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CWS affiliate agency in Atlanta helps, and advocates for, hurricane evacuees
The Nealy family: Tamika Obleton, Raymon Nealy, Jeremiah, and Raymon Jr., being sponsored by Oak Grove United Methodist Church in Atlanta.
Photo: Chuck Rogers, Oak Grove UMC
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Atlanta, GA – Refugee Resettlement and Immigration Services of Atlanta (RRISA), a Church World Service affiliate, is using its experience resettling refugees from other countries to help meet the needs of Gulf Coast hurricane survivors relocated to Georgia.
One of nine agencies serving evacuees through a 10-state program sponsored by Church World Service and privately funded by CWS member denominations and individual donors, RRISA is one of the largest evacuee assistance programs in Georgia.
RRISA has been assisting Gulf hurricane survivors for more than two months, and by mid-November had taken on more than 500 as clients. The agency has helped another 200-300 families with one-time referrals, such as to an employment center or a furniture source.
The numbers of evacuees still in need of permanent housing are staggering – about 150,000 nationwide. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) estimates that 12,000 hurricane evacuees are still living in Georgia hotels. The Red Cross puts the number at as many as 40,000.
RRISA put out a call for congregational sponsors through the local judicatories of the United Church of Christ, Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (USA) and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and through Atlanta Intercultural Ministries and the Regional Council of Churches of Atlanta.
To date, 50 churches have agreed to sponsor an identified evacuee family or families, as has The Paideia School in Atlanta, which also supports RRISA's refugee resettlement work. Other schools, businesses, and the Atlanta Jewish community also have contributed to RRISA's evacuee assistance program. (Examples follow of how Atlanta congregations have assisted evacuees.)
In order to prepare participating congregations to assist evacuees, RRISA provided them with training on ways they can provide moral and material support in order to assist hurricane evacuees as they recover their dignity and regain self-sufficiency in their new communities, whether their stay ultimately is short or long.
RRISA and congregations have been working in partnership to help hurricane evacuees sort out the myriad disaster relief programs; find jobs, health care, and affordable housing and furnishings; get their children enrolled in school, and get oriented to and integrated into their new communities.
But congregations "cannot, and should not, take up all the slack," said Sarah Miller, a RRISA evacuee program caseworker. "They've already done so much, and they continue to help, but they can't afford to maintain people in apartments month after month. So many already have done that with several families. They can't take 10 more per church."
When FEMA announced that hotel vouchers for evacuees would be cut off as of Dec. 1, it precipitated panic, trauma and confusion, Miller said. RRISA joined in a Nov. 18 letter to President Bush and other government officials pleading for an extension of the vouchers at least until mid-January 2006 to give evacuees more time to find viable affordable housing.
Fortunately for several evacuees, FEMA's announcement also prompted four more churches to call "to say they could take another family," Miller said. "The cases RRISA currently has in hotels are more in need – for example, a young single mother with four children who are ill; a very elderly couple that get a total of $500 a month in Social Security; an elderly, disabled grandmother rearing a two-year-old."
On Nov. 22, FEMA extended hotel vouchers for most evacuees, including those in Georgia hotels, through Jan. 7. CWS and its affiliates welcomed the development, but cautioned that the extension is a patch, not a comprehensive solution to evacuees' problems.
In the meantime, "we got many, many panicked phone calls," Miller reported. "I went down to a hotel and was in the room of a woman literally having a panic attack. She's still missing a couple of her children. She was curled up in bed in the dark, unable to get the energy anymore to surmount this newest obstacle."
It takes time to absorb so many people into a new community, especially one like Atlanta that already has a shortage of affordable housing, in a state where the unemployment rate already exceeds the national average, wrote Miller and others in their Nov. 18 letter.
"Much remains to be done for tens of thousands of evacuees nationwide, many of whom are only beginning to recover emotionally and financially from the trauma of losing their homes, jobs, and sometimes family members and friends in one of the worst disasters in the nation’s history," they said.
Before FEMA extended the housing vouchers, RRISA's Sarah Miller said, "Initially, landlords were waiving security deposits and the need to have a job. Now they are requiring one month's rent plus a security deposit and proof of employment. Prospective tenants without jobs are required to provide three months' rent plus security deposit. We've been working to find landlords who'll accept people before the end of November – how do you do that? We don't want hotel vouchers extended forever, but two weeks notice is not fair."
Examples of how Atlanta churches are helping
In September, Oak Grove United Methodist Church in Atlanta, GA, welcomed both a refugee family from Russia and an evacuee family – a couple and their two sons – from New Orleans. The church found and furnished apartments for both families, and within two weeks got the New Orleans husband a job interview. First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Atlanta is assisting the wife's sister, her fiancé and their four-year-old son.
Other sponsoring churches include Eastminster Presbyterian Church of Atlanta, which mobilized about 50 of its members to help Gulf hurricane evacuees.
"Among members is the owner of a construction company, who worked nights and weekends to get a brand-new, three-bedroom house ready for a young New Orleans couple with a three-year-old child," said the Rev. Sandra Mullins, Executive Director of RRISA.
"The family had been living in public housing," Mullins said. "Now they are in a house. The church is charging nothing for three months, then will collect rent for three months. After six months, the church will help the family find more permanent housing, refunding the three months' rent as 'seed money.' In our experience, this is a good model for churches with parsonages or other property to consider, whether resettling refugees or helping hurricane evacuees."
The New Orleans couple has been working at McDonald's, Mullins said, and the Eastminster Presbyterian Church congregation is helping them with their resumes and recommendations for better jobs.
Also in Atlanta, St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church is co-sponsoring a young couple raising their three children and caring for a 16-year-old cousin with severe learning disabilities. "In New Orleans, they were barely getting by," Miller said. "Now they are in a nice, big apartment, and the 16-year-old likes school for the first time in his life. The congregation’s teen group took the family hiking with them. The New Orleans family feels very energized by the church, working on job skills and looking for jobs."
St. Martin in the Fields Episcopal Church, Atlanta, is assisting three of 18 related families from New Orleans, comprising 70 to 75 people. Their one Atlanta relative, a widow, found herself hosting up to 40 family members at a time in her three-bedroom apartment until they were able to get situated in local hotels.
Atlanta's predominantly African American Hillside Presbyterian Church and the predominantly "Anglo" First Presbyterian Church have co-sponsored a refugee family every year for the past four years. Now the two congregations are working with an evacuee family, helping the family realize its dream of home ownership by getting them into a rent-to-own program.
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