A Home for All: The Challenge of Housing in Refugee Resettlement

Abstract

When a refugee is accepted for resettlement in the United States, they are assigned to a refugee resettlement office that is responsible for providing for all the initial basic needs that a refugee family may need, including finding and furnishing appropriate housing. Finding and procuring housing is the largest challenge to successful integration that resettlement organizations face. Housing has always been a concern in refugee resettlement because there is no coordinated body at the federal level that provides guidance or housing assistance. Nor is there a federal law to ensure that living spaces are set aside for those who have been accepted for resettlement. Without federal support, refugee resettlement, although ultimately successful, can be disorganized and decentralized leading to a situation that is volatile and open to the capriciousness of shifting political leadership. Drawing upon qualitative research conducted with one refugee resettlement organization, which I call Refugee Resettlement Affiliate Office (RRAO), to elucidate the ongoing challenges to housing integration for those refugees resettled in the United States, I assert that a federal solution is needed in order to ensure the smooth integration into life in the US for resettled refugees. This article articulates the challenges to housing as expressed by those working in refugee resettlement and discusses some potential solutions.

1. A Home for All: The Challenge of Housing in Refugee Resettlement

The goal of refugee resettlement is to ensure the safety and well-being of those individuals facing life-threatening circumstances in their home countries and are, therefore, unable to return. The United States has the largest and most successful resettlement program in the world, resettling around 300,000 individuals since the program’s inception in 1980 (Beers 2020; Kerwin 2018). The goal of the refugee resettlement program in the United States is integration, defined as “a process wherein immigrant newcomers and the community in which they settle—both the individuals and the institutions—mutually adapt to one another” (Jiménez 2011, p. 2). In the United States, integration is typically measured in terms of economic self-sufficiency (Alshoubake 2024; Collyer et al. 2020), but there are many other factors that influence one’s ability to successfully integrate. Safe and stable housing, for example, greatly impacts the physical health, emotional well-being, and sense of belonging of new arrivals (Glover et al. 2001).

Despite its importance, finding and gaining access to housing that is affordable, in an appropriate geographical location, and culturally acceptable is one of the largest challenges to successful integration resettlement organizations face. This challenge begins when a refugee is accepted for resettlement and is assigned to a refugee resettlement affiliate office. The case managers at this office must pick the refugee or refugee family up from the airport, provide them with food and basic necessities, introduce them to public transportation, get any children enrolled in school, help them learn the language, and help them find employment. Before the case manager does any of this, however, they must first find a place for the family to live in. There is no coordinated body at the federal level that provides guidance for finding this housing or to ensure that living spaces are set aside for those who are accepted for resettlement. Therefore, every time a new family is assigned to a resettlement agency, the case managers there have to restart the relatively arduous task of finding housing. Drawing upon ethnographic research conducted with one refugee resettlement organization, which I call Refugee Resettlement Affiliate Office (RRAO), to elucidate the ongoing challenges to housing integration for those refugees resettled in the United States, I assert that a federal solution is needed in order to ensure the smooth integration into life in the US for resettled refugees. In the current situation, the lack of a clearly defined housing policy impedes the integration of resettled refugees into the United States by maintaining them as a segregated “Othered” population and pits refugees against other housing-insecure individuals in the United States. The result of this complex situation is that refugees may be welcomed into the country, but they receive the message that they are not welcome.

This research took place in 2021, a time when the barriers to safe, affordable, and appropriate housing for refugees were even more pronounced due to specific conditions arising from shifting political priorities and the COVID-19 pandemic. During his presidency from 2016 to 2020, President Trump attempted to halt immigration to the US and dismantle the refugee program. During his time in office, refugee admittances plummeted from over 100,000 a year to less than 30,000, and, as a result, many resettlement organizations laid off staff or even closed offices (Fee and Arar 2019). When Biden took office in 2021, he dramatically increased the proposed cap for admitted refugees from 18,000 to 62,500 (and 125,000 in the following year). In light of such drastic changes, refugee resettlement offices initially had insufficient staff to handle the case load and an increase in the number of clients needing services. The instability in refugee resettlement housing was further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) passed in March of 2020 included a moratorium on evictions of tenants in rental properties that received federal funding. In September of that year, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) announced a sweeping eviction moratorium that remained in place until August of 2021. The eviction moratorium provided much needed relief to many people but placed an additional strain on refugee resettlement organizations since it meant that fewer properties were available at a time when they needed more.

Given all of this, the story told in this article is about a specific moment in time. Nonetheless, the information presented herein remains relevant and important. Housing is a substantial challenge even as the moratorium has ended and resettlement offices have hired new staff. I argue that the case of refugee housing presented in this text should be understood as an example of how vulnerable resettlement is to social and political forces.

2. Refugee Resettlement in the United States

A refugee, as defined by the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, is “someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion” (https://www.unhcr.org/what-is-a-refugee.html, accessed on 1 December 2024). The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reports that as of the end of 2023, 117.3 million people were forcibly displaced “as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations, or event seriously disturbing public order” (UNHCR 2023). Of these, 31.6 million were refugees who were considered to be under UNHCR’s mandate and 6 million were Palestinian refugees under the mandate of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). This is more displaced people than ever before in recorded history, providing evidence that the world is experiencing a “refugee crisis”. War, persecution, and natural disasters are forcing more and more people to flee from their homes in search of safety and shelter.

There are three durable solutions proposed to deal with displacement: return, local integration, and resettlement. None of these have been particularly successful. In 2023, 6.1 million displaced people were able to return to their country of origin and only 158,700 resettled in a new location (UNHCR 2023). The vast majority of displaced people are in a state of protracted displacement in refugee camps or locally integrated into a population without hope of having their asylum claims reviewed (Dunn 2017; Gallagher 1994). Returning home or resettlement is the reality only for around 3 percent of the world’s refugees—2.5 percent are able to return home and 0.8 percent are resettled through formal resettlement programs (Ferris 2018). Resettlement is not mandated in the UN 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees or in any international law but is the best pathway towards integration. It is considered “a tool for protection of and solution for refugees, a tangible mechanism for burden and responsibility sharing and a demonstration of solidarity” (Ineli-Ciger 2022, p. 28). In the absence of an international legal regime governing resettlement, it becomes a “tool of responsibility sharing” (Ibid., p. 32). The United States has the largest and one of the oldest resettlement programs in the world (Capps et al. 2015) but only resettles a small fraction of those seeking refuge.

Prior to World War II, the US did not have a separate policy for refugees. People were not differentiated on the basis of why they moved, and asylum was not recognized. In the 18th and 19th centuries, immigrants were welcomed as necessary laborers as the US was expanding and building up its industry. Limitations were not put on immigration until the end of the 19th century. The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882 to limit the immigration of Chinese workers and bar them from citizenship. In 1921, the Emergency Quota Act was the first legal act to limit the number of immigrants accepted into the country. Passed in response to the large numbers of migrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, the law defined who could be admitted into the country on the basis of nationality and limited the number who could enter from any given country to three percent of the population from that country living in the US.

During and after World War II, the Janus-faced policy that still characterizes US refugee and immigration practices today emerged in an attempt to balance a liberal human rights policy with a national security one. In such a system, “One face presses for admission, the other urges restriction. While the gates of admission are always guarded, time and circumstance determine which face prevails” (Zucker and Zucker 1992, p. 54). Those admitted throughout the post-World War II era included people displaced from the war, survivors of the Holocaust, and, increasingly as the Cold War ramped up, those fleeing Communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe. For example, following the failed Hungarian Revolution against the Red Army in 1956, over 30,000 were admitted to the US under the program Operation Safe Haven (Coriden 1996; Pastor 2016; USCIS 2022; Zucker and Zucker 1992). At the same time, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) strengthened border controls and increased deportation efforts as a way to quell public alarm over non-citizens living and working in the US (USCIS 2019).

The Refugee Act of 1980 was passed in order to standardize refugee policy in the US. The act removed geographic and ideological limitations on who gets to be a refugee and aligned the national definition of a refugee with that of the UN Refugee Convention stated above. The new legislation built greater stability and predictability into the resettlement process by creating a permanent system, the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), setting an annual refugee admittance ceiling, and standardizing the procedure to vet, process, and resettle refugees. The USRAP is overseen by several government offices such as the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) at the Department of State; the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the Department of Health and Human Services; and the US Citizenship and Integration (USCIS), which is housed within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and has assumed responsibility for the screening of asylum applicants since the creation of the DHS.

As delineated in the Refugee Act of 1980, the number of refugees admitted to the United States annually is set by the President in consultation with Congress. The past decade has seen dramatic fluctuations in the number of refugees received due to shifting political priorities and agendas of presidential administrations. In accordance with his campaign promises, there were record low admissions under the Trump administration. Trump lowered the refugee admittance cap every year he was in office (from 50,000 in 2017 to 18,000 in 2020) and accepted fewer than projected. In 2021, only 11,411 refugees were resettled in the United States, the lowest number since the program began in 1980. President Biden raised the cap to 62,500 upon taking office and has maintained it at 125,000 every year since then. The numbers of refugees being admitted are increasing but still fall short of the proposed caps. The Biden administration places the blame for this gap on Trump-era policies that led to funding cuts and staff cuts in the resettlement system. The gap between cap and admissions can also be explained by the prioritization of resettlement for Afghan parolees following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and Ukrainian parolees in the midst of the Ukrainian–Russian war. Those with parole status are able to stay in the US on a temporary basis but do not have an immigration status or a path to lawful permanent residence. Both Afghani and Ukrainian parolees are eligible to receive reception and placement services even though they do not have refugee status, but they do not receive funding or intensive case management, nor are they provided with a pathway to citizenship.

The Act identifies nine voluntary agencies (VolAgs) to coordinate resettlement services for newly resettled refugees. These organizations, most of which are religious in nature, were largely the same ones that the government relied upon to aid resettlement efforts prior to 1980. The legislation formalized the already existent public–private relationship. The nine VolAgs oversee over 300 local refugee resettlement agencies throughout the country. Employees and volunteers at these agencies are responsible for welcoming newly resettled refugees at the airport; finding and setting up housing facilities with furnishings, culturally appropriate foods, clothes, and necessities; and providing access to necessary services such as registering for school, applying for a Social Security card, scheduling appointments, finding employment, using public transportation. Employees and volunteers from these organizations also provide cultural orientation, social support, and wrap-around services for up to five years.

The agency that I call Refugee Resettlement Affiliate Office (RRAO) is one such resettling organization. It is affiliated with one of the nine VolAgs, but I do not identify which one in order to maintain the organization’s confidentiality. RRAO provides more than just resettlement services and has provided for the various needs of their community for over 100 years. Today, however, most of their staff are dedicated to resettlement work. They resettle tens to hundreds of refugees per year, with the specific number dependent on the quota set by the president. During the fiscal year 2023, RRAO resettled 253 cases (each individual is a case, even if they have come in a family), most from Afghanistan. In 2024, that number went to 450 cases, and they are proposing to be able to resettle 525 in FY2025. Finding housing for all refugees assigned to their office has been a challenge, but to date spaces have been found for all clients assigned, in part by expanding the geographical region in which they seek apartments.

Refugee Integration Through Housing

Lindsay Harris states, “The purpose of asylum is to provide a survivor of persecution, or an individual with a well-founded fear of persecution, with protection. I argue, however, that the goal of our asylum system should be not only to provide protection to those in need, but also to give asylees a chance to rebuild their lives, in essence, to thrive, and to ensure that we, as a country, take full advantage of their presence in the United States” (Harris 2016, p. 39). In other words, resettlement is not enough. Integration should be the goal. Many scholars point out that the US lacks “a national, coherent integration policy” (de Graauw and Bloemraad 2017, p. 106; see also Ager and Strang 2008). They characterize the American approach as “laissez-faire” or individualized, relying on grassroots initiatives and immigrants’ own “resources and ingenuity” (de Graauw and Bloemraad 2017; see also Bloemraad 2006; Bloemraad and de Graauw 2012; Jiménez 2011). Integration is often the stated policy goal and targeted outcome for projects working with refugees but is ill-defined and difficult to measure. Therefore, the work of integration primarily falls to refugee resettlement agencies such as RRAO.

Resettlement organizations are among the myriad of third-sector organizations that deliver social, humanitarian, political, and social services to newcomers to the United States (Garkisch et al. 2017), but they are the only ones who receive federal funding to do this work. While many government programs focus on employment and economic self-sufficiency, one of the most important aspects of integration to address, especially in the first months someone is in the country, is housing. Residential integration through access to safe, affordable housing in a neighborhood where people feel a sense of belonging that is connected to public transportation and close to schools and places of employment is an undeniably crucial part of the process of refugee integration (Alshoubake 2024; Massey and Denton 1985).

There are two times when housing is particularly important in a refugee’s resettlement process. The first is upon arrival and the second is when they move out of housing provided by the resettlement organizations. There are challenges associated with both, some of which are shared, but the key difference is that when a refugee family is accepted for resettlement and assigned to a resettlement office, it is up to the local affiliate to find housing. The federal government provides a set amount of funding per resettled refugee, which is then provided to the local resettlement affiliate to be spent on clients for immediate resettlement needs. Using these funds, organizations like RRAO provide intensive case management in the form of airport pick-up, finding and setting up an apartment, helping to establish benefits and a Social Security number, taking clients shopping and helping them learn the area, and driving them to appointments for up to 90 days. Funding can be extended, but the expectation is that within 90 days, the refugee client will be employed and moving towards self-sufficiency. They are still eligible to receive services from RRAO such as employment assistance, physical and mental health support, youth programs, and ESL and continuing education for up to five years after arrival.

After resettlement support ends, resettled families are expected to be economically self-sufficient, including, among other things, being responsible for their own housing payments. At this point, they are eligible for assistance services. Resettlement organizations cannot access federal housing assistance because newly arrived refugees do not have income and, therefore, do not meet the eligibility requirements. This means there are fewer options available to them in terms of potential housing units. However, once a refugee has been in the US for several months and meets the eligibility of having proof of income below the federally recognized income limit for the region, they are eligible. In the area served by RRAO, refugee families often move into housing that accepts housing choice vouchers (called Section 8 housing due to the provision’s location in the Housing Act of 1937) after their initial four to six months in the country. As a side note, at this time, it is common for settled refugees to move to a secondary location (Bloem and Loveridge 2017). This is a concern for resettlement organizations because they often do not have a way to follow up. Refugees move on for many reasons including to be closer to family networks or cultural diasporas.

The authors of a content analysis of the literature available on refugee housing conclude, “The literature suggests that existing housing policies, situated within wider neoliberal trends, lead to insecurity and increased vulnerability and negatively impact the ability for asylum seekers and refugees to build and maintain their social networks locally” (Brown et al. 2024, p. 262). Lindsay Harris (2016) reports that unstable housing is a substantial barrier to integration for asylees, whose asylum claims have not yet been approved. While asylees qualify for federally subsidized housing, “the long waiting list renders eligibility meaningless” (Harris 2016, p. 72). Moreover, due to the limited amount of resettlement benefits and focus on economic self-sufficiency, refugees and asylum seekers are pushed towards low-income housing that “increases isolation and undermines integration” (Ibid.). On the flip side, stable housing can help quickly move newly arrived refugees from a place of uncertainty to relative stability (Auslender 2021). Studies overwhelmingly show that once resettled, refugees contribute to local economies, expand tax bases, and help neighborhoods thrive (Beers 2020; de Peña and la Corte 2019). In short, stable housing is integral to refugee integration, but there are many barriers to providing this housing.

3. Methods

This research emerged from a long-standing relationship between the author and RRAO. Prior to embarking on this project, I collaborated with the team at RRAO to provide learning experiences for my students in the class “Refugees, Migration, and Displacement”. After working with them in this capacity for several years, I worked with a select group of students and the director of RRAO to design a research project that would produce data of use to the organization. The questions that are at the heart of this inquiry—What are the challenges to finding housing? What are potential solutions?—were identified by the director as their most pressing concerns and, therefore, became the focus of this research. While, as discussed above, housing has long been a challenge, it was particularly worrying in 2021 when RRAO was seeing a dramatic increase in the numbers of people being assigned to their office. In 2017, RRAO resettled over 300 cases, but from 2018 to 2021, they resettled fewer than 100 each year. For the fiscal year 2022, they were expecting around 350 people (the final number was 270) and were unsure how they would meet that demand given their reduced staff. In addition, many of the housing contacts they had in 2017 had dried up. I was tasked with identifying the barriers to housing in order to work towards implementable solutions. I have worked in close collaboration with the director of refugee resettlement at RRAO to develop questions, identify research priorities, and contact research participants.

This is a qualitative research study utilizing the tools of ethnography. The data for this research come from an ongoing analysis of changing refugee policies, coordination with local community partners, and qualitative interviewing with a small but representative number of individuals who either work in refugee resettlement or are connected through their work in the city, as property managers, or as individuals who have gone through the resettlement process. Those interviewed were three employees of RRAO (two current and one former), an individual who works in city planning, the director of a local housing organization, two resettled refugees who had been assigned to RRAO, and a property manager. Students worked on several aspects of this issue. They compiled data on where refugees lived in comparison to where services were and mapped these data using GIS, contacted other refugee resettlement organizations to compare the housing challenges they faced, investigated housing safety issues for refugees, and compiled a list of properties that could potentially provide units for resettled refugee families.

RRAO, a regional organization, is the focus of this project, but a student researcher reached out via email to 87 different resettlement organizations located throughout the United States. The questions posed to these organizations were as follows: (1) What challenges does your organization face in procuring housing for newly resettled refugees? (2) What solutions have you used to overcome these challenges? and (3) What changes would your organization like to see on a local or national level to support refugee housing and resettlement? The purpose of contacting nationwide resettlement offices was to confirm that the experiences reported by RRAO were shared. Only nine organizations responded. I suspect that the low response rate may have something to do with the time period in which we were conducting the research. The summer of 2021, when the emails were disseminated, was a period of uncertainty. Many organizations, like RRAO, had to cut services and lay off staff during the Trump presidency due to reduced arrivals. According to a 2017 survey, 300 jobs were cut and five local resettlement offices closed in the first year of Trump’s time in office, which meant that “skilled and experienced caseworkers, social service providers, and expert staff” were lost, “creating a void in communities across the country” (Fee and Arar 2019, p. 21). When Biden took office, he raised the refugee cap, but organizations were still understaffed. RRAO, for example, had gone from three case workers in 2016 to one in 2021. Nonetheless, the nine responses were thorough, insightful, and keeping in line with what I was learning from RRAO.

4. Findings

As has been stated, the primary challenge with housing is that there is no federal policy or coordinating agency to ensure that municipalities make residences available for new arrivals. However, beyond the lack of federal support, housing proves to be a unique challenge and, therefore, is one of the biggest barriers to successful integration. All the findings below were identified through conversations with the RRAO director, interviews with RRAO employees, and employees at other refugee resettlement agencies who responded to the email the student sent out.

4.1. Affordable Housing Shortage

It is important to note that with or without a comprehensive federal policy, one of the biggest challenges facing those working in refugee resettlement is the same issue that all working in affordable housing must face—the United States is currently in an affordability housing crisis. There is an overall lack of affordable housing due to the gap in land availability, buyer budget, and construction costs. Land and construction costs exceed what many buyers and renters are able to afford. The housing market has increased exponentially as income has declined such that “rising demand is outpacing the growth in supply and has increased the burden on renter households” (Clark 2016, p. 92). The crisis in affordable housing fuels gentrification, leads to more and more people in poor or insufficient housing, creates instability in the markets, and puts pressure on those working in housing. A “housing crisis” has particular negative consequences for those “at the bottom of the class structure” (Powell and Robinson 2019, p. 188). This includes, of course, refugees who are particularly disadvantaged due to “their socio-legal status, pre-migratory experiences and their positioning in society which affords them additional vulnerabilities and exacerbates the housing stress they face” (Brown et al. 2024, p. 260).

The affordable housing crisis is distinctly felt by those in refugee resettlement. Although the federal government provides funds for each resettled client, these are often limited in nature. The resettlement agency receives USD 2125 a month for four months to provide for all the immediate needs of a refugee assigned to their office, which, especially in light of rising rents costs, does not cover very much. One person working in Tennessee said, “In this market, both affordability and availability are huge challenges”. According to another working in Nebraska, “The main challenge is affordable housing. With the rent hikes across the US, it had become very challenging to find affordable, safe, good housing for my clients”. A sustainable housing solution is needed in the country and would be to the benefit of everyone. As one resettlement official in North Carolina explains, shelter-less and housing-insecure people should be treated the same way as refugees: “Their housing needs are the same and if they are not met, then the refugee needs probably aren’t either. To use a cliché, when the tide rises, all boats rise with it. The tide needs to rise to make housing affordable for everyone”. Most of the resettlement officials with whom we spoke across the country cited the lack of affordable housing as their primary challenge. According to one in Idaho, “We do not have affordable housing, but even worst, there is no available housing period”.

4.2. Discrimination, Bias, and Cultural Barriers

As was explained to me by RRAO employees, even when housing is available, property managers and rental agencies are often reluctant to rent to refugee families. Some of this reluctance comes from racialized stereotypes, misconceptions, or a lack of awareness of who refugees are. This is to be expected given that many Americans lack an awareness of who refugees are. They obtain their information about refugees from media messages, which often conflate migrants and refugees and depict them as either victims in search of the American dream (Steimel 2010), impoverished or at risk (Olier and Spadavecchia 2022), or illegal and potentially criminal (Chavez 2007). Due to these media messages, cultural bias, and a lack of training, many property managers may associate refugees with criminality and/or poverty. A wealth of research has provided ample evidence that migrants and refugees are “no more prone to engage in criminal activity that the general native population” (Masterson and Yasenov 2021, p. 1068). Indeed, in the study region, despite an increase in crime rates in 2021, no crime was attributed to immigrants (migrants and refugees are not differentiated in statistics, nor are they over represented among the poor). Of the approximately 106,683 foreign-born living in the region, 70 percent are employed, compared to 65 percent of the US-born population (The Commonwealth Institute 2021). One report concludes that in the study region “the majority (if not overwhelming) amount of empirical evidence points to the conclusion that immigration leads to increased innovation, a better-educated workforce, greater occupational specialization and higher economic productivity” (Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy 2018, p. 145). Refugees’ rates of labor force participation, entrepreneurship, and home ownership exceed that of the general US population (Beers 2020; Capps et al. 2015; Kerwin 2018). Despite evidence to support refugee integration, media messages are pervasive and can greatly influence the behavior of property managers and other potential landlords (Esses et al. 2013).

Although property managers have most likely not experienced increased risk of crime when renting to foreign-born, many do report having negative experience with renters. The property manager with whom I spoke claimed that other residents complained about cooking smells coming from units occupied by refugees or immigrants. She also mentioned that newcomers do not have experience with plumbing and, therefore, flushed diapers and other non-flushable materials and caused major plumbing issues. One property manager that RRAO used to work with began to refuse refugees, particularly those from Africa, citing hygiene concerns such as those listed above. Refugees accepted for resettlement to the US receive cultural training in which they learn about plumbing and hygiene, in addition to many other important lessons. This cultural orientation is reinforced by RRAO case managers, but nevertheless, it is the case that there may be a steep learning curve, and new arrivals to the US may have different sanitary standards. One property manager I spoke with who not only routinely rented to refugees, but also expressed great affection for her renters, mentioned that there was a “different odor” associated with refugee units. She also spoke of concerns regarding general housekeeping, commenting that it could be difficult to access units because household items would be piled up rather than stored as expected. However, it should be noted that this represents a cultural challenge, not an insurmountable problem. US culture is one that is very concerned with cleanliness, almost to the point of being sterile. Non-Americans are often less concerned with smells and bodily hygiene. In addition, US foods are often lacking in strong flavors and smells and, thus, are unaccustomed to strong smells in general. There is a long history of discriminating people, particularly Blacks, on the basis of odor (Zhang and Nyelade 2021). “Odor”, posits le Guerer, “becomes an instrument and justification for or the sign of a racial, social and, in the end, moral rejection” (le Guerer 1992, p. 27). Cultural awareness, training, and education can be beneficial tools to combat these stereotypes.

Another concern due to cultural differences is that refugee families are, on average, larger than the typical US families. Apartment complexes generally comprise solely two bedrooms units with tenant capacities less than the average refugee family size. According to a resettlement official in Tennessee, one of the housing challenges is “finding housing for families greater than seven. For seven people, legally they can stay in a three-bedroom apartment. However, finding housing for larger families is always a struggle”. Another in Nebraska concurs: “We received families of eight, nine, ten, and twelve. It was extremely difficult to find them housing”. In these cases, it may be possible to rent two to three smaller side-by-side units, but this is an unsatisfactory solution to a persistent problem; one that could be solved by a clearly defined housing policy.

4.3. Lack of Support for Housing and Refugee Integration

Property managers may refuse to rent on the grounds of these hygienic/smell or family size concerns because they are not obligated to provide housing for refugee families. Indeed, renting to refugees often requires them to go against their own rental leases and contracts to do so. To rent an apartment, an applicant must provide a background check and proof of employment, things that newcomers to the United States do not have. Moreover, case managers must be able to gain access to the living space and the key before the family arrives so that they can furnish the apartment, another unorthodox procedure. The resettlement organization has a response to all of these concerns. First and foremost, refugees go through an extensive background check and are thoroughly vetted before they are accepted for resettlement. They are likely to be screened more extensively than any other potential renter. In terms of proof of employment, RRAO pays the rent for 90 days and can provide an additional month if needed. They have never had a case where a family was not self-sufficient within that time frame. Moreover, to provide reassurance, they can pay two months of rent at the start of the leasing term. Finally, in order to gain access to the apartment before the legal leasers arrive, RRAO can provide a legal promissory note.

Despite work arounds such as these, property managers and owners are often reluctant to work with RRAO. My student researchers and I struggled to have property managers speak with us or return our calls. One student researcher tasked with attempting to make contacts experienced consistent frustration. When calling, few people answered the phones. When she left messages, no one returned her calls, and emails also went unanswered. She explained, “I did not talk to many people; many did not answer the phone, and of the few that did, no one wanted to discuss housing refugees, even in a short phone conversation”. One individual who was willing to have this short conversation likely exemplified the sentiments of many property managers. When asked about providing rental spaces to refugees, this individual claimed that they could not rent to refugees because they would not be able to meet the application requirement of having three times the rent income. When the student explained that the refugee resettlement organization could provide this amount, the property manager responded that they had tried to rent to refugees in the past but ran into problems because they did not have the proper paperwork. Again, the student came back that all applicants are federally vetted and should have the necessary documentation. The call was ended at this point. It is important to note that we did speak with one individual who called refugees “some of the best tenets I’ve ever had”. She explained, “they pay their rent on time, do not get into fights with each other or drink outside of their homes, and keep the peace within the complex”. This individual said she had tried to convince others to rent to refugees but to no avail.

In the absence of federal oversight, the housing situation is such that property managers rarely want to rent to refugees and do not have any incentives to do so. In fact, they are largely dis-incentivized since renting to refugees requires them to work counter to normal procedures. As a result, the apartment complexes most likely to work with RRAO are those who typically rent to lower-income residents. There is a benefit in working with properties designated for lower-income residents. These properties tend to be located near bus stops that connect families with places of employment, health care offices, and the resettlement agency, an important factor to consider when housing refugees. However, the use of low-income properties is not without decided drawbacks.

First, the use of low-income housing limits the number of properties available to RRAO. Refugees are ineligible for federal housing subsidies because they do not have taxable income. Since some housings are set aside specifically for subsidized housing, there are many properties that are nonstarters with resettlement agencies. This creates a situation in which there are fewer properties available for more people and refugees are pitted against the housing-insecure.

Those working in refugee resettlement face the added challenge of inconsistency in their client base and staffing challenges, exacerbated due to the anti-migrant policies of the Trump administration. Until 2016, the refugee resettlement office experienced a more or less steady and predictable flow of refugees needing protection. In the final year of the Obama administration, they accepted 360 refugees, a substantial number but one they were able to accommodate. Throughout the four years of the Trump administration, however, the office accepted a negligible number of cases. As such, the staff shrunk from three case managers to one. As the sole case manager explained when I asked him about housing, “I am not a housing coordinator. So, there has to be a person to do this, but we don’t have that person available. So, I am the case manager. I have a very well-defined job description as well as [finding housing]. As soon as a case is coming here, the clock starts ticking. So, which means that there are some deadlines that have to be met. I have to do certain things within days of their arrival. Next day, five days, ten days, 30 days, depends on the case. So, I have a timeline and then I have to deliver those services. And housing is on the top of it”. As if to illustrate the point, he received a call during our conversation about a new case for which he needed to find housing—“Basically”, he explained, “there is no housing available”. Since this conversation, additional case managers have been hired and the staff has grown, but they are still struggling to keep up with the quick uptick in demand.

A slowdown in services during the Trump administration also meant that RRAO lost many of their housing partners. Apartment complexes depend on a steady turnover of residents. They cannot hold units open in anticipation of potential arrivals that may or may not come. Former housing partners, for various reasons elucidated above, are now reluctant or unwilling to work with RRAO. We were attempting to contact people during the summer of 2021 when the eviction moratorium was still in place. It is highly likely that the moratorium had something to do with the lack of cooperation. To help provide economic relief and protection for those whose employment and income had been negatively impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, the CARES act established a partial eviction moratorium. This was replaced by a more comprehensive eviction ban by the CDC, which was extended twice before being ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in late August 2021. The goal of the eviction moratorium is laudable—to keep families safely housed during a global pandemic. Indeed, many immigrant and refugee families previously resettled benefited from the moratorium since immigrant and refugees are more likely to work low-wage jobs that are often the first to be eliminated. As such, they are in the group with the potential to experience high levels of financial insecurity and potential eviction, but, despite its potential benefits, the moratorium created an additional barrier to housing for resettled refugees. The moratorium did not eliminate the debt accrued, but merely postponed it. Additionally, it did not account for the manner in which such an act would impact the decision making of both landlord and tenants. Some landlords either left the business or became more hesitant to rent to those they considered to be un-vetted. Since the moratorium provided only temporary and partial relief, it served primarily to pit low-income renters against each other and did nothing to mitigate the social and economic inequalities between renters and tenants. Although the moratorium is no longer in place, its ramifications are still being felt and may affect property managers’ willingness (or lack thereof) to rent to refugees.

That being said, as the number of refugees needing housing increased dramatically during the Biden administration, RRAO responded to the challenge and managed to make new partnerships, and they have successfully housed all of the cases assigned to their office. In a meeting with RRAO community partners in 2023, the director of refugee and immigration services explained, “We have the best housing options that we’ve ever had”. The office expanded the geographical region in which they looked for housing, established more partnerships, and had more apartment complexes willing to work for them. However, as optimistic as the situation looks now, it is still tenuous. A representative from the city planning office who was also in this meeting expressed some skepticism, “You may have made progress, but we [in the city] are facing one of the most challenging times”. As long as refugees and low-income individuals are competing for the same housing, there future will look unsure. Moreover, those working in refugee resettlement are concerned with what will happen during a second Trump presidency. Again, without a clear policy, variability and inconsistency will define resettlement efforts.

5. Discussion

The most notable consequence of such a chaotic housing situation is that newly arrived refugee families often do not have a place to stay ready for them when they arrive. Quite often, the resettlement organization learns a new family is arriving only days, or sometimes only hours, before they need to be picked up from the airport. The amount of work that needs to be done in the short amount of time is almost overwhelming. They must find suitable housing, preferably in an area located close to a bus route, schools, and shops. They must have the utilities turned on for the property and have it suitably furnished and stocked. A former case manager for RRAO said that to do this, he relied on a vast network of connections to find available rooms and new mattresses. Due to all of the reasons mentioned above, those networks have been fractured and, in some cases, severed. When housing cannot be found in time, the families will be temporarily placed in an extended stay hotel room. One resettlement official in Tennessee explained, “Sometimes putting our newly arriving refugee families in expensive hotels in the only way to meet the government’s requirements for welcoming them to our community”. While an acceptable and necessary temporary fix, this is overall unsatisfactory as it significantly prolongs the amount of time it takes for new arrivals to adjust to their new home and begin the long process of integration.

The second implication is that it perpetuates conditions that isolate new arrivals into substandard housing. Lack of affordable housing is an issue beyond the needs of refuges and other new arrivals. Affordable housing is defined as spending no more than 30 percent of one’s income on rent or mortgage, heat, and utilities. By this metric, 37.1 million households in the United States were considered cost burdened in 2019 (Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies 2020, p. 34). Refugee resettlement is not an affordable housing issue, per say, but there is a great overlap. Refugees tend to get placed in low-income housing units because these are the ones that are most available and most likely to be located near bus routes. After refugee families have been in the country for four months, they are expected to be self-sufficient. At this time (or at any time thereafter), they may apply for federally subsidized housing. Thus, it is not possible to consider the needs of refugees apart from the issue of affordable housing.

The problem is not solely that refugees are placed into low-income housing. There is a structural reason why this happens, and research has shown that the average earning rate of refugee families increases and their dependence on social welfare decreases the longer that they are in the country (Kerwin 2018). However, there are consequences associated with the marginalization of refugee housing. First, it reinforces the erroneous belief that refugees are poor and/or criminal. Research has consistently shown that refugees in specific, and immigrants in general, tend to engage in less criminal behavior than the native population and when they do commit a crime, it is more often directed at members of their own community than the larger population. However, when refugees are only geographically housed in those areas associated with poverty and crime, the stereotype prevails.

Second, there are consequences for refugees themselves. Being housed in poorer areas can create disillusionment among refugees about life in America. A common misconception is that refugees’ lives are defined by flight and danger and that their lives, as a whole, were dangerous, impoverished, or just overall appalling before being resettled. The reality is people are leaving good homes, loving families, and stable jobs. As Warsan Shire writes in her poem “Home”, “No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark”. That is, home is not a place people want to leave, but must. Dina Nayeri dispels the misconception that refugees are always leaving behind extreme poverty or abject destruction. In her book, The Ungrateful Refugee, she reminiscences about her home in Iran. “In Isfan, we had yellow spray roses, a pool. A glass enclosure shot up through our living room, and inside that was a tree. I had a tree inside my house…life in Iran was a fairy tale” (Nayeri 2019, p. 7). It can be quite a shock to leave behind a “fairy tale” for a low-income property in an American urban center.

Like Nayeri, the new living conditions of recently resettled refugees may often pale in comparison to their old ones. A resettled refugee with whom we spoke had this experience. He said that the first place he was placed was in a bad neighborhood. “I tried to move at that time. I was homesick. I just would like to go back home…It’s a very different view of America. There was dangerous fighting in the night”. High-poverty, low-quality housing impacts individuals’ sense of safety in their environment and can result in newly arrived families moving out and away from helpful resettlement services (Sichling 2021). It bears repeating that the decision to place refugees in low-income housing is a structural one and is not a failure of the refugee resettling organization, but rather a factor of affordable housing and refugee housing constraints.

A final implication of the housing crisis for refugees is that it places an undue burden on the refugee resettlement organization. Housing is just one of the many responsibilities of refugee resettlement organizations. Like all such organizations, RRAO provides assistance with employment. They provide language classes and liaise with schools to make sure that children are being adequately served in the school system. They coordinate with local health care providers to ensure access to health care screenings, vaccines, and basic needs. They are advocates for their clients and work to support them in every stage of their transition to life in the United States. When so much of their resources are tied up in procuring housing, they are less able to focus on these other tasks. All arrivals up to June 2024 have been successfully housed, but this has been the primary focus. The need to find housing takes time, resources, and energy from other necessary tasks.

Solutions

It is difficult to propose feasible challenges without a comprehensive local or federal housing policy. Indeed, as I have discussed in this analysis, policies that are in place not only do not support renting to refugees but discourage property managers from working with refugee resettlement. One individual working in housing at a resettlement office in Tennessee expressed the difficulty of working within the current housing policy that does not make allowances for the unique needs of refugees: “It would be wonderful if local and national programs were created to specifically allow refugees to access permanent housing that would give new arrivals a preference. As it is, ‘Fair Housing’ laws tend to make landlords and property managers fearful of giving a preference to refugees. It is, however, lawful to establish such a preference. Creating clear government-endorsed flyers that explain how establishing a preference for refugees does NOT violate Fair Housing could be very helpful for people myself that are looking for housing options”. Another commented on the need for a policy that would prohibit property managers from denying refugees on the basis of failing to meet application criteria: “The changes I would like to see is some sort of policy (locally & nationally) in place that says landlords have to work around their application & screening processes for immigration purposes. This is often an excuse they will use for not willing to rent to them, (i.e., ‘This is a corporate policy that I can’t make an exception for’)”. It goes without saying that policy changes are the most needed, permanent, sustainable solutions. However, lacking this, those in refugee resettlement have devised many temporary solutions and are working towards more permanent ones.

As already mentioned, when there is no housing available for an arriving family, resettlement offices will need to put families up in hotels. This is not an adequate solution for anyone as a hotel is not a permanent living place. Moreover, in many cases, the costs of the hotel come out of the families’ welcoming funds, meaning that they are depleted when more long-term housing becomes available. Some of the resettlement offices have been able to work with local Airbnb properties. This is a better solution than the hotel but is also not sustainable. As one explained, “[The Airbnb] helped a lot in terms of having a temporary place for them to stay until we found housing, but it hurt us in the way that families expected to have a house like Airbnb and that was not often the case”.

In order to find available and affordable housing, resettlement offices have had to expand their service areas. For example, RRAO tries to house new arrivals in the city where their office is located but has expanded their search for housing to the surrounding cities. Expanding the search for housing is what has made it possible for RRAO and other resettlement offices to find living spaces for all newly arrived families, but this solution is not without its drawbacks. Families resettled in other cities lack access to the resettlement office. An affiliate in Idaho explained, “We have been focusing on finding housing for newly arrived refugees in our neighboring cities, but this means that we have to work so hard to develop resources for refugees in those new resettlement cities”. Also, resettlement organizations are limited in how far they can reach outside of the city center. As one individual in Tennessee told us, “We have had some offers for housing in rural areas but that unfortunately is not the best situation for our clients (far from community, halal markets, not near any bus routes, far from any employers that would hire clients, etc.)”.

Several people with whom I spoke as part of this research identified a potential solution that could address the challenges of both affordability and availability—the development of complexes specifically for refugees. These can be city-owned or resettlement office-owned properties that are maintained by a cooperative and provide units specifically for newly arrived refugees. One resettlement official in Nebraska told us,“A bigger dream of mine that has been shared in my community and those working with refugees, is to have an entire complex dedicated to refugees. It would be a space where they can temporarily land, to be with others in their community, and to provide education services about housing. It would also give us adequate time to find good, safe, affordable housing”.

RRAO has also been on the look out for properties such as old hotels or run-down complexes, and the city is in support of these efforts. I spoke with someone in the city planning office that expressed interest in looking for properties that have fallen into disuse that could be remodeled for refugee use. Not only that, but this is a model that has been used by those working in affordable housing. In a cooperative housing model, residents are shareholders of cooperative (or, in this case, nonprofit)-owned properties. Cooperative housing works to keep housing costs low and help provide support for residents because they live near those who have the same needs as they do. For example, living in a cooperative housing unit means that residents can rely upon their neighbors for things like childcare, transportation needs, and language challenges (Auslender 2021; Brandsen and Helderman 2012; Reynolds 2018).

Despite the potential of this solution, cooperative housing has not been established due in part to the lack of partnerships to make this happen. Staffing is a challenge in resettlement, and so there is a lack of dedicated staff to carry out this plan and to coordinate the management of a property. In the case of RRAO, the city is in support of such a plan but is similarly lacking in staff to manage such a complex. I reached out to Habitat for Humanity as a likely potential partner, but their model is based on building pathways to home ownership. They do not work with refugees because their clients need to show that they will be in the region for the foreseeable future. It is not possible for a new arrival in the States to make such a commitment. Indeed, it is very common for refugee families to engage in secondary migration to new locations in the US after a few months or even years living in the location where they were first resettled (Bloem and Loveridge 2017).

Partnerships and outreach with community advocates and property managers are necessary to form long-term, sustainable solutions to the specific housing challenges inherent in refugee resettlement. One example from the literature of a model that has relied upon these community partnerships is Every Campus a Refuge (ECAR). ECAR is an initiative established at Guilford College in 2015 by Diya Adbo with the intention of creating resettlement campus ecosystems on college campuses. ECAR’s mission is to partner every US college and university with their local refugee resettlement agency as a co-sponsor to host refugees on campuses to support them in their resettlement. University campuses already have the basic resources a newly resettled refugee family needs: housing, food services, utilities, and volunteers. ECAR chapters on university campuses partner with local resettlement organizations to provide a “softer landing” for refugee families and resources that enable them to thrive, not just survive (Abdo and Craven 2018; Roche 2022). One university in close proximity to RRAO has an ECAR chapter and is currently hosting their first family. This is a limited model in that most universities can often only host one family at a time, but it provides an interesting model that can be reinterpreted in other locales.

ECAR is an example of a program designed to fill the gap left by the federal government. It is reliant on university communities to provide resources and staffing to aid resettlement efforts. Another example of this is Welcome Corps, which was launched in 2021 at the time when the United States evacuated over 100,000 asylees from Afghanistan. Through the Welcome Corps, independent citizen groups can sponsor a refugee family. This individualized response helps provide more housing but it does not alleviate the issue of sustainable housing. Moreover, as Lindsay Harris (2016) points out, this can lead to an exploitative situation in which an asylee or refugee cannot become self-sufficient or move on because they are expected to serve the family or engage in free labor.

6. Conclusions

Despite media images to the contrary, refugees are consistently successfully integrated into local communities. They are typically employed within a few months of arrival, their dependence on social welfare programs declines precipitously with time in the country, and they engage in less criminal activity than native-born populations. Access to safe, affordable housing speeds up the process of integration and ensures a smooth transition into the country. Refugee resettlement organizations are aware of the importance of good housing. They are constrained in many ways but are actively involved in seeking out sustainable solutions and partnerships. However, without a coherent policy, refugee resettlement organizations are working to reinvent the wheel with each new arrival. Much of their resources are dedicated to funding housing, rather than supporting integration. If any administration truly wants to provide a safe haven for refugees, they will establish a housing policy. If not, they are perpetuating a situation in which refugees remain a problem.