Fleeing violence, refugee finds homelessness in Utah

This story first ran Dec. 10, 2008

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Midvale » Four and a half months pregnant with twins and ordered on bed rest by her doctor, Bintiw Kuey is homeless. So she spends most mornings trying to sleep amid the crying toddlers and sharp conversations of frayed parents in the warehouselike Midvale winter shelter.

It is not very peaceful.

The 28-year-old Sudanese refugee came to Utah in August last year after an adulthood spent moving from state to state in the Midwest. Here, a friend told her, Kuey would find good adult education classes and fewer refugees.

Indeed, she is currently the only refugee at the Midvale shelter, but she is among a small

group believed to be homeless in Utah. At least five or six refugee families with children in the Salt Lake City School District are known to be homeless, typically living with other families. The actual number may be larger. Hundreds if not thousands of refugee families struggle to keep their housing each month as they earn near minimum wage and adjust to life in America. Now a plan is in the works to build them a home of their own.

The long wait » As of Tuesday, Kuey was one of at least five pregnant women at the Midvale shelter. Their delivery from homelessness may be their babies' births.

Newborns are not allowed to stay in the cavernous space and new mothers are immediately moved into the family shelter

in Salt Lake City --- where they have their own four walls. Pregnant women are instead put on the waiting list.

In the meantime, women like Kuey wait for their name to come up on another list -- for subsidized housing. She's not hopeful.

"A lot of people have been here a while," said Kuey, whose mouth frequently twists as she battles pregnancy fatigue. "I've never seen anything change."

The wait for public housing programs, depending on the location and bedrooms needed, can be as high as four years, according to a recent survey by Utah housing officials.

The young mother had been working hard to support her two children, cleaning the Salt Lake City airport on a graveyard shift she took to be available for them. "I leave home, they already go to bed," Kuey said.

But the nausea and exhaustion of her high-risk pregnancy made employment impossible. She turned to her children's school for help, which led her to the shelter, where the hope was housing would become available faster than if she struggled invisibly on her own.

Officials at The Road Home, which runs both the downtown and Midvale shelters, emphasize that they have limited space. The family shelter has 31 rooms where families, on average, stay for 77 days.

"The shelter is a very stressful environment," said John Selfridge, director of clinical services. "If people can stay out and get a place, generally that's better."

Building a solution » Affordable housing is hard for many Utahns to find, but refugees' needs are considered unique, particularly those who have just arrived in the country. One proposal is for a 50 to 200-unit complex where the basics of Western living could be taught. Housing officials are looking for donations and government funding for the facility where refugees would live for up to two years.

"The federal government is sponsoring the relocation of refugees into the U.S. and in Utah so we feel it's logical to see if they'd support this as an infrastructure project, " said Michael Gallegos, director of the Salt Lake County Community Resources and Development division.

Generally, refugees in housing crisis are those who have been in the U.S. for several years and no longer have case managers, said Mike Harman, the school district's homeless liaison. In some cases, the families still do not understand what rules they need to follow to avoid eviction, or their rent is too high.

Harman believes Utah has an obligation to refugees, who "we've invited over to be part of our community," he said.

 

'I'm not happy' » Kuey says she should be treated like any other single mom, although her childhood memories include seeing gun battles and living in a refugee camp.

She left Africa 14 years ago for a new life, but she never finished high school and the father of her older children was abusive, she said.

These days, Kuey, who has almost no maternity clothes, is bored "all the time" and tries to sleep before 3 p.m., the magic hour when children return from school.

Her plan to attend Horizonte, which offers adult education, was interrupted by the intense sickness from her pregnancy. A Utah man, also from Sudan, is the father of the unborn twins. He, too, is unemployed and attends community college.

Kuey wants to stay in America and hopes to go back to school to get a better job, maybe in nursing. But her life has turned out quite differently than she expected.

"My life's worse in the U.S.," she said recently. "I'm not happy."

jlyon@sltrib.com