Is Sacramento’s ‘ANSAR’ coalition the answer to Afghanistan refugees’ housing struggles?
Politics loves an easy win. So it’s gratifying to see the city of Sacramento, Sacramento County, Airbnb and five local resettlement organizations band together in a new coalition to help Afghan refugees find homes in Sacramento. Each of these groups was trying to find a way separately, and now they can benefit from shared efforts, knowledge and, hopefully, funding.
At a press conference Monday, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg was frustratingly vague on the details of how this would work, but he did mention that the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors is pledging $5 million in funding to help Afghan people get the assistance they need to settle here. And the group, called ANSAR — American Network of Services for Afghan Refugees of Sacramento Valley — did appear to have nailed the acronym. (Politics also loves a good acronym.)
More than 600,000 Afghans have fled their country since the beginning of this year, thousands of whom are expected to resettle in the Sacramento area. Approximately 10,000 Afghan Americans currently live here, making the region home to one of every nine Afghans living in the country. Steinberg said the city expects more than 5,000 to relocate to Sacramento and the surrounding communities in the next year.
But with housing prices at an all-time high and rentals increasingly scarce in the region and across the state, refugees have few options. Some Afghan Americans living here have opened their homes, but many would be in breach of their leases if they hosted another family for more than a few days.
Agencies such as Lao Family Community Development, the International Rescue Committee, Opening Doors and World Relief Sacramento have been working on the issue locally for years. Vacation rental giant Airbnb joined those efforts in August by pledging to host more than 20,000 Afghan refugees across the country. Since then, more than 5,500 have received housing and support, including 200-plus people in Sacramento and more than 1,000 statewide.
So Airbnb was already at it. So were Opening Doors, World Relief and the International Rescue Committee. The city and the county were already well aware of the problem, too. And each is retaining its own funding and solutions for these problems.
They’re just sort of a supergroup now — like the Traveling Wilburys, or possibly the Avengers. The ANSAR coalition is a promising start with signs of substance, but whether it’s an “answer” for refugees struggling to live in California is still open to question.
