Archive for the ‘Cuban’ Category
Posted by Christopher Coen on January 20, 2012
Last May we read news reports in the Milwaukee media that Lutheran Social Services of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan had placed Burmese refugees in an apartment building overflowing with code violations, roaches, leaking sewage, and owned and operated by a known felon involved in child-porn. A local reporter tried to get some answers from the State Department about their contractor, but answers were not forthcoming.
Now, based on a State Department monitoring report of USCRI’s International Institute of Wisconsin (IIW), it seems that agency was violating almost every State Department contract requirement. Monitors visited the usual small sample (too small?) of three refugee cases and found serious failure of the agency in providing minimal contract-requirements in all three cases. Problems ranged from lack of orientation or help of any type for a refugee family to refugees in substandard housing.
…[A] Burmese family of four lived in an apartment complex…The apartment visited had a smoke detector that did not work; the bathroom had missing ceiling tiles with pipes exposed, mold around the chalk in the bathtub, and evidence of water leakage; there were exposed wires in the hallway; paint was dirty with holes and nails on the wall…
They told monitors they did not receive any orientation from the agency. The caseworker told monitors that orientation was provided but that he had relied on the 17-year-old daughter for translation…This was not documented in the case file…
…[A] single Burmese Karen woman lived in a room in an apartment shared with a Burmese married couple…Her bedroom door did not have a doorknob or lock. She used a bookcase/dresser to block the door at night. The bathroom had a leaky ceiling. There were two broken windows in the living room and in the kitchen. She reported mice infestation in the apartment, and monitors observed mouse droppings in the kitchen pantry… Read more here
By the way, minors should never be used as interpreters.
Posted in Burma/Myanmar, community/cultural orientation, Cuban, cultural/community orientation, post arrival, dangerous neighborhoods, home visits, housing, housing, substandard, International Institute of Wisconsin, language, late health screenings, Milwaukee, pocket-money, rats and roaches, State Department, teenagers | Tagged: Milwaukee, refugees, resettlement, substandard housing, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on January 19, 2012
A pair of enterprising immigrant medical professionals in Minnesota are showing that with a bit of help refugee medical professionals can get back into their professions. An article in the Minnesota Post details the story:
…They have treated patients in some of the world’s toughest places: Pakistan’s earthquake-stricken mountains, Burma’s embattled neighborhoods and crowded camps where Bhutanese families sought refuge.
What hundreds of these doctors and nurses haven’t been able to do is treat anyone in Minnesota where barriers to foreign-trained medical workers are formidable.
Now, they are surmounting those barriers — and, in the process, filling serious gaps in Minnesota’s health care delivery — thanks to Dr. Wilhelmina Holder and Stephen Nguyagwa.
From scratch, Holder and Nguyagwa built a ground-breaking system for supporting foreign-trained doctors and nurses in their struggle to win the credentials they need to practice in Minnesota…
Their leadership rose from deeply disappointing personal experience…
…Holder, 64, was a medical doctor whose career was shattered by civil war in her homeland, Liberia, where her father had been the president. Like millions of other refugees, she found herself absorbed for years in the distractions of settling in a new land and caring for the needs of a displaced family. By the time she was free to resume her practice, doors had closed to her in Minnesota, even though she had updated her skills.
“To my amazement, I realized I never would get into residency,” Holder said.
Instead, she channeled her energy into helping others overcome the same obstacles. She knew doctors who were working as taxi drivers and parking-lot attendants even while their communities cried for their professional services…
…Of some 250 medical professionals who have participated in the association’s program, only about 20 doctors have stepped up to residency programs so far, Nguyagwa said. About 20 nurses have gone all of the way to nursing jobs, he said. A few dentists, pharmacists and professionals in other medical specialties also have gone through the program and landed jobs…
…All three Somali doctors who went through the program last year won residency slots. So prospects are bright for this year’s class… Read more here
Posted in Burma/Myanmar, Cuban, economic self-sufficiency, health, Minnesota, Nepali Bhutanese, professionals, Somali | Tagged: African & American Friendship Association for Cooperation & Development, medical professionals, refugees, resettlement, Stephen Nguyagwa., Wilhelmina Holder | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on August 25, 2011
Catholic Charities of Houston, the agency which was the subject of complaints from gay Iraqi refugees in 2010, is now attempting to defend itself from allegations that a worker sexually assaulted an 11-year-old refugee boy in 2007. ABC 13 KTRK-TV tells us more:
HOUSTON (KTRK) — A former Catholic Charities worker is accused of indecency with a child, and the boy involved says the worker threatened not to give financial help to his family if he told anyone.
The man in question worked at Catholic Charities until 2009. He is currently working for another county agency, but is not yet under arrest, so we went looking for the man wanted by authorities.
In 2007 while working at Catholic Charities, prosecutors say Carlos Valera sexually assaulted an 11-year-old Cuban refugee whose family was receiving help from the charity.
“The defendant would call the victim to his office and ask if he wanted some candy,” said assistant district attorney Tolu Omodele. “The victim would go into his office, and the defendant would grab his hand.”…
…we contacted his former employer. In a statement Catholic Charities says it was made aware of a potential problem two years ago.
- “Catholic Charities is aware of criminal allegations made today in Houston against a former employee of this organization. Two years ago Catholic Charities acted quickly to investigate concerns about the employee. After engaging an outside firm to independently investigate, we terminated the employee in November 2009 for violating our agency’s Ethical and Personal Conduct Policy. We remain committed to safety and wellbeing of our 90,000 clients in the Greater Houston area and fully support the independent and law enforcement investigations of this matter.”…
…”He threatened the victim,” Omodele said. “He told him not to say anything. He told him that if he did tell anyone, that his family would no longer be assisted by the organization.”… Read more here
What I’d like Catholic Charities of Houston to respond to is what the agency’s role was in the delay in the allegations coming forward, which it claims to have known about for two-years.
Posted in Catholic, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, children, Cuban, faith-based, Houston, sexual abuse | Tagged: Carlos Valera, Catholic Charities of Houston, child abuse, Cuban, refugees, resettlement, sexual assault | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on June 10, 2011
The family of renowned Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died last year while on a hunger strike, are on their way to Miami for resettlement. The State Department has assigned them to the International Rescue Committee according to a BBC report.
The family of renowned Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died last year on hunger strike, have left their country for the US with his ashes.
Thirteen family members were due on a flight from Havana to Miami on Thursday, his mother said. Airport officials said they had arrived.
The family had earlier received visas allowing them to emigrate to the US.
Zapata was 42 when he died in February 2010 after an 85-day hunger strike demanding better prison conditions.
He was the first Cuban activist to starve himself to death in protest in nearly 40 years, and his death drew international condemnation…
…The International Rescue Committee in Miami, which assists refugees, said the family would be settled in four apartments and given food and clothing… Read more here
Checking our State Department monitoring reports page I see that the most recent monitoring of the Miami IRC office occurred in 2002. Yet, the Admissions Office claims to have given us every monitoring report from 1999 to 2008.
The 2002 report indicates that monitors found that the IRC was not visiting refugees at home within the first 30 days as required, and that refugee clients still did not have food stamps more than a month after being resettled. The office also had a very low 90-day employment rate for refugees – 39%.
Refugee home visits revealed that none of the 3 families visited had signed a lease with their landlord. Monitors found a refugee family of four crowded into a one-bedroom apartment. The mother and father slept in the kitchen on a small cot from the janitor’s closet in the hallway. It also appeared from case notes that the IRC did not visit the parents or younger son until just one-day before the older son’s arrival in the US. Another refugee family reported that they had been in the US for over a month yet still did not have food stamps. A third refugee family had only been in the US for four months, yet they received a notice that their food stamps would be cut off. IRC Miami staff seemed to be “unaware” of the family’s problems.
Posted in Cuban, IRC, Miami | Tagged: Cuban, human rights, International Rescue Committee, IRC, Miami, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, refugee, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, resettlement | 3 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on February 27, 2011
The State Department finally released another inspection report of YMCA International Services, a Houston USCRI affiliate, three years after we submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. I blogged about this case last June.
This report is from January 2008 and reports that YMCA International Services was “non-complaint” with most of the terms of its government refugee contract. That’s a nice way to say “contractual fraud” and “neglect and abuse of refugees”.
Here are some of the highlights of the report:
- All refugee homes inspected had significant roach and/or mice infestation.
- Refugees and YMCA expressed concern about safety of refugee apartment complexes. Refugee families at the Glendale Park Apartments complex reported that people were harassing them on their way to the supermarket and their children were getting into fights on the bus (being attacked?).
- YMCA did not give refugees ready-to-eat food upon arrival.
- Records were in complete disarray.
- Home visits to refugees were almost never documented.
- A Cuban refugee couple only had a bed with one small, thin blanket, a plastic folding table, and two folding chairs. The bed was extremely uncomfortable, if not unsafe, with protruding mattress springs. The family waited over 45 minutes at the airport for the YMCA case worker to arrive, who did not speak their language. YMCA did the housing and personal safety orientation using hand signals. The couple did not feel safe in the apartment complex. They had heard of local robberies and the police had come to their door warning them to.use caution in the parking lot. YMCA took 3½ months to give the family community and cultural orientation.
- Upon arrival YMCA gave an Iraqi refugee couple with a small child only one bed (no bed for the child) with one small, thin blanket, a plastic folding table, and two folding chairs. The bed was extremely uncomfortable, if not unsafe, with protruding mattress springs. The YMCA employee who picked them up at the airport did not speak their language. YMCA did the housing and personal safety orientation in English. The couple did not feel safe in the apartment complex as they had heard of local robberies and the police had come to their door warning them to
use caution in the parking lot. YMCA took 3½ months to give the family community and cultural orientation. There was no ready-to-eat food upon arrival. The family used money they brought from Iraq to buy food until they received their food stamps. Neighbors told them the apartment complex was “risky” and they wanted to move. The family received an electrical bill that began one month before they arrived, but YMCA told them they must pay it. No one from YMCA visited the family until three months after their arrival, and YMCA did not give them a community orientation so they did not even know how to use the bus system.
- YMCA placed a Burmese refugee family that arrived in December in an apartment that had a large hole in a ground-floor bedroom window, and the management still had not repaired it two weeks later. The bed YMCA gave them was so uncomfortable that they slept on the floor. No one from YMCA spoke their language at the airport. YMCA did the housing and personal safety orientation in English and hand signals. It was two months before someone from YMCA visited them at home.
- YMCA placed a Burundian refugee couple in an apartment complex surrounded by barbed wire. The only furniture upon arrival was four plastic folding chairs and five beds. For their first two months the family ate their meals on the floor. They pulled couches from the trash. No one from YMCA spoke their language at the airport. YMCA did the housing and personal safety orientation using hand signals. The family needed clothes but YMCA did not offer to help them.
- YMCA caseworkers were enthusiastic! Yipeeee!
- The State Department monitors had to order YMCA to check all fiscal year 2007 refugee cases and compensate refugees for all missing money.
- YMCA fired the Refugee Program Director, Gabriel Gebray, yet allowed the agency’s Executive Director, Jeff Watkins, to keep his job. He apparently got off scott-free.
Here is a question: if an Executive Director of an organization claimed he had no idea how his refugee clients were being neglected, what does that tell you about his performance? Don’t Executive Directors ever look at the records or talk to refugee clients?
I know ignorance is bliss but is it an excuse to not be accountable?
Posted in beds, Burma/Myanmar, Burundian, clothes, community/cultural orientation, Cuban, dangerous neighborhoods, food, furnishings, lack of, home visits, household items, missing or broken, housing, housing, substandard, Houston, Iraqi, language, language interpretation/translation, lack of, meeting refugees at the airport, rats and roaches, safety, State Department, USCRI, YMCA International Services | Tagged: Gabriel Gebray, houston, Jeff Watkins, refugee neglect, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, resettlement, State Department, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, USCRI, YMCA International Services | 3 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on February 11, 2011
The Statesman Journal has an article about a Cuban refugee who died in 2009 from neglect at a Oregon state psychiatric hospital. He arrived from Cuba at age 12 and was institutionalized after his doctor gave him the wrong dose of medication and released him prematurely, after which he had a psychotic episode and injured his mother. An investigation of the psychiatric clinic where he spent 15 years concluded that the facility “failed to properly treat his chronic medical conditions, failed to prepare a meaningful treatment plan for him, failed to update his medical chart and failed to return calls from his family in the last weeks of his life.” Ironically, Oregon State Hospital was the site of the 1975 filming of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
A wrongful death lawsuit alleges that an Oregon State Hospital patient who died at the Salem psychiatric facility in 2009 was subjected to 15 years of “inhumane treatment” there.
The federal lawsuit, filed on behalf of the estate of Moises Perez, compares Perez’s flawed care at the state hospital to the tale of mental hospital cruelty told in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” the novel written by the late Oregon author Ken Kesey, which spawned a 1975 movie filmed at OSH.
“While the novel is fiction, the frightening reality is that the OSH is worse than Ken Kesey ever imagined,” the lawsuit says. “The hospital ignores and oppresses its patients on a daily basis. This oppression was embodied in the life and death of Moises Perez.”…
…According to the lawsuit, Perez “suffered on a daily basis” because of deficient care provided him at Oregon’s main mental hospital.
“Over the course of his 15 years in the OSH, Mr. Perez developed a number of serious health conditions,” the suit says. “At the time of his death, he was suffering several ailments, including but not limited to congestive heart failure, hypertension, diabetes and obesity. The development of these ailments was directly related to the constitutionally inadequate care and treatment Mr. Perez received …”…
…The lawsuit asserts that Perez received flawed mental health care in Oregon prior to his commitment to the state hospital.
Perez was 12 when he and his family escaped Communist Cuba in a boat filled with refugees, hoping for a life of freedom in the United States, the suit says.
As a teenager living in Woodburn, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and the family turned to Marion County for help.
“With medication, they were told, Moises could live a relatively normal life,” the suit says. “They were so grateful for the help that their adopted country and state were giving to Moises.”
But Perez had a psychotic episode after a psychiatrist working for the county gave him the wrong dose of medicine and released him prematurely from a stint of inpatient hospital care, according to the suit.
“Due to his psychotic episode, Moises attacked his mother at their home, almost killing her, and severing a number of her fingers,” it says.
Found guilty except for insanity of attempted murder, Perez was placed in the state hospital.
“For the next 15 years, Moises was subjected to inhumane treatment at the OSH on a continuous basis,” the suit says. “He suffered on a daily basis. Ultimately, Moises died at the age of 42 because of his treatment at OSH.”…
…OIT investigators reported that Perez’s caregivers on Ward 50F failed to properly treat his chronic medical conditions, failed to prepare a meaningful treatment plan for him, failed to update his medical chart and failed to return calls from his family in the last weeks of his life… Read more here
Posted in Cuban, mental health, Oregon | Tagged: Cuban refugees, mental illness, Moises Perez, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, oregon, Oregon State Hospital, psychiatric care, refugee resettlement, refugees, resettlement, schizophrenia | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on September 10, 2010
The issue of lack of interpreters for refugees during medical appointments is the focus of an article in the Anchorage Press. The piece focuses on the case of a Sudanese single refugee mother who was coughing up blood, but who a medical clinic misdiagnosed as having “touch of pneumonia” while refusing any suggestion that she needed an interpreter. Doctors later correctly diagnosed her with a heart tumor and ovarian cancer, and operated on her twice – again with no interpretation provided. Medical personnel strapped her down, and then played western music and danced in a failed attempt to calm her as she panicked while not knowing what was happening.
According to the article there are now thousands of refugees residing in Anchorage, many of them given medical treatment at clinics and doctors offices without the use of interpreters.
…there are about 1,000 Southern Sudanese refugees, between 5,000 and 6,000 Hmong refugees, about 100-plus Somali refugees, maybe 50 Iraqi refugees, 100 Bhutanese refugees and about 500 former Soviet Union refugees. There are also various asylees from Gambia and South America, entrants from Cuba and refugees from African countries such as Togo and Congo…
…Many Alaska physicians are breaking the law—specifically, “Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which requires that any health care provider who receives federal funds, including funding from Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program or Medicare, to take reasonable steps to ensure meaningful access to its health services,” says Doreena Wong, a health policy expert and lawyer at the National Health Law Program, a public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C.
“It is horrifying to watch a human being treated this way. If you look at it from the doctor’s office, they don’t want to get known for this,” says Karen Ferguson, the director of the Refugee Assistance & Immigration Services (RAIS) program in Anchorage. She has a packet of information and a stocked reserve of horrific stories—cases of doctors’ seemingly malicious abuse of refugees in ill health….here
As in other parts of the refugee resettlement program, providers here are ignoring laws and regulations at will. I should note that when people do report the problems, the government oversight agencies do little to correct them. It’s as if the U.S. refugee resettlement program is still stuck in the wild west phase of its development, with government bureaucrats who can not be shaken out of their comfort zones.
…Medicaid in Alaska reimburses physicians for medical services but not for interpreters. It’s simple. An interpreter can cost between $40 to $120 per hour. If you are being paid $150 for a visit, it doesn’t make sense to pay $100 for an interpreter.
Curiously, the Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center in Fairview provides interpreters for any and every client who needs it. According to Joan Fisher, its director, they accommodate “over 21 different languages.” How? It turns out that with the special designation as a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), Fisher can bill the federal government for interpretation services. It’s no secret formula. Find the money and find interpreters. Alaska physicians are not malicious; they’re practical.
Thus one encounters the common “friends and family” solution—the free solution—a pernicious panacea, where the responsibility for finding an interpreter is passed on to the patient, who is recommended to enlist the help of a multilingual friend or family member. Of the nine providers interviewed for this article, eight said that they depend on friends and family for their patients with limited English.
Think about this: If you are a mother, and you have a son who is moderately bilingual, would you want him to interpret for you at your next appointment at the OB/GYN? If you are a father, and you have a daughter who is bilingual, would you want your daughter to interpret at your next prostate exam? Would you want your friend or family member to be the first to know that you have cancer?
In the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Department of Justice writes, “It is inappropriate to ask family members or other companions to interpret for a person who is deaf or hard of hearing. Family members may be unable to interpret accurately in the emotional situation that often exists in a medical emergency.” Are the Sudanese refugee and the deaf individual different in this respect?
If something goes wrong and the physician used a family member deemed inappropriate (such as a minor) as an interpreter, the provider is liable. The Health Law Program studied a cohort of malpractice cases and found that nearly three percent of all cases arose from such problems, costing doctors millions…
…Doreena Wong from the Health Law Program comments that “larger providers save money with interpreters.” For this reason, hospitals generally have systematic methods for interpretation needs. The problem is with small to medium private practices.
“The solution is simple,” says Barbara Richards, the regional director of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. If Alaska requests it, the federal government will provide the majority of the funding necessary to reimburse Alaska physicians for interpreters. Thirteen states have already implemented similar programs, including Washington, Hawaii, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Maine and Utah…
…The process to solve [this problem] is easy. Either the Alaska Legislature or the state director of Health & Human Services would need to recommend that interpretation services be included in the state Medicaid budget. Because law requires it, the federal government would immediately approve the expense. The state would cover a minority of the cost. Doctors would then be able to bill for interpreters.
Doctors want access to interpreters. Refugees need it. The law requires it. All the state needs to do is suggest it. In one of the most culturally diverse states in the nation, it only makes sense.
Just so readers know, language interpretation by phone is available to any organization that needs it via a company called Language Line. It is available 24/7 by phone in 175 languages and costs $2.90 to $3.90 per minute, with a $100 monthly minimum.
Posted in abuse, Alaska, Cuban, former Soviet republics, health, HHS, Hmong, Iraqi, language, language interpretation/translation, lack of, Nepali Bhutanese, Refugee Assistance & Immigration Services (RAIS), Somali, Sudanese | Tagged: ADA, Alaska, Americans with Disabilities Act, Anchorage, Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center, Department of Health & Human Services, Federally Qualified Health Center, FQHC, health care provider, interpretation, Language Line, Medicaid, National Health Law Program, RAIS, Refugee Assistance & Immigration Services, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, resettlement, Sudanese refugees, Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on September 8, 2010
The Refugee Women’s Health Clinic in Phoenix is the subject of an article in The Arizona Republic. The clinic set up a system to guide refugee women through each step of the process to show them how the system works, so they can learn to navigate it on their own. Refugees seem to benefit greatly from a hands-on approach to refugee resettlement, rather than a tough love approach that leaves refugees lost – an important lesson for refugee resettlement agencies.
Volunteers…are the lifeblood of the Phoenix clinic, working hands-on to guide refugees through every step of their appointments. Many of them…are refugees themselves. They understand the fears and frustrations these women feel about navigating something totally alien: the American health-care system.
The clinic has served more than 400 patients since it was opened in October 2008 by the Maricopa Integrated Health System as part of its larger women’s clinic. The clinics are funded through the county health system.
Crista Johnson, the clinic’s medical director, said she recognized the need for more hands-on involvement when patients began wandering around MIHS for hours at a time, not knowing where to pick up prescriptions or get blood work done.
The clinic, which now has five volunteers and five translators, is an important resource for Arizona’s refugees, whose population is growing as its demographics shift. There are 3,260 refugees in the state, according to the Arizona Refugee Resettlement Program. Somalis, Cubans and Sudanese historically have dominated Arizona’s refugee population, but since 2008, there has been a surge from Bhutan, Myanmar, Burundi, Iraq and Iran…
…For most refugees, scheduling an appointment is a foreign process – like everything else about their new lives here.
The ultimate goal is to empower patients to navigate the health-care process by themselves, Johnson said.
Until then, patients are guided every step, starting with a knock on the front door.
Employees at apartment complexes remind every patient of her appointment the day before and call for a taxi to pick her up on the day of the appointment.
Once the cab drops a patient off, hospital volunteers accompany her as she waits in the reception area. They help her fill out insurance paperwork and start friendly conversation.
A volunteer or an interpreter stays with every patient throughout the appointment, taking care of her other children while her temperature is taken or translating from behind a curtain in the exam room as she gets a pap smear.
Then, volunteers take every patient to pick up her prescriptions or get X-rays. Before patients leave the clinic, Nizigiyimana schedules follow-up appointments and calls for taxis to take them home.
Georgia Sepic owns and manages a Phoenix apartment complex in which 97 percent of residents are refugees. Sepic said she emphasizes the importance of routine health checkups to her residents…
…Refugee women are skeptical and fearful of authority, Nizigiyimana said, because many of them have experienced rape, torture or trauma. Volunteers like Abdalla try to minimize the patient-provider mentality by approaching the women as friends… here
I notice that at one apartment complex in Phoenix refugees make up 97 percent of the residents, which is interesting following on the heels of refugee housing segregation in Boise, in another article.
The mention that refugee women are often skeptical and fearful of authority is something that is central to refugee resettlement. Countless times I have witnessed resettlement agencies who play with refugees’ fears in order to intimidate refugees not to complain when the resettlement agencies neglect their contractual responsibilities. Another common practice is questioning refugees after they have spoken to community members who are critical of resettlement agencies. Resettlement workers will pepper refugees with questions about who they spoke to, why they spoke to that person, and what they said – sending a clear message that refugees are not to voice any of their concerns or complaints to members of the community. The refugee program should never tolerate any refugee resettlement agency that uses refugees’ fears to coerce them.
Posted in Arizona, Burma/Myanmar, Burundian, Cuban, health, intimidation of refugees, Iranian, Iraqi, Nepali Bhutanese, Phoenix, Somali, Somali Bantu, women | Tagged: Arizona, health-care system, Maricopa county, Maricopa Integrated Health System, Phoenix, rape, refugee health, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugee women, Refugee Women's Health Clinic, refugees, Somali bantu, torture, women's health | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on August 26, 2010
Catholic Charities, Inc. in Oregon this week dedicated a brand-new 60,000 square foot headquarters in Portland. The building, designed by Lundin Cole Architects, includes a homeless shelter with computers, laundry and shower facilities, an administrative floor with 14 conference rooms, and an oratory with beautiful sculptures of the Holy Family and the risen Christ. A significant part of the complex is an empty second floor that will allow for future growth.
…Catholic Charities will dedicate its new building, the Clark Family Center.
…In less than 18 months, 145 individuals, corporations and foundations, along with funding from investors from a special federal tax credit program brought the project funding to completion…Major gifts came not only from individuals such as Robert Franz and the Clark family including, Maybelle Clark Macdonald, Mary Clark and Mike and Tracey Clark, but also from many of the major foundations in the area including the Joseph Weston Public Foundation, the Collins Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Meyer Memorial Trust, M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, Regence BlueCross BlueShield and Providence Health and Services. The response was an affirmation of the positive impact of Catholic Charities in our community. Community Funding Group also helped Catholic Charities get a large tax credit for the new building.
In June 2010, the staff and clients of Catholic Charities began to occupy their new home and the activity in the building is teeming.
On the basement level, chronically homeless women, who are assisted by the Housing Transitions program, now have space for meeting with caseworkers, access to computers, and laundry and shower facilities to assist them in preparing for job interviews.
A storage facility exists on the basement level to hold the many donations Catholic Charities needs. Along with helping homeless women furnish an apartment, Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement services furnishes apartments with household items and furniture when the agency moves a refugee family from war-torn parts of the world to the Portland area.
…For the first time, Catholic Charities will have storage space on site for easy access.
Most program staff will work in open spaces on the third floor and fourth floors. The vital work of the agency is done, however, in the 14 conference rooms located in this space.
…In addition to some program staff, the top floor of the center houses Catholic Charities administration. …with more than 180 employees the need for accounting, human resources, technology services, development and executive management is important.
…A unique feature of the top floor is the Regence Life Learning Center. Internally, the large room will be used for board of directors meetings and employee gatherings.
…Within an intimate area of the Regence Life Learning Center is a unique space – an oratory dedicated to the Holy Family donated by Mark and Leslie Ganz. This chapel-like space, with beautiful sculptures of the Holy Family and the risen Christ, offers the opportunity for quiet reflection for the staff during what can be challenging and stressful daily work.
A significant component of the complex is an empty second floor. This space allows for the development of new programs in the future.
…The Clark Family Center was designed by Lundin Cole Architects and incorporates many green features including sun shades to sunlight, electric car charging stations and permeable pavement. here
The question that comes to my mind, however, is how Catholic Charities is able to raise such sizable funding for this type of complex while seemingly not being able to pay for minimum, basic services for their refugee clients.
The State Department’s most recent inspection report of Catholic Charities, from October 2006, indicates that the resettlement agency placed a Somali refugee family of nine into a three-bedroom apartment. Yet, according to Portland’s occupancy codes a dwelling unit is deemed overcrowded (29.30.220) “if there are more residents than one plus one additional resident for every 100 square feet of floor area of the habitable rooms in the dwelling unit”. The family had arrived 7 weeks earlier and the head of the household said that Catholic Charities had not given them winter coats, hats, or mittens, and that no one from catholic Charities had advised the family about immigration issues or advised them about repaying their IOM refugee travel loans. The family also had no personal hygiene items in the bathroom, and there were no towels anywhere in the apartment even though Catholic Charities represented in the case files that they had given the family towels.
An Ethiopian refugee family of four also indicated that no one from Catholic Charities had provided them with information about their immigration status or about repaying their IOM travel loans.
An elderly husband and wife refugee couple from Cuba that arrived five months earlier was found living in a three-bedroom home crowded with eleven people, all relatives (his son and family had been resettled just 11 months earlier and appeared to be struggling with their own resettlement). The elderly refugee man was suffering from epilepsy, diabetes, and chronic depression, and was hospitalized twice since arriving. His doctor advised him to find a separate apartment due to high activity and noise levels in the house. The couple told the State Department monitors that they wished that Catholic Charities had offered them more support.
The monitors also found that Catholic Charities’ case files were haphazard and disorganized. Of particular concern was lack of compliance regarding services to refugee minors, including lack of post-arrival assessment, home visits, and regular in-person contact with the minor for 90 days after arrival.
I know that refugee resettlement agencies always claim that they don’t have enough public funding for minimum-required services for their refugee clients, but then how are agencies such as Catholic Charities at the same time able to afford multi-million dollar new headquarters?
It would be nice if mainstream journalists would ask some of these tough questions.
Posted in Catholic Charities Archdiocese of San Antonio Inc., children, clothes, Cuban, Ethiopian, faith-based, housing, housing, overcrowding, immigration assistance, lavish new offices, Oregon, Portland, Somali, State Department, Travel Loan Program, USCCB | Tagged: catholic charities, Clark Family Center, Cuban refugees, Ethiopian refugees, IOM, IOM travel loans, Portland Oregon, refugee minors, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement program, refugee travel loans, refugees, resettlement, Somali refugees, State Department, us catholic conference of bishops, USCCB | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on July 15, 2010
A 15-year-old Eritrean refugee boy was murdered on June 11th at the apartment complex that the International Institute in St. Louis (a USCRI affiliate) resettled his family and other refugees to. The neighborhood the apartments are in is known as unsafe, yet the International Institute continued to place refugees there do to the apartments’ size and cost.
Sahele Wodede
[Sahele Wodede] and his family were in search of a stable life, a place to rebuild. After Sahele’s father was killed in their home country of Eritrea, the rest of the family fled to a refugee camp in neighboring Ethiopia. When the family relocated to St. Louis in 2007, safety was foremost. So much so that the family picked up and moved when Sahele’s mother felt their apartment on Hodiamont Avenue was too dangerous.
But it wasn’t enough.
On June 11, one week after finishing his sophomore year, Sahele was gunned down at the same apartment complex his family had abandoned.
The 15-year-old had returned to the apartments often to visit one of his good friends and soccer mates, Jujuba, who came to the U.S. 10 months after Sahele. The boys were from the same refugee camp. They loved their new American life but talked fondly about their homeland.
Sahele and four other teens were dropping off Jujuba at his home June 11, after a day of soccer practice at Tower Grove Park. As the teens walked to the front door, a white car drove by. Several shots were fired from an automatic rifle. An 18-year-old took a bullet to the chest. Sahele was shot twice in the head, with the second bullet traveling down his back. He collapsed in Jujuba’s apartment, where eight family members were at home, terrified but unharmed after bullets came through a front window. Sahele died at a hospital a short time later. The 18-year-old is recovering.
The shootings have set the small Eritrean community in St. Louis on edge. here
The International Institute’s chief executive officer claims that the problem lies, not with her agency for placing the refugees in a dangerous area, but with the refugees who just don’t understand how dangerous the city is. Plus, they trained the refugees to be streetwise.
Anna Crosslin, chief executive officer of the International Institute of St. Louis, said that the agency worked with police and neighborhood groups and that refugees were trained to be streetwise.
“We struggle with the whole perception of what is safe and what isn’t,” Crosslin said.
Refugees think of the city as safe harbor from the atrocities they faced in their home country.
“They say: ‘I’m safe, I’m safe. I’m free.’ Until something like this happens, they don’t realize (crime) is real,” she said.
Yet, the refugees do indeed seem to have understood the dangers facing them in the neighborhood, contrary to Anna Crosslin’s claims.
When the family came to St. Louis, they moved in next to refugees from Somalia, Nepal, Iraq and Cuba. All sought the roomy and cheap accommodations of the apartment complex on Hodiamont Avenue.
Sahele’s family felt uneasy there, in a neighborhood that did not always welcome outsiders and is known for its violence. One of Sahele’s brothers was beaten. So the family moved to another part of town after only a few months.
Teachers who work with refugees in the St. Louis Public Schools say the students have complained about the Hodiamont apartments. The neighborhood is not walkable to the schools refugees attend or to most of the services they need.
“The kids are constantly harassed, their bikes get stolen. Car windows get broken out,” said teacher Sarah Natwick, also with the English language program at Roosevelt.
Ms. Crosslin goes on to claim that her organization just can’t find large enough apartments with landlords who are willing to take refugees with no credit or work history.
An ongoing challenge, Crosslin said, is finding large apartments with cheap rent. The agency must abide by city occupancy permits, which restrict how many people can live in a residence. Most refugee families are large.
“The ability to find three- and four-bedroom apartments is a woeful problem,” Crosslin said.
Most landlords require credit ratings and work history — two things refugees don’t have.
“We work with landlords who will take them on faith,” said Crosslin.
Yet, do landlords really ask for work histories as Ms. Crosslin claims? I asked a few people in our group and none of us have ever been asked for this when applying for an apartment or helping refugees to apply. They do ask for one’s current employer in order to verify income, although any source of income is usually acceptable. As to credit histories, many landlords do not ask for this as so many people on the market for inexpensive apartments have poor credit histories. Most landlords are more interested in whether or not someone has an eviction on their record or not.
Of course even if landlords in St Louis are asking for work and credit histories as Ms. Crosslin claims, does that mean that refugees must be resettled to dangerous apartment complexes? It is the International Institute in St. Louis, in partnership with the State Refugee Coordinator, Sandra Nelson, who is recommending St. Louis as an appropriate resettlement site for international refugees. If we are to believe that the only place to resettle these refugees is to Hodiamont Avenue apartments in which their property and lives are in danger, then is St. Louis really a good site for them?
I think that if refugee resettlement officials also risked paying with their lives for these decisions, just like the refugees do, that we would quickly see a sudden change in how they conduct refugee resettlement in this country.
Posted in children, Cuban, dangerous neighborhoods, Eritrean, housing, International Institute in St. Louis, Iraqi, Missouri, Nepali Bhutanese, safety, Somali, St. Louis | Tagged: Anna Crosslin, Eritrea, Eritrean, Ethiopia, Hodiamont Avenue, International Institute in St. Louis, refugees, resettlement, Sahele Wodede, Sandra Nelson, US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, USCRI | 11 Comments »
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