Many of the Afghan refugees evacuated to the U.S. after their country fell to the Taliban in August 2021 believed safe housing and robust government and community support awaited them in the richest nation on earth. Instead, they were confronted with a stripped-down resettlement system ill-equipped to handle nearly 100,000 refugees during a historic housing crunch.
Combined with predatory landlords and unsafe or unsanitary homes, the idyllic picture of life in America was quickly dashed for many of the new arrivals. That perfect storm caused anguish and distress for those who had supported the U.S. military during the two-decade occupation of Afghanistan at great personal cost.
(iStock.com/Olga Naumova, Olha Khorimarko and PCH-Vector)
Part 1
When tens of thousands of Afghan refugees arrived in the U.S. after the fall of Kabul in 2021, they were met by a historic housing crunch and a bare-bones resettlement system that greatly hindered their ability to find safe and affordable homes. In the first of a two-part series, Law360 delves into the crisis and its main culprits.
Part 2
For the Afghans, the crisis made building new lives in the U.S. all that much harder. In the second of a two-part series, Law360 revisits the individual experiences of multiple refugees across the country with predatory landlords, unhealthy homes and unsustainable rents.
"I put my life at risk ... I wasn't expecting that I should be welcomed this way," he said.
Over the course of more than four months, Law360 spoke to refugees, community organizers, representatives of faith-based and nonprofit groups, officials from federal and local governments, and the resettlement agencies the U.S. government formally tasks with acting as the initial bridge between refugees and their new lives.
The interviews focused on specific problems with housing, even though the refugees also shared dismay at how little help they received regarding other needs like visa processing and finding gainful employment.
The picture that emerges — and which is buttressed by a new report released this week by the U.S. Department of State's Office of the Inspector General — is one of underresourced resettlement agencies confronted with a sudden and unprecedented influx of refugees, resulting in many Afghans feeling like they received tick-the-box treatment that failed to address the depth of the challenges they faced.
"I didn't just come — I was brought here, evacuated," Samad Noor Akakhil, a former Afghan soldier who relocated to Iowa, said through an interpreter. He told Law360 he doesn't know how he will afford his rent now that help has run out.
The sheer extent of the problem is difficult to gauge because the Afghan refugees, especially those who don't speak English and are unfamiliar with American rules and norms, can be hard to reach after processing, and many are unlikely to complain. But several refugees and their advocates stressed to Law360 that the issue of unsuitable homes, inflated rents and looming evictions is significantly widespread and underreported.
In the four years of the Trump administration, refugee services were "gutted" and their staff "dramatically reduced," which led to the closure of more than 100 refugee resettlement facilities, the White House underscored Thursday in releasing a summary of a classified review on the U.S. evacuation and its aftermath by the Departments of State and Defense.
Yet, the Biden administration ultimately feels it kept its commitment to the Afghans during the chaotic airlift and the resettlement process, according to the 12-page document.
"Despite predictions to the contrary, we have and will continue to facilitate the departure and resettlement of our Afghan partners through Enduring Welcome, our multi-year effort to relocate those who worked with and for us to the United States through a variety of legal immigration pathways," the White House said Thursday. "With the help of nine domestic refugee resettlement agencies and a network of about 200 local affiliate organizations, each and every Afghan family has been resettled into American communities."
A Threadbare Safety Net
Initially, and as is typically the case, each refugee was matched with one of nine official resettlement agencies that are contracted by the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration to support them in their first 90 days in the U.S.
Those agencies include the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops — under whose umbrella are dozens of Catholic Charities agencies across the country — Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services and the International Rescue Committee.
A refugee in Iowa expresses anger over the state of the rental she has been assigned to. (Courtesy of Des Moines Refugee Support)
A State Department official noted in a statement to Law360 that the agencies are required to provide the refugees with housing that "is decent, safe and sanitary."
The department gives the resettlement agents a one-time $2,275-per-refugee payment to carry out their mission, $1,225 of which can directly cover rent, clothing or other immediate needs, while the rest goes to the administrative costs of running the program. By comparison, the U.S. spent the equivalent of $300 million a day during 20 years of military involvement in Afghanistan, based on figures from Brown University.
To supplement or prolong their support for the refugees, the resettlement agencies and their affiliates can tap into their private fundraising efforts as well as additional resources from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement and other federal, state and local programs such as Medicaid and food stamps.
The combined package can vary widely depending on the exact status and provenance of the refugees and the localities they are brought to, but it typically remains far from sufficient to keep up with the extraordinary growth in housing costs seen in recent years.
Today's "catastrophic" shortage of affordable homes represents a "tremendous" hurdle for recently arrived and vulnerable refugees, Kevin Brennan, vice president for media relations of Catholic Charities USA — a membership organization of Catholic Charities agencies — said in a written statement to Law360.
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition's latest figures, the U.S. lacks some 7.3 million rentals accessible to extremely low-income families, a shortage that has grown by more than 500,000 units from 2019 to 2021. That translates to only 33 affordable and available homes for every 100 extremely low-income renters, the NLIHC found.
Meanwhile, public housing agencies around the country are bogged down by funding and staffing shortages, poor maintenance and miles-long waitlists for available units. The public voucher programs that help low-income Americans pay rent for private-sector accommodations also often run up against landlords' distrust, and many decline to accept them.
In addition to the dire housing situation, the Afghans also had to contend with cuts that former President Donald Trump made to the already minimal safety net the U.S. typically provides refugees. His administration drastically reduced the number of refugees that could be legally resettled annually in the U.S., thereby shrinking related funding streams.
"For me, one of the most alarming consequences of [that] is that the network and infrastructure for refugee resettlement was going to suffer," said Sheila I Vélez Martínez, the Jack and Lovell Olender Professor of Asylum Refugee and Immigration Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. "You have organizations scrambling to hire people, scrambling to then rebuild relationships with landlords to have the spaces available."
The professor noted the resettlement agencies by and large rose to meet the challenge, saying that she's heard refugees' frustrations with overwhelmed caseworkers, long stays at hotels and motels, and permanent housing that's far away from transportation and services, but not with the condition of the rentals themselves, at least in Pennsylvania.
Derelict Yet Expensive Housing
Many others, however, shared stories about accommodations that were inadequate by any standards.
Refugees and volunteers told Law360 that on multiple occasions, caseworkers forced these accommodations onto Afghan families sight-unseen. Although this is common for refugees who are given homes right upon arrival, many of the Afghans — who were already living in temporary shelters — were declined an opportunity to see the properties where they were expected to live in for multiple months at a minimum.
Dead rats and live snakes are among the unwelcome roommates that refugees in Iowa and Oklahoma have found in their homes. (Courtesy of Des Moines Refugee Support and Mohammad Osmani)
"I saw the [resettlement] agencies are very careless, and they are not helping the Afghans," said Shir Agha Safi, who arrived in Iowa in early October 2021 after serving for 12 years with the U.S.-allied Afghan military in Helmand Province, one of the bloodiest theaters in the 20-year war. "They don't care what kind of housing they are finding for you. They just want to find housing and say, 'Hey, we found housing for you.'"
Safi told Law360 that his caseworker took him to an apartment in the Des Moines area that was dirty, foul-smelling and swarming with bedbugs, cockroaches and other insects.
"Two times I got really sick in that apartment," he recalled. "I was already traumatized, but when I came to that apartment, I was very, very sad because it wasn't a place to live in. It wasn't for humans."
The harsh realities the refugees encountered on the ground also clashed with their expectations — perhaps unrealistic — of what housing and life at the lower rung looks like in the U.S. And they bumped up against rumors circulating in their community that the government was going to provide significantly more financial and logistical support than it ever did or planned to.
"Some of the places out there aren't great, which is really unfortunate, but at the same time, the inventory is so, so, so low here," said Kristen Bloom, executive director and founder of Refugee Assistance Alliance, a nonprofit group that supports refugees in South Florida. "We work with the clients to talk about how this does not mean your forever home and that we can work toward something better."
Bloom said some of the accommodations the refugees were given indeed had bug infestations, but also noted that that's an all too common problem for low-income Americans of all stripes and backgrounds.
"I don't want to act like only Afghan refugees are experiencing this, because unfortunately a lot of people are living like that," she said.
Blame to Go Around
People disagreed over who exactly is to blame — the shoestring federal resettlement budget, the incomprehensible maze of state and local aid, bare-bones resettlement agencies, inept caseworkers, the dearth of affordable and decorous homes, refugees' outsized expectations and cultural inclinations, or all of the above. They did, however, agree that things haven't been working for many Afghans.
"I mean, it was a mess. It is a mess. The system wasn't built for the number of Afghans that came in," said Laura Thompson Osuri, executive director of Homes Not Borders, an organization that aims to provide refugees in the Washington, D.C., area with household-, job-related and other services. "Definitely, I don't think it's perfect at all, but I don't think there's a lot of nefarious players out there. I feel like I've heard that from refugees ... but I think a lot of it might just be people falling through the cracks."
A damaged vanity in an Iowa home, and evidence of leaks in one in Virginia. (Courtesy of Des Moines Refugee Support and Atiqullah Andish)
Thompson Osuri said she too has found resettlement agencies at times hard to reach and unresponsive, but chalked it up to their being utterly swamped by the volume of work relative to their resources. She added that some agencies are better at communicating and supporting refugees than others, and that "the refugees know that."
The system, it appears, relied on overworked or undertrained caseworkers running the refugees as briskly as possible through the 90 days during which the official resettlement agencies are obligated to provide them with support. Then, just as quickly, the agencies turned the page, dumping the Afghans in the hands of volunteers and community organizations, who are even less resourced but ostensibly more proactive and gentler.
The gargantuan task of quickly resettling tens of thousands of Afghans would have likely required multiples of the resources and staffing that the agencies actually had, and that gap might have helped create the impression that they were underperforming, said Marty Johnson, director for mission at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, which has helped several Afghan families in the area.
"But I just do not draw that conclusion," he said.
Johnson, however, said he understands the refugees' frustrations.
"All of us as human beings want to be treated with dignity and respect," he said. "Listening carefully and demonstrating compassion makes a big difference, and maybe some folks in civil society and the churches have been able to give more time to these people."
The State Department recently seemed to be leaning even further in the direction of individualized volunteer support when it announced in January the creation of Welcome Corps. The program aims to encourage regular Americans to sponsor refugees from Afghanistan, Ukraine and elsewhere by greeting them at the airport and helping them secure initial housing, employment and education for their children.
A State Department official said in a statement to Law360 that the housing crisis "is one of the biggest single challenges impacting domestic capacity to resettle refugees." The official added that the department takes any complaints against the resettlement agencies "very seriously," and follows up "extensively" to ensure they comply with the terms of their contracts, which, the official underscored, only cover the initial resettlement process for 90 days.
"Housing has been a category of grievances we have received, more so during Operation Allies Welcome considering the fast pace of Afghan arrivals; the lack of available housing, especially for larger family sizes; and delays in obtaining necessary documentation normally required for securing a rental unit," the official said. "These concerns have been conveyed by staff and newcomers alike."
A spokesperson for the State Department's OIG told Law360 that the inspector general is conducting multiple assessments of the department's performance in handling the Afghans' departure, security vetting around the world and resettlement in the U.S.
One such report, the OIG's "Review of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and Changes to Accommodate the Admission and Resettlement of Afghan Evacuees," which began in October 2021, was released this week.
The study, based on engagement with relevant State Department officials and the resettlement agencies, identified securing permanent housing for the new arrivals as one of the "major challenges." Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic, the refugees' typically large family size and their desire to relocate to specific regions like California and Northern Virginia, which have substantial Afghan communities but some of the tightest housing markets, made things especially difficult, according to the OIG.
The increased presence of corporate owners in the rental space also proved limiting. The review found that these landlords were less flexible on their requirements for tenants' records, pay history and credit scores — which the refugees lacked almost entirely — than smaller mom-and-pop shops with which the resettlement agencies had long-standing relationships and trust.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement at HHS noted in a separate statement that it has provided additional funding through the states and the resettlement agencies to meet refugees' housing needs. The office also said it strives to ensure the recipients of its funding comply with all relevant laws, rules and policies, and has created mechanisms for the refugees and the volunteers and officials who assist them to flag complaints.
According to Patrick Raglow, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, the scarcity of attainable homes across the country turned out to be the most intractable of problems — one that went well beyond any issues with the resettlement system or the scarcity of federal refugee funds.
"It's a 'We should not tolerate landlords allowing places to be beneath human dignity' problem, and that doesn't necessarily require federal funding. It could be that we have inspection requirements," said Raglow. "I don't want to make quality landlords pay the price for all the jackasses out there doing things that are unethical, so it should be one of those things where, if an apartment complex has repeated violations, they can't rent their property without permission."
"Everything Upside-Down"
Incredibly, the worst may be yet to come.
A Iowa volunteer relays the exasperation of a refugee about the treatment he's received from his designated caseworker. (Courtesy of Des Moines Refugee Support)
With many refugees facing the high rents typical of the U.S. market on their own — and sometimes the price-gouging of opportunistic landlords — while holding down minimum-wage jobs, a wave of evictions could be forthcoming.
"When that [aid] money runs out, then you get an eviction, you have an eviction on your record, and that could affect many other things," said Badria Mryyan, a staff attorney with Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma. "So you want to prevent this if possible."
One Afghan refugee who came to California eight years ago after working as a procurement manager on behalf of the U.S. government told Law360 that the "all business, no love" approach of the resettlement agencies has been a long-running problem.
Farhad Yousafzai recalled his caseworker bringing him, his wife and daughter to their new apartment approximately three months after they landed in Oakland, California. It was around 10 p.m., and one of the first things the caseworker told them was that it was not safe to walk outside. That came as a shock for a family that had just fled a war zone.
The one-bedroom unit itself was fine, Yousafzai said. He added, however, that many other Afghans struggled with subpar housing. In a case that received ample coverage in local news at the time, one family was placed in a compound with such a massive lead problem that their baby daughter ended up spending months in a hospital recovering from some of the highest levels of lead poisoning the nurses had ever seen, he recalled.
The resettlement agencies "have a checklist," Yousafzai said. "They are thinking, 'Complete your checklist, and you are good based on the contract.'"
Yousafzai's biggest complaint with his resettlement agency was its attempt to force him into low-wage, low-skilled work despite his advanced English and managerial background. He dropped out of the program entirely within weeks and went on to make a successful, entrepreneurial life in Northern California for himself and his family without agency support.
Yousafzai, who now runs his own insurance business, told Law360 that the refugee resettlement system as it currently stands essentially traps refugees in a cycle of poverty and hopelessness. He noted, for instance, how refugees are eligible for Section 8 public housing once they become U.S. residents, but that process can take many months and, as for many low-income Americans, the subsequent wait time to get placed into a unit is often several years long.
"When they apply for Section 8, it takes five, six, seven years, and you should still be a low-income person [then] to qualify, and for [the refugees] to achieve that goal ... they keep themselves as a low-income," Yousafzai said. "I think the better way is that the person who arrives should get the public benefits, low-income housing ... for four, five years, and [that way], they can train to succeed and be on their own feet."
"In the U.S., everything is upside-down," Yousafzai concluded.
--Editing by Alanna Weissman and Covey Son. Graphic by Jason Mallory.
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