African refugee faces up to homeless misery
August 21, 2008
Georgia Straight
By Carlito Pablo

With the low rental-vacancy rates in Metro Vancouver, it’s tough enough to find a place that’s suitable and affordable.

Imagine what’s it like for a single mom with six children ranging in age from eight to 19. She can hardly read or write English. …have never lived in a western city before but have spent about 10 years in refugee camps in Kenya. They arrived in the country only about eight months ago.

This is the situation Congolese refugee Bitisho Bembeleza has to contend with, and, according to the 35-year-old mother, it makes her cry every day.

A former Congolese refugee himself, Mulangu noted that although refugees are taken in by Canada on compassionate grounds, they arrive in the country already saddled with debts because the government charges them for airfare and medical-examination costs.

“They bring people on humanitarian grounds, but they load them with debt,” Mulangu told the Straight. “A lot of Canadians don’t know about that.”…

In the case of Bembeleza, she owes the Canadian government about $10,000, for which she pays $150 a month from the refugee allowance she’ll be getting only for a year’s time. After that, she’ll have to support her family with a job or go on welfare….

… government-assisted refugees often spend most of their allowance on rent, use their child-tax benefit cheques to pay Citizenship and Immigration Canada for their debt, and rely on food from food banks to get by. According to Bembeleza, she skips her English-language class on Fridays so she and her children can line up at food banks.

… a family of six receives $1,477 a month, of which $725 is intended for shelter. However, a family this size usually gets charged about $1,100 for rent, leaving only about $300 for food and expenses like heating.

“With no daycare and no family around to help, it is, in the words of one settlement worker, ‘automatic welfare’ for single mothers, who also often have few educational opportunities either, so the cycle of poverty begins here, sometimes leading to isolation,” the draft states.