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.