California housing costs creating harsh reality for refugees
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is part of The California Dream project, a statewide non-profit media collaboration of CALmatters, KPBS, KPCC, KQED and Capital Public Radio with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the James Irvine Foundation.
Khisrow Jan has $800 in the bank. Rent is $1,850, and was due four days ago. He’s late with his payment — again.
While Jan gets ready for work — driving an Uber in San Francisco for the next 12 hours — his 4-year-old daughter Shukula barricades the front door of their two-bedroom apartment in Antioch, a far-flung Bay Area suburb east of Oakland.
“I need to work. Need to make some money,” Jan, 34, playfully tells his daughter.
“No, you cannot,” replies Shukula, an impish smile spreading across her face.
“Look buddy,” says Jan. “I got to go, get some money, and buy you a dress.”
That satisfies Shukula. She and the rest of Jan’s family — 9-year-old Sameera, 5-yearold Mirwais, and 9-month-old Wais, carried by his mother — follow Jan out to his car. He’ll be back at 2 or 3 a.m., long after his kids have fallen asleep.
When Jan and his family fled Afghanistan in 2015, he knew adjusting to a new life in California wasn’t going to be easy. His wife speaks very little English, and even after working as an interpreter with U.S. troops, his job prospects were limited.
But he never dreamed California was going to be this expensive.
The state’s skyrocketing housing costs have created a harsh new reality for refugees on the ground, many of whom are going to extraordinary lengths just to afford rent. The cost of living has increased so much in recent years that refugee resettlement agencies working in California are rethinking their strategies for relocating clients — and whether the state is a good fit for some refugees in the first place.
“I heard a lot about California out there in Afghanistan,” says Jan, who embedded with American soldiers from the Bay Area and other parts of the state. “They were saying California is nice. But trust me, I didn’t know anything about the rent and all these bills.”
California has long been a landing spot for refugees like Jan. Waves of Vietnamese, Iranian, Central American and other immigrants have resettled here over the past few decades, escaping persecution and turmoil in their home countries. More than 700,000 refugees have come to California since the mid-1970s, including more than 30,000 in the last five years, according to state statistics. That history is partly why so many Californians pride themselves on their welcoming attitude toward newcomers displaced from their native countries. When refugee arrivals dipped dramatically last year under new Trump administration policies, the state’s progressive political leadership repeatedly branded California as the refugee-friendly antidote to Trump, challenging the president’s actions to reduce refugee admissions and passing a “California Welcomes Refugees” legislative package last year.
But a warm welcome only goes so far.
“This is a really hard place to come, just because of the cost of living, especially the cost of housing,” says Avi Rose, executive director of Jewish Family and Community Services East Bay, the non-profit that assisted Jan.
Most refugee resettlement agencies no longer place families in San Francisco because of the city’s high housing costs. In San Diego, long a leading destination for refugees, one resettlement agency was accused of placing families in apartments that did not have enough sleeping space and advising refugees to lie to landlords about the number of people in their family.
Last year, Jewish Family and Community Services East Bay resettled 183 refugees in the Bay Area, the vast majority coming from Afghanistan. Rose says his agency is moving more and more of those clients inland, away from pricier coastal cities.
That may mean cheaper rents, but it also means refugees may be farther from communities that share their language and culture.
“It’s particularly a problem with women, because the women are home usually with the kids,” says Rose. “They’re more likely to be isolated, less likely to be picking up English. It’s hard anyway, but it’s harder if you’re isolated geographically.”
That’s part of the reason Jan stays in the Bay Area, despite the high price tag. His brother lives close by, and there are other Afghan families in his apartment complex. That makes things easier on his wife, who doesn’t speak English very well and does not have a driver’s license.
“If I [had to] do it over, I wouldn’t come to California,” says Jan. “Over here, it’s too much rent. But I’m used to it now; I can’t move.”
Even though he worked with American troops and says he saw live combat, Jan is not eligible for veterans’ benefits. Neither are any of the other roughly 10,000 holders of “special immigrant visas” in California, a program designed for Iraqis and Afghans who worked with the U.S. military.
It is frequently not safe for natives who worked with American forces to remain in their home country.
Special immigrant visa-holders and other refugees don’t get much in the way of government support. The federal government provides a little more than $1,000 in one-time cash assistance for each refugee family member, regardless of where that family is resettling.
So an Afghan family resettling in California gets the same amount per person as another family that relocates in Idaho or Texas, which have significantly cheaper costs of living. That cash assistance is supposed to pay for a security deposit and three months of rent.
Refugees are also eligible for safety net programs like food stamps, welfare and free health insurance for the poor. Jan’s family is on Medi-Cal, the state’s low-income health insurance program.