ArCS connects asylum seekers with local hosts, helping ease an immigrant and homeless crisis
Somaya Ahmady was helped by the nonprofit ArCS Cluster in achieving her dream going to college in the United States. (Photo: Somaya Ahmady via LinkedIn)
State orders forcing migrant families to leave temporary overflow shelters – including one at the Registry of Deeds Building in East Cambridge – creates dire straits for people who fled hostile and dangerous environments in other countries, many of whom do not speak English well or at all.
As the administration of Gov. Maura Healey scrambles to manage the surge, individuals and volunteer organizations have stepped in help.
One such organization is the ArCS Cluster, which seeks to help Massachusetts meet its obligations as a “right to shelter” state. Founded eight years ago in response to the Syrian civil war by Eric Segal, a retired software professional in Arlington, the organization focuses on pairing asylum seekers with hosts in Arlington, Cambridge and Somerville.
The prospect of hosting a family that likely does not include English speakers and has a multitude of needs might seem overwhelming, especially given the confines of city spaces, but ArCS hosts say they are glad to participate.
Meredith Jones, of Somerville’s Magoun Square, a social worker at an area high school and mother of 5-year-old twins, described the process of helping a young woman escaping domestic violence in a South American country as “an extreme privilege.” The anticipation when picking up her guest from the airport was exciting, she said, “almost like having my twins.”
Shana Berger, a single mother who teaches English at Bunker Hill Community College and lives in Union Square, is hosting a Haitian family. She was paired with her family through the Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network and Brazilian Workers’ Center. “We have the space, and it’s the right thing to do to help those who have nowhere else to go and those who have been failed by the system,” Berger said.
State of the shelters
Our state was the first – and is still the only – with a “right to shelter law” (New York City has a similar law, but not the state). The law, enacted in 1983, applies to pregnant women and families with children. It makes Massachusetts an appealing destination for those seeking asylum, and a prime political target; the rise in migrants entering Massachusetts is due to unrest in South American and Caribbean countries and the war in Ukraine, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, as well as a political tactics by mostly politically conservative Southern and Southwestern red states to offload their own asylum seekers.
By October nearly 7,000 families were in emergency shelter, costing the state almost $45 million a month, according to the Boston University School of Law’s Juliana Hubbard.
The formal state emergency assistance system has some 7,500 families, of which 3,700 entered as migrants, refugees or asylum seekers. The four overflow shelter sites in Cambridge, Norfolk, Lexington and Chelsea – a $125 million expense over the more than $1 billion the state spends in a fiscal year to shelter people – have been filled with families waiting to get into that shelter system, which Healy recently capped at its current number, City Manager Yi-An Huang told Cambridge’s City Council on Aug. 5. Cambridge’s registry building had around 80 families, and all are expected to be removed from the shelter by the end of the month as policies toughen.
Now called temporary respite centers, the shelters will house families and offer case management for only five to 30 days – and accepting that shelter means being barred for six months from entering a pool for longer-term help and access to up to $30,000 in aid, said Phoebe West, of Cambridge’s Office of the Housing Liaison. (The other option is “reticketing,” which will help get homeless families somewhere else that they believe they will have housing.)
“The challenge is, then, where are families going to go?” Huang said. “We’ll end up with families and children on the streets, and that is something that I know that the administration is really seeking to avoid.”
“If there are people in our community who want to help,” Huang said, they need information on “what they may be able to do.”
A person leaving a hostile situation in another country and granted temporary admittance to the United States still can’t work immediately, Segal pointed out. That puts extra stress on social systems. The time it takes to get work authorization varies by status and country of origin; for someone from Haiti or South America, it can take five months or longer. “So how can you afford your own housing?” Segal asks.
Hosts declined to go into detail about their guests, citing the delicate nature of asylum seeking. Their “parole” status, granted by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and other Homeland Security branches, is typically temporary, often lasting no more than a year, and does not protect those admitted from deportation once a parole period ends. The Records Access Clearinghouse, which provides comprehensive data on such cases, says there are potentially 59,000 deportable people in Massachusetts.
Last year, that number was 54,000, with the majority being from Haiti, a country experiencing political instability and gang violence.
Berger’s father was a Holocaust survivor. He experienced outpouring of support when he came to America from in Europe, Berger said. She sees supporting asylum seekers as a way to pay it back and pay it forward.
The host relationship is a two-way street, Berger said. While each familial unit has their own bed and bath – she has a 6-year-old son, the visiting family has a 5-year-old-son – they share in housework and meals.
Jones did cite some “day-to-day challenges,” mostly related to limited space, but ArCS staff deals with many matters: teaching bus routes and independent navigation, overcoming language barriers and scheduling and getting newcomers to medical and administrative appointments. As a result, Jones said, hosting “is not as much of a heavy lift as one might expect.” The experience for Jones and her husband, a policy researcher, has gone so well that they have signed up to host more asylum seekers – a family next time.
Success story in progress
A success story in progress belongs to Somaya Ahmady, who came to the United States from Afghanistan in 2023 on a student visa. With the help of Segal and ArCS, she was able to streamline her application for graduate studies at Brandeis University and secure housing with a couple in Cambridge while pursuing a degree in global health. “It had always been a dream of mine to go to college in the United States,” Ahmady said.
Ahmady was born in Iran, where her parents had fled during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan after dozens of her relatives were killed in a Russian airstrike. Her parents returned to their homeland only after the United States toppled the Taliban regime in 2002.
The couple Ahmady stayed with in Cambridge had a second home on Cape Cod, which helped make room for all; she also spent time with them on the Cape. She is now conducting postgrad research at Boston College, living with a family in Waltham, and working through the green card process.
Segal is pragmatic in his mission for ArCS and its aid for immigrants. “We need these people. Our population is shrinking, and we do not have enough workers to meet our needs. There is a lack of labor, especially in the hospitality and home aide industries,” he said.
On the humanitarian side, Segal said, “We live in a bubble. Connecting with other people is a way to expand that bubble. Despite the war and hardship they’ve faced in their homelands, they are just like us.”
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