Friends of Refugees

A U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program Watchdog Group

Archive for the ‘San Antonio’ Category

Donated mattresses, bedding and upholstered furniture hold risk of bed bug infestation

Posted by Christopher Coen on April 18, 2012

***UPDATE*** – April 24, 2012 — Dovetree Apartments alleges that only one apartment was affected by bed bug infestation

Bed bugs have infested at least 24 apartment units in an apartment building housing refugees in San Antonio. The resurgence of bedbugs is a problem throughout the United States (Note: like mosquitoes they take a blood meal from humans, however, unlike mosquitoes they transmit no diseases). Bedding donated to Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of San Antonio seems to be the culprit in this case. An article at KSAT has the story:

Refugees from all over the world came to San Antonio to escape war, poverty and persecution in their home countries, yet Pamela Espurvoa, a refugee advocate, said they arrived here only to encounter a bed bug infestation at the Dove Tree Apartments in the 4500 block of Gardendale.

Yet now, Pamela Raines, director of development for Catholic Charities, the agency responsible for their resettlement, said Dove Tree will begin treatment on Friday once the affected apartments are identified.

“Catholic Charities will certainly cover it,” Raines said, referring to the cost of the extermination…

…Espurvoa said tenants of all ages were being bitten by the bugs. She said an exterminator told her the bed bugs were in the mattresses, walls, air ducts and clothing.

“He couldn’t believe the magnitude of this, and this is only one unit,” Espurvoa said.

Espurvoa said she believes at least two dozen units are infested…

…Reason being, the apartment manager said, was that the infestation occurred after the refugees moved in.

Both she and Espurvoa said the likely source was the bedding that was donated, since the families arrived with next to nothing… Read more here

An article at the San Antonio Express-News indicates that several buildings are affected. Also, a Myanmar refugee said she had not reported the problem to apartment management despite a month-long infestation.

…Exterminators have been called to combat a bedbug problem at a Northwest Side apartment complex reserved for refugees seeking asylum.

The outbreak was reported Tuesday at the Dove Tree apartments in the 4500 block of Gardendale. Dove Tree is one of several San Antonio complexes where refugees settle after arriving through the United States Refugee Resettlement Program.

Catholic Charities is helping provide exterminators to spray affected units Friday, according to a source. The organization had no comment Tuesday night.

The pest problem has been reported to affect several buildings.

Nye Reh, from Myanmar, lives with his wife and five other relatives in a two-bedroom unit where a spray of insect droppings covers the corner of a mattress.

Reh said through a relative interpreting for him that he itches throughout the day.

Damanti Biswa said she sleeps near her front door to get away from the bugs. Tika Biswa interpreted for her, saying she’s had the problem for the past month and hadn’t reported the bugs to apartment management yet…

…The resurgence of bedbugs has been a problem throughout the United States, not only in apartments but also in the nicest hotels, said Roseann Vivanco, clinical instructor at the University of Texas Health Science Center…

“Bedbugs don’t mean a person is dirty; they don’t discriminate between the rich or poor,” Vivanco said. “There does need to be some education, continuous cleaning, and they’ll need assistance with that. I’m glad to see that Catholic Charities has stepped up to the plate to help out.” Read more here

Posted in bed bugs, Burma/Myanmar, Catholic Charities Archdiocese of San Antonio Inc., Nepali Bhutanese, San Antonio, volunteers | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Iraqi refugee clients were unhappy last year with Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of San Antonio, Inc.

Posted by Christopher Coen on December 8, 2010

After the complaints by Somali and an Ethiopian refugee client of Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of San Antonio, Inc. I just found an article about how Iraqi refugee clients voiced their dissatisfaction with services at the agency last year as well. An article in the San Antonio Express-News tells more:

…On a recent morning, as the tall, 47-year-old man [Khalid Ali ] served steaming Turkish coffee to guests in his Northwest Side apartment, his 3-year-old daughter, Sura, pulled at floppy sneaker shoestrings. Her sister, 4-year-old Shahad, bent back over his knees like a gymnast, singing, “Here I am, here I am,” from the nursery rhyme, “Where is Thumbkin?” …

…His wife Sundas died in early September after a long battle with breast cancer. Doctors gave her two months to live in late August – she died a week and a half later…

…He’s frustrated along with other Iraqis because they can’t find work, in or out of their professions. Some have master’s degrees and artistic talent not tapped since the war started.

A misunderstanding about paying a bill resulted in Ali’s electricity being cut for five hours, sending him scrambling to his caseworker to get power restored for his wife’s oxygen machine.

He prefaces his statements about Catholic Charities with thanks for their aid, but he doesn’t think he’s getting the help he needs. The search for a job is taking too long, he said, and he worries what will happen when his assistance runs out… Read more here

Posted in Catholic, Catholic Charities Archdiocese of San Antonio Inc., employment services, faith-based, insufficient assistance with daily tasks, Iraqi, San Antonio, SIV (Special Immigrant Visa) immigrants | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of San Antonio, Inc. continues to neglect refugee clients

Posted by Christopher Coen on November 22, 2010

Nothing seems to have changed at Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of San Antonio, Inc. Last March we reported about the severe problems that Burmese refugee clients were having with the agency. Now Somali and Ethiopian refugee clients of the agency are coming forward to express their distress and frustrations. Refugees report that Catholic Charities placed them in small, roach-infested apartments without any home-safety orientation. When refugees call the agency they don’t hear anything back for days at a time, or case workers tell them they will be out to see them and then don’t show up. The agency has made late rent payments to landlords resulting in landlord warning letters to the refugees. Some refugees are also receiving electrical disconnect notices. Refugees lack transportation and report that overall communication with the agency is extremely poor. They asked to meet with the agency’s director of refugee programs, Paula Walker, but so far she will only speak to them by phone. Some refugees have been so desperate for help that they have resorted to calling 911.

An American volunteer said that some of the refugees asked him a couple of times to come and meet a group of new refugees “that nobody is helping”. He said he went and the small apartment soon filled with over 30 people. Most of the refugees were Somali and they were desperate. They shared some
of their stories. One said that his family was picked up at the airport and left for three days and two nights without enough food. Another refugee said that instead of the traditional rental assistance for six months, it was being cut to three months because of the huge influx of refugees into San Antonio. Yet another refugee said that they were a family with eight kids and had a two room apartment. None of the refugees had a job and no one was helping them look. The volunteer said he came out of the meeting and saw a refugee woman with a young child with hydrocephalus—the child’s head twice the normal size. The woman said the family had been in the country for a month and still had not seen a doctor, nor did they yet have a doctor’s appointment. The child clearly needed a shunt inserted into his head to relieve fluid buildup.

The volunteer said he went back the next day and started on the myriad problems of one family – because the Catholic Charities’ caseworkers were refusing to help. While he was there, one refugee man called his Catholic Charities caseworker about an appointment to get scheduled inoculations for his family. The caseworker said that he couldn’t take the family because it wasn’t “in the budget”. Another refugee had an 85-year-old mother with hepatitis-C and a wife with a uterine infection – and again, no scheduled appointments. The volunteer reports that the number of serious complaints went on and on. Some refugees complained of verbal abuse from Catholic Charities staff, with an assistant director named Hisham telling one man that he “didn’t care about his problems!” All of this added to the volunteer’s experiences from earlier this year with the abandoned Catholic Charities Burmese refugee families. One Burmese refugee man hung himself and his body was found by children. The volunteer said that his conclusion is that there are hundreds of abandoned refugees in the Wurzbach-Gardendale-Datapoint streets area – and another 80 families are expected within weeks.

After the crisis with the recently arrived Somali refugees, a couple of days later the refugees called the police on Catholic Charities. Four police cars pulled up to the apartments. The police then called Catholic Charities to find out why they weren’t helping the refugees. Then two Catholic Charities administrators arrived and passed out $100 gift cards and told the refugees to go back into their apartments. A couple of days later, four blocks away, Catholic Charities held their annual “International Gala” at the Omni Hotel. The volunteer reports that San Antonio has been completely overwhelmed by vast numbers of refugees that continue to be mindlessly pumped in. The apartment complexes in the Wurzbach, Gardendale, and Datapoint streets area have basically become “refugee camps” of confused, frustrated, un-served, and under-served refugees.

Catholic Charities’ refugee program director Paula Walker was quoted last year in a news article about the agency saying, “In the past two years, the local program grew from helping 600 refugees settle into new lives to more than 1,000.” Perhaps this is the result of raising the number of refugees an agency receives so quickly in such a short period. That, of course, would be the State Department’s doing.

Posted in Burma/Myanmar, capacity, Catholic, Catholic Charities Archdiocese of San Antonio Inc., children, Ethiopian, faith-based, food, health, housing, housing, overcrowding, insufficient assistance with daily tasks, late health screenings, police, San Antonio, Somali, Somali Bantu, State Department, transportation | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Refugee Clients of Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of San Antonio, Inc. in Desperation

Posted by Christopher Coen on March 30, 2010

Refugee clients of Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of San Antonio, Inc. who arrived a year ago are living in desperate circumstances, and a local aid leader is asking that they be cared for first before Catholic Charities brings in any more refugees (here).

Something wasn’t right with 5-year-old Taw Meh.

She threw up every morning, just before breakfast at the Head Start program she attended. It had become so frequent that her counselor, Abdul, a former interpreter for U.S. military forces in Iraq, would cover her with plastic to protect her clothes.

When he told his Family Services Association co-worker, Pam Espurvoa, about the child, she suspected her diet. She suggested they visit the Northwest Side apartment Taw Meh shared with her father, Baw Reh, 49, mother, Htwa Meh, 39, and two sisters, Pleh Meh, 15 and Mo Meh, 3.

When Espurvoa and Abdul arrived at Taw Meh’s apartment at the Auburn Creek complex off Wurzbach Road, the only food they found was rotting vegetables in the refrigerator. A chill hung through the apartment. Several wires dangled from a furnace blower that didn’t work. …parents about apartment maintenance and application deadlines. Many refugees are illiterate in their language, Espurvoa said, and the letters for phone appointments for Medicaid and food stamps are in English. They, like other refugees, do not have a phone.Meh’sreturned to the apartment in early March, with her supervisor, Susan Miller, to teach Taw EspurvoaFour beds for five people filled one of the two bedrooms. A father and his daughter lived in the other bedroom. Roaches scurried up the walls as Andrade showed the family how to use a space heater.

Why are other agencies in San Antonio having to come to the rescue of these refugees a year after their arrival? The State Department contracted with Catholic Charities to teach these refugees about apartment maintenance and application deadlines (e.g. for food stamps) during their first 30-90 days in the US.

Local aid agencies are advising that new refugees not be resettled to San Antonio until refugees already here are properly taken care of. Why didn’t Catholic Charities and the state refugee coordinator, Caitriona Lyons, think of that themselves?

Some aid workers said the best move would be to take care of those already here before bringing in more refugees.

Jann Fractor from Refugee Forum SA, a local network of organizations, churches and volunteers that helps refugees with transition needs, said several refugee families — without jobs and beyond services — faced eviction in the Wurzbach area in December, but humanitarian agencies came together to pay their rent.

Fractor, one of the forum founders, said several refugee families recently faced expulsion from their apartments, but groups scrambled to help them.

“People chipped in, but here we go again,” Fractor said.

“We can’t bring people here and have them homeless, that’s not the idea. The realistic view is not there because they’re expecting people who haven’t been educated in their own language to attain enough English in six months to get a job,” Factor said.

Notice that not only did the refugee resettlement agency apparently not continue to look out for these refugees, they also don’t seem to have at least referred the refugees to anyone who could help them fill out forms in English and turn them in on time. The refugees also don’t seem to have learned how to request help for apartment maintenance issues. Also, did Catholic Charities originally place the refugees in those roach-infested apartments at the Auburn Creek complex off Wurzbach Road? That’s against State Department contract rules, albeit rules that are not enforced.

Why do members of the community and local aid leaders have to come forward to the media and point out that refugees are not receiving the help they need from Catholic Charities rather than the state refugee coordinator dealing with these issues before they become a crisis?

We had to point the Texas state coordinator Caitriona Lyons to refugees being neglected in Houston, and she was fairly unresponsive (here, here and here). She refused to contact the refugees in question, and would not answer basic questions about what she was doing to investigate the situation. This, at a time when President Obama is calling for a new focus on open and accessible government. Are refugee program government oversight agencies determined to cover up their own failings with a culture of secrecy and unresponsiveness to the public?

I think what we need even more than additional funding for this program is some new, real accountability. Certainly government checks sent directly to the refugees is the only sensible way to help these refugees. It’s clear that many refugee resettlement agencies cannot be counted on to deliver direct services to the refugees.

**UPDATE** November 22, 2010

**UPDATE** December 8, 2010

Posted in Burma/Myanmar, Catholic, Catholic Charities, Karenni, Obama administration, San Antonio, State Department, Texas, USCCB | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

 
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