1 week Ago By By Tony Messenger St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS — Marie Kenyon’s phone kept ringing this summer. One by one, Kenyon, the chairperson of the immigration task force for the Archdiocese of St.
Louis , would hear from representatives of one nonprofit or another who had run into an immigrant family with the same issue: They were homeless, or soon to be. They came from Afghanistan, Syria and various South American countries. Most were refugees who came to America under the auspices of one of the federal asylum programs.
In some cases, they answered the call of the International Institute’s various resettlement programs , and then, after coming to St. Louis, realized they didn’t qualify, or still needed help after their federal aid ran out. In other cases, they heard from relatives who were making a new life here; then they got evicted, sometimes because there were too many family members living in an apartment.
Whatever their reason for being in St. Louis, a city that has been working overtime to recruit immigrants to prop up its declining population, they are here, and they are people in need. “We just asked everybody we know who works with the immigrant community, let’s just start these conversations,” Kenyon said.
The result was what she calls an uncommon cooperation among various agencies to come up with a solution to help families that were falling through the cracks of the city’s various safety nets. On Monday, some of those families will have a roof over their heads. The ad-hoc “Family Refuge Coalition” is opening a floor with 17 rooms for immigrant families in the homeless shelter run by Peter & Paul Community Services in the former Little Sisters of the Poor building in north St.
Louis. “These are families, living outside, who have no place to go,” says Anthony D’Agostino, the chief executive officer of Peter & Paul. The nonprofit bought the building earlier this summer with help from donors and the city of St.
Louis, and it is large enough to handle the need. The Incarnate Word Foundation has agreed to pay for a pilot project for two months, to provide the families with interpreters and case management, to help them find more permanent housing and employment. For Jessica Bueler, the founder and executive director of Welcome Neighbor STL , this is an opportunity for St.
Louis to recognize that sometimes immigrants who come to the community need a little extra help before they can become the economic drivers that start businesses and help the city grow. That’s how she got started serving the immigrant community eight years ago. Bueler read about some immigrants from Syria who were living in poor housing conditions and needed support after coming to St.
Louis to escape trauma in their home country. “Somebody should do something about this,” Bueler remembers thinking at the time. “It turned out to be me.
” Bueler and D’Agostino were among the leaders of dozens of agencies that serve immigrant populations who were pulled together by Kenyon and started to come up with a plan to help families in need. Some were living in a car. They needed diapers for their children.
They struggled with the language barrier. They needed help with asylum paperwork. There are nonprofits in St.
Louis that can help with each of those things, but getting them together, in a way that can quickly help families living out of a car, can be a herculean task. But come together they have, and starting Monday, several refugee families in St. Louis will benefit from their cooperation.
Of course, getting them from cars and the street, and hotels, into shelter and offering them case management is just a short-term answer. The next challenge is a bigger one. How does St.
Louis leverage its ongoing need for immigrants, with the reality that the national immigration system is broken, and best efforts and intentions sometimes lead to success stories — like Hassib Ahmadi , the former Afghan interpreter who came here in 2017 and has started his own construction business — and other times lead to families who need a helping hand along the way? Bueler, for instance, wants to see the city adopt new housing codes like some cities have, that allow extended families to live together. But that’s a heavy lift for another day. For Kenyon, the success here is a model that she thinks is sometimes missing in St.
Louis — various agencies and nonprofits working toward the same goal, without battling over who gets the credit, to solve a problem that needs solving. “It’s unprecedented,” Kenyon says. “This would be amazing if this is how we tackle problems going forward.
”.
