Housing aid for immigrants stymied by lack of translated documents
The Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority has failed to translate key documents into Somali and Spanish despite federal requirements, jeopardizing some families’ housing, advocates say.
Leases, hearing notices and payment contracts “are complex documents full of legal jargon that can be challenging for any tenant to understand,” said Benjamin D. Horne, a managing attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Columbus. “For a new American struggling to learn a new language and a new culture, the challenge is multiplied,” he said.
The Legal Aid Society is to discuss the translation issue with the CMHA on Tuesday.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development office in Columbus also is looking into the situation, said Tom Leach, the field-office director.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects people from discrimination based on race, color or national origin in programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance, Horne said.
In August 2000, President Bill Clinton issued an executive order requiring agencies that receive federal funds to create plans to ensure that people with limited English skills would have access to services.
Seven years later, HUD released a set of guidelines for housing providers that receive federal assistance to meet the requirements to provide translation assistance.
CMHA created a plan in 2009 but still hasn’t acted on all the provisions, said Tracey Rudy, CMHA’s chief operating officer.
Rudy said she doesn’t know what has caused the delay in the translation services because she has been at CMHA only since 2011. She suspects it might have to do with money. “It’s extremely costly,” she said.
The agency has bilingual workers and some materials printed in Somali and Spanish at its E. 11th Avenue office and spends more than $1,000 a month to offer free interpretation services upon request, Rudy said. But “translation services (for documents) may be a weakness for us.”
In its 2009 plan, CMHA said it would have “pre-applications, applications, leases, (housing-assistance payment) contract, denial or termination” letters translated into Spanish and Somali by October 2009. Also promised were tag lines in Somali and Spanish on key documents in English stating that an interpreter could explain the document free of charge.
The tag lines alone would be invaluable, especially if they were in more languages than Somali and Spanish, Horne said.
“As a community, we should make sure that a family does not lose its housing for a reason that boils down to confusion over a notice or lease term or program rule,” he said.
Horne said he recently represented two people at risk of losing their Section 8 housing vouchers. One is Somali; the other is from Eritrea, a nearby African nation, and speaks Tigrinya.
His clients didn’t know about a requirement for Section 8 because they didn’t understand the language in documents, Horne said.
Section 8 provides assistance for very-low-income families, the elderly and the disabled in obtaining safe housing in the community.
“I’m pretty sure that if we hadn’t been involved, they would have lost their housing assistance and, in at least one case, been evicted,” he said.
Rudy said CMHA officials will discuss services during the Tuesday meeting with Legal Aid. “If we do have areas that we can improve upon, we want and value their feedback,” she said.
Other housing agencies struggle with language barriers, said Renee Williams, a staff attorney with the National Housing Law Project in San Francisco.
“Some housing authorities don’t have limited-English-proficiency plans in place, and even those that have great plans on paper often have problems with execution,” Williams said.
Making provisions will become even more important as the immigrant population grows, Williams said.
Franklin County is home to more than 100,000 foreign-born residents — about 9 percent of its population. More than half of those immigrants have come in the past 10 years.
Hassan Omar, who leads the Somali Community Association of Ohio, said he sees people who are having problems understanding CMHA documents two or three times a month. He usually sends them to the Legal Aid Society.
CMHA should fix the problem, said Josue Vicente, executive director of the Ohio Hispanic Coalition.
“It’s shameful that people are losing their Section 8 vouchers because they don’t understand their rights and responsibilities under the program,” he said. “There are supposed to be protections in place to keep this from happening.”