(NewsNation) — As migrants and asylum seekers are evicted from sanctuary city shelters, finding and staying in a home or apartment in a new and unfamiliar city comes with a daunting to-do list that includes keeping up with the rent.
States like Illinois, New York, and Colorado provide migrants and asylum seekers access programs that offer security deposits and a few months of rent, legal assistance, and caseworker support.
But what happens after those funds run out often creates a quandary for many migrants, the majority of whom won’t be qualified to work for months or years.
They’re left navigating a world of utility bills and rent payments while adjusting to new surroundings in a country that is still mainly foreign.
“We’re doing our job by (having to say) that this is not going to be easy for you for a very long time and making sure they are aware of what’s in front of them,” said Peter Zigterman, the director of Immigrant Family Services Chicago for World Relief, one of a collection of humanitarian organizations that work with migrants in Illinois.
Migrants in challenging new surroundings
In Chicago, some migrant families have decided to move in together to share expenses to cut the financial burden, Zigterman said.
Other families realize they cannot sustain independent housing and are forced to return to the city’s Landing Zone, where they can re-apply to re-enter the shelter system for another 60 days like those current shelter residents who do not have a discernible path forward because of a lack of work.
Zigterman said many migrants have a hesitancy to move away from Chicago’s Hispanic communities where they have been sheltered.
Vacant apartment units are made available to migrants who must make 80% below the area median income to qualify and do not need proof of employment or income, according to the Chicago Tribune.
However, the neighborhoods with the most vacant apartments are on the city’s South Side, which is predominantly African American and does not offer the same Spanish-speaking support services. It leaves migrants feeling like they have less access to the support they need to navigate what’s coming next, Zigterman said.
It also leaves humanitarian organizations like World Relief with a sense of feeling demoralized, Zichterman said.
“We’re connecting them to resources, we’re connecting them to rental assistance, we’re going to help them find a place, we’re going to help them get moved in, and here’s an on-ramp to something and you’re put in a position that this has a chance of working,” Zichterman told NewsNation.
“But now, what is the on-ramp onto the sustainability path? But part of the reason why we don’t know what the answer to that is, no one knows the answer to that’s tough.”
New York City has a similar issue, where many migrants don’t want to move into surrounding suburban communities that are opposed to the rental assistance program and lack affordable housing opportunities, The New York Times reported.
Additionally, the money migrants could make under the table is more plentiful in the city, where they don’t need a car to commute to work.
Where does funding come from?
Late last year, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker changed the state’s Asylum Seekers Emergency Rental Assistance Program.
The initiative once provided up to six months of rent, but as part of an investment that added $160 million to Illinois’ humanitarian crisis response, the program was cut to three months to allow all shelter families access to the funding rather than the portion of shelter residents who qualified for rent assistance before the change.
As of March, the program has helped 4,600 families move into new homes from shelters where 15,000 of the nearly 39,000 migrants who have been bused to Chicago from the U.S. southern border were once being housed.
However, once the initial three months of assistance expires, qualified migrants can apply for another three months of rental assistance up to $15,000 thanks to a federal pool of money.
In some cases, that is enough, to keep families afloat until the progress of finalizing work authorization is complete or until they can find other means of income or financial support.
The $45 million state rental assistance is filtered through the Illinois Department of Human Services, which also receives federal funds to provide migrants with rental help.
As of last week, only 163 migrants had been asked to leave shelters more than a month after the city announced it would begin evictions. An estimated 2,000 migrants were scheduled to leave shelters by the end of April, but like in New York City, the number of families on the move is lagging.
Still, many officials remain concerned where migrants at a time when the city just added $70 million to its budget for migrant assistance and as temperatures begin to warm up.
‘No way of telling where they have gone’
At least for now, the Illinois Department of Human Services and Chicago city officials say they have not seen a trend of migrants losing their housing due to falling behind on rent.
There have been instances when migrants have left their new home or have moved, the Human Services spokeswoman told NewsNation.
But the state does not track why or when they leave of their own accord, which allows some migrants to fall through the cracks, migrant organizations say.
“The City has no way of telling where they have gone, or connecting them with the resources they need,” Ald. Andre Vasquez said in a statement last week. “This is something that should concern all of us.”
In Chicago, families are slowly being asked to leave shelters, where the current population is around 8,600 this week.
The Chicago City Council recently passed an ordinance that will force the city to issue weekly reports beginning in mid-May to indicate how many migrants are being evicted and details where they are being sent.
Vasquez recently introduced a bill that would do away with Mayor Brandon Johnson’s 60-day shelter limit, reiterating that Chicago should not be in the business of evicting migrants from temporary housing.
New York’s program is narrower than Illinois’, limited only to asylum seekers with children who are on track for work authorization.
It was designed to move 1,250 families into housing once their time in shelters came to an end. However, as of February, only 175 families had been moved into permanent housing, the New York Times reported.
“Man, do I wish that program was working better,” Jackie Bray, the state emergency services commissioner, told the newspaper. “That program is not at this point succeeding. And that’s a huge disappointment to us.”