Page 10
Rural Housing
Street Roots • Oct. 26-Nov. 1, 2018
Abdikadir Abdi's
partner, Munira, and
the couple’s daughter.
ABDI, from page 9
Refugee Community Organization. He was
able to utilize his fluency in Swahili, which
he learned while living in Kenya, as well as
his region’s Somali dialect
Abdi saw that opportunity as a vital
learning experience and springboard for
what he wants to do to further support the
burgeoning Somali community in Ontario
with his very own nonprofit one day.
He said the Welcome Center had a
process he found problematic when trying
to find employment for families seeking
services.
One particular family he met was
struggling because the grandmother became
the foster mother of her grandchildren after
their mother had to remain in Somalia. Now
she’s raising several young children in the
United States and doesn’t know how to drive
or receive adequate welfare.
While the Welcome Center is there, to
help, its primary focus and grant funding is
for translation services. The self-sufficiency
grant funds are also restricted to benefiting
refugees within five years of arrival, despite
that, on average, refugees are economically
on par with their wider communities and are
self-sufficient after about seven years,
according to a 2017 data analysis by The
Washington Post
Abdi sees a great need for continued
services well beyond those five or seven
O N TA RIO , fro m p ag e 9
P H O TO S BY
CELESTE NO C H E
years.
“I want to stay here 10 Or 15 years,” he
said. “We like it here in Ontario, but the
only problem is they don’t have a lot of
resources. They don’t know what to do or
where to go. We have to explain the benefits
to them, and they need to understand what
kind of help they need.”
He hopes to move to Ontario from Boise
soon but is juggling the responsibilities of
fatherhood, owning and managing the
Broadway Taxi cab company in Boise, and
completing a criminal justice program at the
Treasure Valley Community College campus
in Ontario. He looks forward to the future
and all that he’ll do to make sure it’s filled
with much joy, recreation and kinship in the
Somali community.
you, and if they don’t know».they’ll come
¡with you wherever you need. When I
Cummings and Arabic speakers Ekram
Ahmed and Jaafar Raheem.
o ffered hv O ntario , t h f ' d e r is i o n t n move
was motivated by factors beyond his own
preferences.
“I liked living there, but my family is
important, and (I need to) support them,”
he said. “Nobody was there to help them.”
While the goal of refugee resettlement
programs globally is ultimately to have
people move back to their home countries,
less than 1 percent of the world’s refugees
ever do. The Ontario pit stop will likely last
much longer for refugee families interested
in leaving, but who are new to the waitlist or
were recently added.
Cummings, who for three years was a
housing advocate at local nonprofit
Community In Action, expects even more
changes.
“It won’t surprise me actually if some of
the ones who port their vouchers out end
up coming back because I think there’s
some confusion on what the resettlement
agencies offer (after) that first year,”
Cummings said. “Without some of that extra
assistance, I think it’s going to be hard for
some people to stay in those areas that have
such a high cost of living. They may not end
up coming back to Ontario, but I have a
feeling they will stay in (neighboring) places
like i t ”
In the meantime, she said, the Welcome
Center is here to stay and will offer services
to all Ontario residents with open arms.
“What I’ve been saying to families is I
can’t do anything about (Section 8), but if
you know you’re going to be here for two
more years, what can we do to make those
two years better for you? What kinds of
things can this community work on?” she
said. “The hope is that in two years, things
have gotten better, they’ve gotten used to it,
and, you know, the longer you stay some
place, the more it feels like home.”
-
tattoos or that I have Jesus on my hand. So,
(arrived), it was hard to find a house. So, I
(I feel) free.”
asked this older guy, around 80 years old,
In San Diego, Jarjees spent years working
and he left everything inside his house and
full time at a hospital in a similar role to
came with me, in my car, for like two hours.
positions he previously held in Iraq and later
And then not just this guy. A lot of people
Ontario, assisting doctors and nurses with
did that. After I found a house, he called his
procedural preparation by supplying them
friends and neighbors. In San Diego, it’s
with the correct sterile instruments. But his busy.”
commutes were 90 minutes each
Renee Cummings, director of
way with traffic, and he had to
the Four Rivers Welcome Center,
pick up gigs as an Amazon Flex
said community-fueled interactions
package courier three times per
like Jarjees’ experienced are
week to make ends meet. That
exactly what she and the
made it even more difficult to
volunteers who founded the
spend time at home with his wife
center earlier this year hope
Afrah Jarjees, and their three
happen for refugees in Ontario
children, ages 7, 6 and 5. On top
more regularly.
of that, he was helping his
“There have been a lot of
Melad Jarjees
parents supplement their
people talking about loneliness
livelihood.
and isolation,” she said. “We’re
So, at the end of 2016, he
finding ther most successful refugee families
decided to provisionally move to Ontario
here have had somebody be there for them.”
after he met a farmer from Boise, Idaho,
The Four Rivers Welcome Center, which
who assured him it would be easier for him
officially opened as a single-employee
and his family to get by in Treasure Valley.
organization in May, with Cummings leading
More importantly, he also learned about the
the way, provides translation services,
short Section 8 wait time, which he hadn’t
assistance with job applications and
been able to utilize in San Diego, although
interviews, and a vital opportunity for
he qualified, due to wait times that exceeded recreation and community with other
10 years.
refugee families. The endeavor was initially
Finding adequate housing, however, was a funded through a grant application by the
crucial component in determining whether
Four Rivers Health Care, a free health care
Ontario could be a place to call home. And
clinic primarily serving people without
while the hunt for housing is a process
health insurance that offered its lobby to the
ordinarily stressful for any person, even
center. Cummings’ grant covers operations
when searching in the same city, that wasn’t through March 2019.
really the case for Jarjees.
It still looks a bit like a lobby, but
' “When I came to Ontario, I felt more
Cummings immediately hung up a world
calm because the cost of living is cheap and
map and stocked up on candies and teas
the people there are super nice, too. They
from the countries of many refugees’ origin.
help,” Jarjees said. “When you ask
A desktop computer is open to the public,
questions, they’ll leave everything to answer and three desks nearby are occupied by
In July, the Welcome Center partnered
with Portland-based Immigrant and Refugee
Community Organization (IRCO) to further
connect with the local refugees and hire
part-time and full-time translators directly
from the community, until funding lapsed at
the end of September. Jarjees was one of
four volunteer-turned-employees, and he
worked there for about one month.
Most of the roughly 50 refugee families in
the area have come to Ontario from the
towns and cities where they were placed
after resettling from Iraq, Somalia and
Sudan, but low-income families across the
United States continue to move to rural
communities, such as Ontario, to receive
the rental assistance benefits they qualify
for sooner. The waitlist finally reopened
earlier this month; it had been closed and
new applicants were not being processed for
almost half a year.
Kristy Rodriguez, Housing Choice
Voucher Occupancy specialist at the
Housing Authority of Malheur and Harney
Counties, said there are approximately 347
households on the waitlist with an expected
wait time of about 18 months. While the
housing authority no longer has a shortfall,
she expects the counties to cycle in and out
of shortfall over the next few years as a
result of voucher transfers to areas with
higher housing costs.
With guidance from HUD, the local
housing authority has adopted a preference
process for Section 8 vouchers to now
prioritize Malheur County residents in
addition to the existing vulnerable
designations, including victims of domestic
violence, people with disabilities, and people
who are homeless, elderly or veterans.
While Jarjees said he enjoyed the slower
pace of life and strong sense of community