Housing Interviews |
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Projects
Clean Water
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Introduction | Interviews | Findings | Recommendations | |
FindingsInterviews with twenty-one refugees from Somalia and Sudan revealed that they were generally not satisfied with their housing situations. Their dissatisfaction was caused by the issues of maintenance, housing knowledge, and cultural awareness. MaintenanceMaintenance was the area where most complaints were found. The students observed poor maintenance in some immigrants’ residences, such as broken windows, worn carpet, closets without doors, and rotten wood structures. The American maintenance system seemed to increase their dissatisfaction in addition to poor maintenance itself. While landlords are responsible for maintenance in America, tenants play this role in Somalia and Sudan. Therefore, the immigrants were frustrated with the extra step of filing for maintenance and waiting until landlords send repairpersons. Housing KnowledgeMost immigrants interviewed, wished to own a house or rent better housing. However, this desire was often unfulfilled because they were not notified of practical options. Even though housing offices had programs that might help immigrants improve housing situations, they were often unaware of this source of information. Cultural AwarenessThe students observed problems caused by low cultural awareness among tenants, landlords, and housing offices. For example, one of the interviewees lost his apartment because of a cultural misunderstanding. When he had guests for a traditional funeral, the landlord terminated his lease as a penalty for having too many people in the apartment. If the landlord and tenant shared apartment protocol with cultural consideration, they could have communicated effectively and avoided this problem. Source:Ahmed, Lul Saeed and Jason Kroning
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This page was created by Minnesota State University, Mankato student. Last updated 08/15/04. |
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