Families are shown in the courtyard of an apartment complex near Ibarra Elementary School in City Heights on Aug. 21, 2017. Many of the families living there are Syrian refugees. (Megan Wood/inewsource)
Federal monitors raised concerns about a local refugee resettlement agency’s housing placement practices months before the organization’s employees committed additional violations, which KPBS uncovered and detailed in a series of reports last year.
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This is part of our continuing coverage on the struggles refugees face when they make San Diego County their home. The stories are a collaboration involving reporters, photographers, videographers and editors at inewsource, KPBS and the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University. Why this topic? Since 2009, more than 23,000 refugees have settled in the county, more than any other region in California.[/feature_box]
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The KPBS investigation found employees at the nonprofit International Rescue Committee in San Diego placed several large refugee families in homes that were too small based on occupancy guidelines. Landlords asked at least four families to move out due to overcrowding.
However, the State Department asked the agency to address a handful of housing placement issues — including resettling refugees in homes too small to accommodate them. KPBS’s investigation showed that even after that request the improper practice continued.
KPBS’s reports and the State Department’s review highlight challenges resettlement workers face in finding affordable homes in high-cost areas, including San Diego.
The federal officials reviewed 19 case files during their visit at IRC San Diego and found in at least two instances homes did not appear to provide enough sleeping space for all of the refugees living in them. Two other files did not contain documentation proving the refugees were placed in adequate apartments and that they received required furniture and household items.
“Case files show that federal or local housing occupancy standards are not always applied,” the monitors said in a report about their visit.
The State Department recommended the agency ensure refugee families are placed in housing units that can accomodate their size.
In response, the International Rescue Committee said it was expanding its search area for affordable housing in the San Diego region, counseling families not to accept poor quality homes and reviewing procedures with staff.
KPBS found at least seven refugee families later that year were placed in housing situations that violated occupancy guidelines.
After the series of reports by KPBS, the IRC’s executive director stepped down, and the agency’s interim leader said the nonprofit was addressing the issue by expanding its housing search area, retraining staff and not accepting large families in San Diego unless they had ties to the region.
Mireille Cronin Mather, the IRC’s acting executive director in San Diego, has said out of roughly 2,200 refugees it has resettled over the past couple of years, 24 families were affected by the practice of placing families in homes too small to accommodate them.
Cronin Mather declined to be interviewed about the State Department’s 2016 findings. In an emailed statement, she said affordable housing in San Diego is an ongoing challenge and that the agency adequately responded to the report.
“As you may note, in 2016, we received (a) compliant rating on the monitoring report. But as with all findings from monitoring reports, we responded and acted upon those recommendations as appropriate,” said Cronin Mather, who is based in San Diego but has returned to her position as IRC’s regional director of U.S. programs.
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Her statement also said that following KPBS’s initial report, IRC’s headquarters in New York hired a housing coordinator “to assist the greater network in housing challenges,” and the agency now requires employees include a copy of refugees’ leases in their case files.
“There is no program requirement that we have a lease on file, IRC took an extra step and we now require that everyone has a lease in a casefile,” the statement said.
An IRC headquarters spokesman confirmed the change was made at all of the IRC’s affiliates, not just in San Diego.
Federal monitors in June 2016 also identified housing placement issues at two other San Diego resettlement agencies.
A review of Catholic Charities Diocese of San Diego said the agency was “mostly compliant” but noted that housing “was overcrowded, not always affordable and does not consistently contain all required furnishings and supplies.”
In response, the agency said it hired a housing specialist and required employees to document the condition of homes with photos.
Robert Moser, executive director of the local Catholic Charities, said resettlement during that period was difficult because of San Diego’s housing market and large bump in refugees compared to previous years. Former President Barack Obama had raised the cap on refugees by 15,000 and was planning for another boost the following year.
“Competition for apartments, the availability of residences, the size and composition of the families who were arriving all put challenges for our agency and the other agencies, but I think that’s where you can get lessons learned,” Moser said in an interview with KPBS.
He said he hopes one of those lessons includes better pacing of refugee arrivals.
“Hopefully, in the context of the future, we can balance between the flood of 2016 and the drought of 2017 and now in 2018 and have a flow that’s reasonable, manageable, affordable and where we can be the best that we can be,” Moser said. He was referencing the significant drop in arrivals under President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
At the Alliance for African Assistance, monitors found at least one refugee living by choice in an overcrowded apartment. The officials noted that Alliance workers had counseled the refugee on the need to move to a less crowded home.
Laura Wingard, inewsource managing editor, edited this story.
Related:
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[two_third_last] Falsified documents leave San Diego refugees vulnerable
July 27, 2017
A five-month investigation uncovered allegations that resettlement workers urged refugees to lie about the size of their families in a tight San Diego rental market.[/two_third_last]
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Gender Identity
Gender Identity
Gender Identity
Women
80%
Women
82%
Women
75%
Men
20%
Men
18%
Men
25%
Sexual Orientation
Sexual Orientation
Sexual Orientation
Straight
87%
Straight
82%
Straight
100%
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7%
LGBTQ-identifying
7%
Not specified
7%
Not specified
7%
Speak a language beyond English at home
33%
Speak a language beyond English at home
18%
Speak a language beyond English at home
75%
Race/Ethnicity
Race/Ethnicity
Race/Ethnicity
White
67%
White
73%
White
50%
Hispanic or Latinx
20%
Two or more races
18%
Hispanic or Latinx
50%
Two or more races
13%
Hispanic or Latinx
9%
Age
Age
Age
20-29
40%
20-29
45%
20-29
25%
30-39
47%
30-39
45%
30-39
50%
60 or older
13%
60 or older
9%
60 or older
25%
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Lorie Hearn is the chief executive officer, editor and founder of inewsource. She founded inewsource in the summer of 2009, following a successful reporting and editing career in newspapers. She retired from The San Diego Union-Tribune, where she had been a reporter, Metro Editor and finally the senior editor for Metro and Watchdog Journalism. In addition to department oversight, Hearn personally managed a four-person watchdog team, composed of two data specialists and two investigative reporters. Hearn was a Nieman Foundation fellow at Harvard University in 1994-95. She focused on juvenile justice and drug control policy, a natural course to follow her years as a courts and legal affairs reporter at the San Diego Union and then the Union-Tribune.
Hearn became Metro Editor in 1999 and oversaw regional and city news coverage, which included the city of San Diego’s financial debacle and near bankruptcy. Reporters and editors on Metro during her tenure were part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning stories that exposed Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham and led to his imprisonment.
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High-profile coverage included the historic state Supreme Court election in 1986, when three sitting justices were ousted from the bench, and the 1992 execution of Robert Alton Harris. That gas chamber execution was the first time the death penalty was carried out in California in 25 years.
In her nine years as Metro Editor at the Union-Tribune, Hearn made watchdog reporting a priority. Her reporters produced award-winning investigations covering large and small local governments. The depth and breadth of their public service work was most evident in coverage of the wildfires of 2003 and then 2007, when more than half a million people were evacuated from their homes.
Laura Wingard is the managing editor at inewsource. She has been an editor in San Diego since 2002, working at The San Diego Union-Tribune, KPBS and now inewsource. At the Union-Tribune, she served in a variety of roles including as enterprise editor, government editor, public safety and legal affairs editor, and metro editor. She directed the newspaper’s award-winning coverage of the October 2007 wildfires and the 2010 disappearance of Poway teenager Chelsea King. She also oversaw reporting on San Diego’s pension crisis.
For two years, Wingard was news and digital editor at KPBS, overseeing a team of four multimedia reporters and two web producers. She also was the KPBS liaison with inewsource and collaborated with inewsource chief executive officer and editor Lorie Hearn on investigative work by both news organizations.
Wingard also worked at the Las Vegas Review-Journal as the city editor and as an award-winning reporter covering the environment and politics. She also was the assistant managing editor for metro at The Press-Enterprise in Riverside. She earned her bachelor’s degree at California State University, Fullerton, with a double major in communications/journalism and political science.
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Racino has worked as a reporter and database analyst for News21; as a photographer, videographer and reporter for the Columbia Missourian; as a project coordinator for the National Freedom of Information Coalition and as a videographer and editor for Verizon Fios1 TV in New York. He received his master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in 2012.
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Tarryn Mento is the health reporter for KPBS. She has reported from three countries and in two languages. Her work has been published by The Washington Post, the Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News, and El Nuevo Herald.
Prior to serving as KPBS' health reporter, Tarryn was the multimedia producer...
More by Tarryn Mento