Moving to a new home is hard enough when it’s just a block away or a new city, but for Syrian refugees coming to Ottawa, it’s an entirely new country they have to face.
Through its recently announced partnership with the Ottawa Centre Refugee Action group, the Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corporation—a non-profit landlord with hundreds of properties in downtown Ottawa—will be offering five market rent apartments for refugee families.
Upon arrival in Ottawa, refugee families begin a “soft landing” and live with an OCRA volunteer for two to three months before moving into permanent housing, soon to be offered by the CCOC.
“The idea is that there’s assistance provided to the family in a whole range of areas to ensure that they have some help integrating as smoothly as possible,” explains Deborah Edwards, an OCRA volunteer and leader in refugee housing.
During this time, OCRA will provide the families with a number of resources, including assistance with finances and getting an apartment and furniture.
After the soft landing period, the refugee families are assisted financially by the government for one year.
But this plan caused some concern for a few OCRA members.
“The concern was for our families where it’s going to take them longer than 12 months to get on their feet,” says Edwards.
“We didn’t want families to face the possibility of having to relocate at the end of the 12 months.”
But some of this stress has been relieved through the CCOC’s commitment to offer assistance with paying the families’ rent after the 12-month period if necessary.
Debbie Barton, the CCOC’s rental department manager, says the organization is prepared to go further than offering just the five apartments.
“We are committed to trying to assist the families to ensure they are able to continue to live there,” explains Barton.
“If they would need some kind of reduction in their rent after the first year, we would be willing to pursue that to make sure they have a successful tenancy with us in the long term.”
When Ray Sullivan, the CCOC’s executive director, heard of the work OCRA was doing to sponsor and settle refugees in Ottawa, he says partnering with the organization made perfect sense.
“The struggle to find stable and secure and affordable housing is an issue across Ottawa…and it’s even more of a problem for refugees and newcomers,” says Sullivan. “We thought it was a perfect fit to match what we do as a non-profit landlord and what they do, trying to resettle refugee families.
This partnership comes in the midst of reports of the struggles that Ottawa agencies, like OCRA, are currently facing with the influx of refugee families and a lack of resources and housing.
The locations of the five apartments have yet to be determined, but will be located in the Centretown or adjacent downtown areas and matched with refugee families based on their specific needs.
Since its inception in 1974, the CCOC has maintained a principle that its properties and tenants will reflect the composition of a strong and healthy community, says Sullivan.
“Any strong neighbourhood includes all kinds of diversity, people of varying levels of income, people of varying levels of abilities,” explains Sullivan. “A strong neighbourhood also involves newcomers and that’s an important mix that we want to see reflected in our tenants.”