HELP USA social workers create housing pathways for asylum seeking clients: 77% achieved housing eligibility
An August survey of 62 asylum seeking households in HELP family and sanctuary shelters found that 77% had achieved work authorizations or asylum status – making them eligible for housing vouchers. An additional 21% of respondents had filed asylum applications – making them potentially eligible, pending acceptances.
In September, HELP Research presented findings from the survey at the 18th European Research Conference on Homelessness. HELP social workers, they noted, increased asylum application and employment rates of these clients in a difficult policy environment (table 2). A State Supreme Court judgment, for example, struck down laws passed by City Council that would have increased this population’s access to housing vouchers. More recently, state officials granted Mayor Adams permission to enforce a 60-day limit of residence in shelters on asylum seeking clients who do not receive cash assistance.
Table 2: asylum application & employment rates of HELP USA asylum seekers (multiple surveys; see slides in link for details)
Currently, HELP Research is applying an “asset accumulation” framework, devised by urban poverty scholars, to understand how these clients have coped with risks engendered by displacement, migration and their rapidly changed social, political and economic conditions in the United States. In this framework the achievement of several capitals – human, financial, physical, and social – can tell us how migrants muster or “accumulate” “assets” to overcome the shocks of dislocation and mitigate risks to further deprivations. For example, a higher education level is one human capital that may help clients acquire other resources, such as jobs (financial capital). As noted, legal documents (physical capital) and services provided by HELP USA (social capital) can lead to housing pathways.
In this context, we have found that the scope of services provided by HELP social workers have bolstered the capital base of the majority of surveyed clients (table 3). We also see that asylum seekers have a substantial inherent capital base, such as university educations and job networks, that they use to overcome barriers (table 4).
Table 3: HELP USA services and asylum seeker capitals (multiple surveys)
Table 4: Livelihood Capitals of Asylum Seekers (August ’24 survey)
