By Maureen Belt
Everyone’s familiar with the saying “It takes a village to raise a child,” but a local organization is putting a new spin on it.
“It takes a village to resettle a family in Massachusetts,” said Susan Winship, LICSW, who co-founded the South Sudanese Enrichment for Families in 2004, a nonprofit that provides grants to house, educate, and enrich survivors of the “Lost Boys” diaspora and their families.
The Lost Boys was a humanitarian crisis caused by the Sudanese civil war. More than 20,000 children, most of them boys around eight years old, were driven from their homes and half of them perished. The survivors traversed barefoot for more than 1,000 miles to the safety of Kenya and have since been resettled throughout the world.
Some took refuge in the United States and organizations such as the SSEF sprouted up to provide for their basic needs. Besides helping the children acclimate to the United States, the organization assists with everything from employment and technical skills, summer camp and emergency funding. The program, Winship said, was chugging along beautifully, assisting scores of refugees to comfortably reside in the U.S. — until the housing hit.
Rents in Massachusetts skyrocketed last year. Prospective tenants for a once-affordable bare-minimum two-bedroom unit in Massachusetts were asked to shell out nearly twice the national average, according to the Massachusetts Association of Realtors. Lofty salaries offered by local technology and biomedical companies fueled the surge and the ability of landlords to discard applications with even the hint of a blemish. Add a prospective tenant with multiple children and a not-so-great credit score, “and you can just hang it up,” said Winship.
Winship was referring to Mary, a single mother of three school-aged children who became SSEF’s latest success story after clearing the housing hurdle. Mary, whose last name is being withheld because she left a situation where she felt unsafe, is a Sudanese refugee who dreamed of becoming a doctor. She arrived poor in Illinois in the mid-aughts and married another refugee. The marriage was tumultuous and ended. Last year, Mary and the children took further refuge with relatives in Boston. That shelter was short-lived, as one of the relatives expected Mary and the children to live in an unheated attic.
Once on SSEF’s radar, Winship immediately sought safe housing for Mary. Having done this work multiple times, she knew there would be correspondence with landlords, appointments for apartment showings, and detailed applications to fill out, but she presumed Mary and her family would be nicely settled in a month or so. But the housing crisis nearly upended Winship’s plans. Eventually, the situation prompted the SSEF to develop a program focused solely on navigating the housing issue. The plan had three parts:
- A housing consultant (hired in late 2021)
- A program encouraging volunteers to co-sign leases for prospective low-income tenants, especially those with weak credit scores
- A fundraising project where housing recipients embroider dinner napkins at home that are sold through SSEF — an effort that will being an estimated $5,000 a year in additional funds for each family.
“We are responding to a need, and this is a very big need,” said Winship.
The consultant’s research revealed what Winship had suspected: “Lots and lots of people were housing insecure.” And lots and lots of people would be needed to get through it, hence the “village” reference.
True to Lincoln’s reputation for helping others, more than a dozen residents came to Mary’s aid. Within a few months, the volunteers helped her secure a home and ensured her children would not have to change schools again. They also found suitable furnishings and embellishments such as curtains, posters, shelves and even a refrigerator stocked with fresh food, converting the housing unit into a home.
But it wasn’t easy.
“It’s not just a bad credit score,” said “Sydney,” a Lincoln resident who volunteered to cosign Mary’s lease and also requested anonymity. “No one really wants to rent to a family that large. Landlords are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of children, but they do, and there’s no way to hold them accountable. The number of kids Mary has seems to be unappealing to most landlords, not to mention she’s a single mom and a Black mom.”
There were other obstructions, she said. Most housing applications are done online, and Mary has few technical skills and very limited reading skills. This is not uncommon among Sudanese refugees, as traditionally the culture relies on oral rather than written communication. Sydney assisted with much of the online work and the women soon found themselves consumed with applications waiting to be filled out. Each unit sought for Mary required a separate application and references. “We applied to so many, and there is no common app,” Sydney said.
Mary’s income created another obstacle. Employed by an online retailer, she earns $37,000 a year and receives another $10,000 in government assistance. Support from her former spouse disappeared when he quit his job.
“No one would rent to her,” said Winship. “Landlords want your gross income to be three times your rent.”
Mary could not clear that requirement on her own. Instead, she began falling through bureaucratic cracks. She made too much money to qualify for affordable housing, but she wasn’t poor enough for emergency housing. Then there was her unfortunate credit score, her need for child care while she worked, and other fluctuating expenses such as food and utilities. The uphill task became ever more daunting.
Still, much like the Lost Boys themselves, the Lincoln volunteers soldiered on, and perseverance paid off. A real estate agent in Arlington with a personal connection to the Lost Boys took kindly to Mary. “She said, ‘I’ll help you find a place.’ And, she did,” Sydney recalled.
Through her networking, the agent connected with the sympathetic landlord of a three-bedroom apartment in Salem. But even after agreeing to lower the rent below market value, however, Mary still did not qualify on her own. Her options narrowed down to the family living out of her car or becoming homeless.
“I said, ‘Forget it, that’s not going to happen,’” Sydney said, and cosigned on the dotted line.
Mary and her children moved into their new home on February 1. Her Lincoln helpers ensured every room was not only furnished but nicely decorated. The kitchen was stocked with cookware and dishes.
“She was so happy. This family had been in transition for nearly two years,” said an exuberant Winship. “Now they have beds and bedrooms. Before that, it wasn’t like that at all.”
Sydney admits to being nervous about cosigning, especially as they had only known Mary a short time. But they have no regrets. “I feel very happy that I did it,’ they said. “It’s especially important for the kids, for them to have a home. It’s very gratifying in that way.”
Other organizations that helped SSEF fund Mary’s journey to safety include:
- Jewish Family and Children’s Services
- Vincent DePaul Society of Salem
- Family Promise of the North Shore
- RAFT (Residential Assistance for Families in Transition)
- Women’s Fund