So there is this Sudanese family with whom I have been working that is in somewhat dire straits. The mom has been desperately looking for a job for the last 10 months but has had no luck on account of her poor English. Meanwhile she is on public assistance which is enough to pay rent and have $60/month left over—which does not cover utilities. I have spent countless hours trying to find utilities assistance, convincing companies to let her pay off past-due bills in installments, etc. There were a few significant developments last week while I worked on this. I have broken them down into “the good, the bad and the ugly”:
The good: This mom had an account with Comcast which, with refugee benefits, was easily paid for. Unfortunately, right as her refugee benefits ended so did the “promotional” price that Comcast had started her with and suddenly this mom was charged $90/month and had no way to pay it. There are no non-profits that will pay for phone bills so she was left facing a collections agency for the balance of the bill. Luckily, one of the case managers in my office had started a refugee-interest group at his church and they had some money left over from a bake sale. They agreed to pay off the phone bill and I helped the mom switch to a phone service that charged only $13/month.
The bad: I was trying to figure out how much this mom owed for water (she cannot read English and so bills sent to her house are frequently lost). I called the apartment manager (who sends out the water bills) and asked for a ballpark figure each month. The apartment manager was surprised to report that it was very high (around $70/mo) and asked me how many people were living there—I explained that the Sudanese mother has 7 children. Turns out that 8 people in a 3 bedroom apartment violates occupancy laws and that this woman’s case manager had told the apartment manager that only 4 people were living there. The apartment manager was not happy and insisted on inspecting the apartment by the end of the month. I may have inadvertently gotten this family evicted—I still don’t know what will happen.
The ugly: Naturally, I wanted to know who lied to the apartment manager (catholic charities has a strict honesty policy—otherwise shit like this happens). Turns out that this Sudanese mother’s case was not handled by catholic charities but by another volunteer agency called Kurdish Human Right’s Watch. They were only a resettlement agency for one year and have since been shut down by the state for improperly resettling refugees (exhibit one: Sudanese mother with 7 children in a 3 bedroom apartment). I managed to track down the now-unemployed case manager from KHRW and asked him about the apartment. He said yes, he did tell the apartment manager that there were only 3 children and told the mother to just keep the other kids out of sight until she got into section 8 housing (for which, might I add, there is a 3 year waiting list). THAT was his plan? WTF? I was really angry and started venting to a coworker who then told me some of the other, crazier stories involving this case worker. Apparently he is well-known in the Somali community for misusing resettlement funds and not bringing families what they needed. His reputation was so bad that it got back to the Somalis in the refugee camps and, according to my coworker, one Somali family saw him waiting for them as they were walking out of airport security and they turned and started running the other way (where they thought they were going I do not know).
The REALLY ugly: this guy. According to my supervisor he looks like a child and has no fashion sense (dresses in over-sized suits--Which isn’t helping the childish look). My supervisor apparently has a sassy side.
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