For Refugees in Surrey, a Harrowing Search for Housing

High rents. Abusive landlords. Decrepit basement suites.

For refugees staying in Surrey as they establish a life in Canada, many have no choice but to accept these problems because it’s the only way they can have a roof over their heads.

These are the stories of the Growing Roots exhibit on display at Surrey’s Black Arts Centre, which gives voice to refugees and their experiences of the housing crisis after landing in a new country.

“After two months we found something,” shared one refugee from Colombia, looking to rent with her cousin and niece. “We went to see 25 houses and people would say no because we don’t have jobs or because we receive money from the government. Finally, we got a basement... where the landlord gave us the place in exchange [for] charging us five extra days of rent.”

Members of the City in Colour Co-op, a group that consults on inclusivity in urban planning, interviewed 42 refugees for the exhibit. The DiverseCity Community Resources Society helped make the connections.

Some of the refugees experienced harrowing arrivals into the country. A 19-year-old aunt and three-year-old niece who turned blue from the cold crossed the border on foot in the snow. A mother with two children waiting to be placed in a shelter was forgotten by service workers at the airport, and spent the night there instead. When the people featured in Growing Roots finally arrived at their intended destination, they were met with a housing crisis in Canada at a scale they couldn’t have imagined.

“They spend so much money they don’t have,” said Fiorella Pinillos, one of the exhibit’s curators. “This is the same for everyone. They spend 60 to 90 per cent of their social assistance on housing, leaving them relying on food banks.”

The stories come from refugee claimants from Latin America (Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela) and government-assisted refugees from Afghanistan, Syria and the Congo. A few of the participants were invited to serve as co-curators.

Their stories can be read throughout the exhibit, translated into English from Arabic, Dari, Spanish and Swahili. The space also features their portraits and artwork on their housing experiences.

There are drawings of their housing journeys. On one wall is a doodle of a meandering path towards housing with obstacles along the way, depicting rejection after rejection. There are drawings of their ideal homes. One common theme is greenery, both a reminder of home and a symbol of rootedness.

“I dream of having a land and a house... a garden where I can plant fruit trees,” shared one person from Syria. “I would surround the house with roses. I love jasmine, roses, cloves and basil.”

The Black Arts Centre, which just opened earlier this year, is on the ground floor of the Civic Hotel in the middle of Surrey’s downtown. With commuters hopping on and off transit at the bus and SkyTrain hub just a stone’s throw away, the curators chose a central spot to showcase the stories specific to Surrey.

“Whether or not the home is big is not important,” Natalia Botero, a photojournalist who arrived as a refugee from Colombia in June 2022, told The Tyee. “What’s important is safety and comfort.”

But that safety and comfort are near impossible to find.

Last in line

Surrey has become the city that has welcomed more newcomers per capita than the Metro Vancouver region as a whole.

About 23,600 Surrey residents arrived in the country as refugees; they make up 29 per cent of refugees in the region. In recent years, they’ve been placed here by settlement agencies due to the city’s stock of cheaper housing options — but even these are dwindling in the affordability crunch.

Surrey’s rental vacancy rate is considered unhealthy, hovering somewhere around one per cent, according to various counts.

In the competition for that one per cent of stock, refugees often are last in line, facing many kinds of discrimination.

There’s anti-Black discrimination from landlords. As one participant shared, “When they see our skin colour, when you tell them you’re unemployed... [landlords] absolutely refuse.”

Tenants with kitchens aren’t necessarily allowed to use them. “They’re not allowed to cook, [with landlords] saying their food is too ‘smelly,’” said Pinillos. “So they have to leave and find another suite.”

The request for local references, whether from work or other landlords, shuts out newcomers, many of whom attend rental showings for dozens and dozens of homes before finding one where the landlord will allow them to stay.

‘I can’t move anywhere else’

The homes that are left are the scraps. The monthly rents that refugees are paying — from $1,200 for a small room in a shared home to $2,400 for a rundown basement — might shock longtime locals who are paying the same for better units.

The stories in Growing Roots tell of homes in terrible disrepair, with no or little light and with rats and insects.

The refugee renters often don’t know their rights as tenants, and landlords abuse this with rent hikes, additional fees and illegal contracts. Some landlords base their rents not on what the unit is worth but on the amount of assistance refugees are receiving from the federal government to get every dollar possible, said Pinillos.

In one case, a participant paid $1,200 for a room from a predatory subletter. That was her entire income, and he made her work in exchange for meals. “This person treats me as his servant,” she shared. “I have to take out the trash, wash the dishes, and if I don’t he doesn’t take it well. He humiliates me, since he knows that I can’t move anywhere else.”

These situations often lead to violations of privacy and abuse.

“The landlord will come inside if they find the door unlocked, even without greeting,” shared one refugee from the Congo. “My landlord might find me at home, come inside and even open the fridge.”

Out of the 43 participants in the Growing Roots exhibition, only two managed to find homes in social housing. The others are renting from the private market or are staying in shelters, not ideal because many separate clients by gender, which means families have to spend nights apart.

With long wait-lists for social housing and even English classes, “they’re basically trapped in this system that leaves them in poverty,” said Pinillos.

The participants might all have passed through Surrey at some point, but this is a regional problem. They move farther and farther out for housing they can afford, but this comes at a different cost.

“People end up going into places that are not transit accessible, that don’t have as many settlement services for refugees and refugee claimants,” Pinillos said.

Even though the participants come from different countries with different backgrounds — some aren’t fully literate in their native languages while others have university degrees — visitors will find many similarities in their housing struggles. Photojournalist Botero, who took portraits of some of her fellow refugees and helped curate the exhibit, says there are two sides to everyone’s stories: hope and hopelessness. (The City in Colour Co-op just received funding for an upcoming second exhibit on the same topic that focuses on policy solutions.)

“We really wanted to present this research in a way that humanizes these stories,” said Pinillos. “We really wanted to tell these stories in a way that is relatable. They’re not just numbers sitting on someone’s desk.”

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‘Growing Roots: Understanding Community Housing Needs of Refugee Populations in Surrey’ is on display at the Black Arts Centre in Surrey. The exhibition runs until Aug. 31 and is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Please book a reservation in advance via email.