All 1,112 Syrian refugees find permanent housing
When Syrian refugees began arriving by the planeload in Ottawa around Christmas time, many wondered where they would all live in a city with a severe shortage of affordable housing.
But in a development that has surprised even settlement workers, all the government-sponsored refugees — 1,112 of them — have already found permanent housing.
The three hotels downtown that served as overflow shelters for hundreds of refugees this winter are no longer needed. The last refugees left their rooms at the TraveLodge on Carling Avenue last Friday.
The Syrians are scattered in apartments and townhouses around the city, mainly in the south and east sides, where rents are lower.
Some landlords offered breaks on rent, including one who set aside 150 units for Syrian refugees in a highrise complex on Donald Street. About 75 families have moved in there.
“We have seen incredible community goodwill,” says Mike Bulthuis, co-chair of the housing task force of Refugee 613, the group co-ordinating Syrian refugee resettlement in the city. “It’s fantastic.”
Things are back to normal at Maison Sophia, the 100-bed centre in the ByWard Market that temporarily houses governmentsponsored refugees when they arrive in Ottawa, manager Chamroeun Lay said. There are about 40 or 50 refugees in residence, none of them Syrians, he said.
Lay admits he was worried about how staff would handle the large influx of Syrian refugees. Maison Sophia normally houses about 350 government-sponsored refugees in an entire year. “How the heck we are going to move (1,112 refugees) in two or three months? But it turned out to be not so bad.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
The refugees all received medical checkups, and some were referred to specialists. Most are now on the caseloads of community health centres. “We squeezed them in, to be honest,” says Jack McCarthy, executive director of the Somerset West Community Health Centre, who is helping organize health care for the refugees.
Initially, the plan was to conduct medical screening at community health centres, McCarthy said. But given the complications of transportation, especially since many families were large, nurses set up clinics at the hotels instead.
They treated many refugees with colds and flu, he said. “They were pretty sick, a number of them.” And although he has no statistics, McCarthy said a number of the refugees have chronic conditions such as lung disease, diabetes and arthritis.
While medical staff will watch for signs of deeper trauma, many of the initial mental-health problems relate to the difficulty of life in a new country, he said.
“Anecdotally, I’ve heard stories of people being in considerable stress. How could they not be, having come from the situation they did. But the key stressors were, ‘Where am I going to live? How am I going to get my income?’ It’s all those basics . ... When they are addressed, you minimize the mentalhealth challenges, the anxiety that comes with that.
“Not to say that we are not going to see some of the trauma manifest itself more later. But when people (first) come here, as one person so eloquently described it, they just want a home, a job and a friend. And a friend is the community.”