One Small Battle in Joe Wilsons War

Steve Thurston, Sept. 30, 2009

NEWS ESSAY

Patricia Gaitan runs through her presentation but is stuck on the term “displacement.”  She says that she is not totally sure what it means or why it’s important, and therefore she is having a hard time putting it into the recommendation that she will present to the Arlington County Housing Commission the following day. 

Her group, the Buckingham Youth Brigade, is meeting in a second floor classroom of the Lubber Run Community Center.  These high school and college students have one last night, just a couple hours in the spartan classroom, to finish the presentation, a culmination of nearly a year's work.

While others work on a large papier-mâché mannequin, Patricia, 17, and the BYB coordinator, Mimi Oziel, talk through Patricia's presentation.

Patricia says that she was forced to move from her own Gates of Ballston apartment once.

“They relocated you,” Ms. Oziel explains.  It was not technically displacement since her family was allowed back into a renovated apartment. “Sometimes what happens is they say, ‘You have to move because we’re going to renovate.'” 

There’s a pause while Patricia considers this.

“Oh, just like move away,” she replies.

“Yeah, yeah,” Ms. Oziel says.  “Or they sell the building and they’re going to knock it down.”

“But sometimes that happens,” the HB Woodlawn Secondary Program senior says with a fatalistic tone in her voice.  She adds a moment later, “But they tell you ahead of time.”

“Some people, A, just don’t have anywhere to go, right?” Ms. Oziel says, adding, “Sometimes what happens is [building owners say], ‘Here is a 120 day notice.’  So, you’re like, ‘OK, I have to find a new place to live.’  So I go to the different apartment complexes and I look for a place to live.  And they say, ‘Yeah, I’ll take you’—”

Rosemery Mazariegos, a senior at Wakefield High School, interrupts: “It takes time, and, like they also make you pay a deposit.  What about if you have to pay a deposit?”

“Right,” Ms. Oziel says.  “And also you might have to pay the first month’s rent at one place, but you still are paying rent [at the old place].”

The effort and money required for a relocation eventually make it into Patricia’s section of the presentation, which covers housing.  She tucks it in after the story of her mother, an El Salvadoran immigrant, whose housing costs have risen about 80 percent in 16 years.

“It should be more for us, but she’s in this [controlled rent] thing,” Patricia said at last week’s meeting.  “Her wages haven’t increased that much, and that’s the real issue.” 

The recommendations the BYB will present to the housing commission stem from their 12-page report written from demographic and historical research as well as about 50 long-form interviews and shorter questionnairs they conducted last winter and spring with friends, family, teachers and random people on the street.  Planning, researching, interviewing and writing the report, which they finished in May, took the better part of a school year.

The report targeted natives and immigrants and tries to answer the question, “Who Are Arlington’s Immigrants?” 

Ms. Oziel has helped them draft and refine the text of their presentations, at times referring back to discussions she has had with her bosses at BU-GATA, the Buckingham Villages and Gates of Ballston tenants association.  Money from BU-GATA and other sources, such as Community Development Block Grants, fund the BYB and Ms. Oziel’s position.

It feels, at times this evening, that the BYB members are representing their own views, based on the interviews and research, but massaged by BU-GATA, whose members may have an even larger interest in seeing some of the recommendations make it to the county board.

And it is in here, after about an hour of my third meeting with the BYB, that I realize I am witnessing a small battle in Joe Wilson’s war.  He is the South Carolina Republican representative who yelled, “You lie,” when President Obama told the joint session of Congress that his health care plans would not cover illegal immigrants. 

The call reignited the political fire surrounding immigration, and these students, whether they intended to or not, have written a report that seems to respond to that statement—a deeper analysis than a two-second TV sound bite.

The BYB students and Ms. Oziel joked and laughed at last week’s meeting when they explained that the students locked Ms. Oziel and her BU-GATA colleague Saul Reyes out of the room so that the group could decide on their own what recommendations they drew from their report.  They said they came to the recommendations by putting together all their interview notes, looking at what they had and then coming up with recommendations they thought made sense.

“We wanted to figure out what we could think up before they would lead us into something else,” said one of the students during the interview.

They all laughed when Ms. Oziel said, “I notice if sometimes I’m there, it’s easy just to listen to me talk.”

Their research turned up some common struggles and common benefits for immigrants, but also pointed out differences between immigrant communities, and issues immigrant parents face as compared to their children who were born in the United States. 

Many immigrants find economic, housing, transportation and language challenges, yet find the United States to be safer and more stable than their countries of origin.  As well, the immigrants felt there were better economic and academic opportunities for their children, the report states.

"Many Vietnamese, Ethiopian and Somali immigrants...came to the United States as refugees which entitled them to certain benefits, including work permits and financial and material support to help them resettle in America.  However, many Latino immigrants...fled their countries to escape political unrest, economic devastation and violence but did not have residency status," their report says. 

From these findings and others, the BYB developed three broad recommendations: the county must improve access to services, offer more affordable housing for current residents, and prevent racism and promote understanding wherever possible.

Three BYB members at an interview before their official meeting a week earlier—Patricia, Rubi Novillo, 17, and Rubi’s brother Juan Novillo, 14—were polite and knowledgable, friendly and willing to answer questions, but what animated them the most was the housing survey that Ms. Oziel brought with her; people at BU-GATA had pointed it out to her, she said. 

Found only on-line and in English, the survey will be used in the county’s long-term, comprehensive plan for housing.

“How do they expect to get a fair demographic?” asked Rubi, an HB Woodlawn senior.  She added, “And how are they advertising for it in the first place? 

“They should make this more accessible….With this they’re only going for…a small group of people.  This is people who can afford a computer, who can work a computer, who know English very well.”

Patricia added, “I don’t see how they’re going to get the great response like they wanted if it’s just only online.”

A week later, they have added another recommendation to their findings: expand the reach of the “Survey on Housing and Community Development Needs” by translating it into many languages and having a print version which can be put in libraries, apartment lobbies and community centers.

The night of the housing commission, the five presenters are ready.  Nervous, but ready.

They have notecards that they read over before the meeting, but  Ms. Oziel is late—she has called to report she is looking for parking—and the teens decide to enter the conference room as adults, that is, without her. 

They walk in carrying Ekeko, the newly-completed, papier-mâché Andean god of abundance.  Like other avatars of Ekeko, this larger-than-life mannequin is covered in the hopes and wishes of a brighter future. 

He holds a house in his papier-mâché hand to show the need for affordable housing; in the other hand he holds a Sun Gazette newspaper with a handwritten notice of an important meeting to show the need for better communication of services; a “no discrimination” sign is pinned to his shirt along with Matchbox cars and a mortar board, showing the hope for better transportation education options.

The twelve-minute presentation which covers their four major recommendations and some detailed analysis of each ends with questions and comments from the commissioners who are clearly impressed with the work. 

Commissioners ask, since they have experts in the room, how the students thought the commission could reach apartment dwellers along Columbia Pike, and how they could reach volunteers.  They are happy to hear that the research connected stable housing to better grades in schools.  But what impresses the commission most are the recommendations.  A couple members tell the students many people only bring problems.  Solutions are rare.

“The fact that you did [bring solutions] is really, really, really helpful to us,” says commissioner Pam Ray. 

In the end, the Housing Commission decides to move two recommendations directly to the county board: expand the eligibility of the housing grant program to individuals so that they, like families, pay at most 40 percent of their income toward housing.  Also, they will ask the board to improve the “Survey on Housing and Community Development Needs” so that it reaches people most affected by those decisions.

The BYB recommendation to expand county-wide the Tenant Assistance Fund which helps low-income renters in Buckingham relocate, and the recommendation that more affordable, family-sized units be made available will go in front of various housing sub-committees for analysis.