Refugees arrive to housing pinch
Lack of quality, affordable options poses challenge for those settling in Albany
Their first displacement was caused by political unrest and economic crisis. The second was caused by a house fire.
The family from Burundi lost their apartment in West Hill about a month ago, and couldn’t find a new one — even with at least three refugee resettlement organizations helping. Finally, an affordable apartment was found — but it wouldn’t be available until Nov. 1. Until then? A hotel has been their home.
As Albany is anticipating the arrivals of roughly 400 refugees in this fiscal year, in addition to more than 100 Afghan refugees quickly being resettled in the area, refugee resettlement organizations are concerned that the newcomers will face the same difficulties as the family from Burundi: Finding quality, affordable apartments in a timely manner.
“We had everybody looking for an apartment, and it just wasn’t there,” said Tim Doherty, executive director of the West Hill Refugee Welcome Center. “We don’t know how many (refugees) are going to come — where can we even house them?”
An affordable housing shortage
For many involved in public and affordable housing, the low supply and high demand is nothing new. But the need seen this year has been even greater.
“The group is probably experiencing first-hand what low-income residents and communities of color in Albany have been experiencing for decades and has only worsened, which is a severe lack of affordable housing,” said Rebecca Garrard, legislative director and housing advocate with Citizen Action of New York.
The Albany Housing Authority waitlist for public and Section 8 housing alone hovered at 10,000 before the
pandemic hit, with families or individuals possibly counted twice if they’re on both lists. Today, that number has climbed to almost 13,400.
The shortage of quality, affordable housing isn’t unique to the Albany area — it’s a statewide and national trend. But with the coronavirus pandemic, those who work in the sector are seeing an increased strain on the industry — particularly as landlords fight back after dealing with paused rent payments and eviction moratoriums for the past year and a half.
“We know that a lot of (income) should be coming back to the landlords through (emergency rental assistance), but there’s a lack of patience,” Garrard said. “What we’ve seen is landlords increasing rents to recoup the losses they suffered during the pandemic.”
As landlords make up for that lost income, refugee and housing advocates have also frequently seen resistance to accept tenants receiving assistance from the Department of Social Services or those with Section 8 vouchers — despite it being illegal to discriminate against applicants because of their source of income.
“Some landlords don’t like to get DSS because they are priced at the very, very low end,” said Francis Sengabo, operations director at the Refugee and Immigrant Support Services of Emmaus. An example Sengabo provided is that DSS provides $350 for housing for one individual, and $575 for two.
“The housing market for public housing is very complex, which means refugees suffer,” he continued. “Even when there are people who accept DSS, the housing is a poor, poor, poor environment.”
Part of the difficulty in finding quality, affordable housing is that many options are located in neighborhoods that were redlined by the federal government in the 1930s, leading to nearly a century of disinvestment, blight and inequitable living conditions in those neighborhoods. With less financial incentive, landlords may end up letting the quality of their properties deteriorate.
“What it costs to rehabilitate houses that have fallen into disrepair, it doesn’t make economic sense to do it,” said Ali Schaeffing, a board member at the West Hill
Refugee Welcome Center. “There’s not a return on investment that supports what is a big risk.”
Desperate times call for creative measures
For the past four years, 100 was the average number of refugees the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants resettled in the Albany area, due to former President Donald Trump’s severe shrinking of the refugee cap. But for the first time in four years, USCRI is expecting numbers closer to what it saw under President Barack Obama’s administration — roughly 400.
“It’s just that it’s potentially more people in a short amount of time,” executive director Jill Peckenpaugh said of the current challenges finding quality, affordable housing. “We hoped this would come, we’ve been gradually gearing up, but it feels different when you’re actually getting names and numbers that are coming.”
Over the years, USCRI Albany has resettled about 4,500 refugees, which means they’ve been able to build relationships with good landlords — some of them immigrants or former refugees themselves — for good housing options. But this year, the options are more limited, and the resettlement agency has not been receiving sufficient advance notice of arrivals to easily find housing in time.
That has meant that organizations have had to get creative about where to place refugees.
Airbnb, for example, has a nonprofit branch that has given USCRI thousands of dollars in vouchers for housing. The home rental agency has also made apartments available for newly arriving Afghan refugees, though the exact number of apartments in the area is unknown. Organizations have also looked to local residents who may have in-law apartments with private entrances they could offer up temporarily for refugees. College campuses have also been a resource — recently, Russell Sage College announced that it would be hosting a refugee family in early 2022.
“The (refugee resettlement) collaborative is having these big conversations and calling attention to the complicated historical and current factors that are truly contributing to this impossible situation,” Schaeffing said. “We’re having these conversations, while also getting creative about housing solutions.”