Daily News | More Afghan evacuees in Philly now finding homes, even as resettlement collides with the housing crisis
Months after he escaped Afghanistan aboard a U.S. military plane, Mohibullah Hasrat found himself walking the sidewalks of Philadelphia, hoping to find what for many evacuees had become an elusive prize:He traversed the city, north, south, east, and west, but found few homes or apartments for rent. And when he did find one, the landlords had set high rent — too high for someone new to the United States, who had neither a job nor a reference.
At NSC, more than seven months after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal, staffers continue to work the phones every day. They hunt properties for clients who departed quarters on U.S. military bases and then found themselves living at the Marriott Residence Inn in Center City whileIn the last six weeks the agency has managed to reduce the number of Afghans at the hotel from 250 to 100.
Ahead looms even more demand for housing, locally and nationally, as the Biden administration prepares to accept 100,000 Ukrainian war refugees into the United States. “That’s true for Afghans, and that will be true for Ukrainians,” NSC’s Shanfeld said. “If Philadelphia wants to be a welcoming city, we have to be sure that people can afford to make new lives here.”
That has offered some benefits, introducing flexibility to the system that’s allowed people to explore different communities and have greater say in where they might wish to settle. It’s also created a lot of frustration. The Biden administration dramatically raised the cap on admissions, to 125,000 for fiscal 2022, but through February had resettled only 6,494 people.
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