came from a multifaith community group that includes representatives from the oldest Jewish temple in the U.S. and a Roman Catholic congregation.
Who are the lucky winners?
Of course at this point in theNPRstory I wanted to know which eight community groups got those first grants from Soros and Shapiro, but other than the one mentioned in New Orleans, Amos was mum on that.
Here are the eight big winners of $100,000 each. I have to laugh because most are among the nine federal refugee contractors*** already raking in millions of taxpayer dollars for their ‘charitable’ work.
Catholic Charities of Northeast Kansas (Kansas City, KS)
Church World Service North Carolina (Durham and Greensboro, NC)
Ethiopian Community Development Council (Denver, CO and Washington, D.C.)
Home Is Here NOLA (New Orleans, LA)
Interfaith Refugee & Immigrant Services (IRIS) & Home for Refugees USA (Los Angeles, CA)
New Roots Fund (Seattle, WA)
U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) Albany Field Office (Albany, NY)
World Relief Chicagoland (Chicago, IL)
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the nine contractors that have monopolized all refugee distribution in the US for decades.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris andlobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
Two of the contractors, the USCCB and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service are alsopaid to find locationsfor the Unaccompanied Alien Children.
When, and if, Church World Service’s Lepley is invited back, it is vitally important that concerned members of the public, not just those in the city, but county residents as well, be present to hear what she has to say.
