African Immigrants Upset at Service Center Closure

Leaders of Los Angeles’ burgeoning African immigrant community are up in arms over the recent closure of a local community center that for years had provided social services to thousands of African refugees and other newcomers.

The African Community Resource Center, a nonprofit organization on Vermont Avenue, was shut down Aug. 10 after county officials deemed the building unsafe because of structural damage.

“This is disastrous for us,” said Nikki Tesfai, director of the center she founded in 1984 to help serve many of the estimated 150,000 or more African refugees living in Los Angeles County. “We are not talking about just a work office. We are talking about services. Everything is stranded right now.”

Tesfai said she was attending a meeting when staff members called her to say they had been ordered to evacuate the building in two hours. “My staff was so panicked,” Tesfai said. “They didn’t know what to take.”

County officials said falling beams prompted the rapid evacuation of the 50-year-old building, which has since been deemed uninhabitable. Investigations are underway to determine whether the facility might contain asbestos, officials said.

“They were asked to leave for the safety of their physical being,” said Patricia Senette-Holt, a spokeswoman for the Department of Community and Senior Services. She added that most of the center’s programs had been relocated to her department’s headquarters on 6th Street in the Westlake area and to other county offices in Compton and El Monte.

“I can clearly appreciate the concern that unfortunately some of the programs have to go ... into another community, and this can be disconcerting,” Senette-Holt said. She expected the relocation to be a “temporary measure” until it was determined whether it was better to repair the building or find a new site in the same area.

Senette-Holt could not give a time frame for when such a decision would be made.

Community leaders said they understood the need to close the facility but were upset that arrangements had not been made to provide a single convenient alternative site.

“We are looking for them to relocate us, so we can be functional,” said Chinyere Charles Aniyam, editor-in-chief of the African Times national news journal. She is acting as a spokeswoman for the resource center. “We want them to give us a place that is centralized.”

He added: “I feel this is a slap in the face to the African community. Refugees who have fallen on hard times must not be mistreated.”

Many of the 1,200 or so immigrants who rely on the services provided at the center live in the vicinity and cannot afford to travel far for aid, Tesfai said.

The majority of the center’s clientele is African, but the facility had also become a haven for arrivals from other parts of the world, including Iran, Afghanistan and the Pacific Islands.

The center used to provide translation services from various languages -- such as Amharic, spoken in Ethiopia and Eritrea -- plus English language instruction and cultural orientation. It was also a place where those without a permanent home address could pick up their mail and collect free food packages distributed to more than 50 families everyweek.

Such services have now been stopped, Tesfai said. Other programs offered at the resource center included counseling for victims of human trafficking and domestic violence.

“For me to do counseling and intake, I have to have a secure location,” said Gerrie Rosen, director of Refugee Safe Haven, a domestic violence transitional center, who used to meet with clients at the Vermont facility.

“I’ve lost all of my clients,” said Rohida Khan, director of the Human Trafficking and Torture Victim Relief Program, who used to counsel refugees every Wednesday at the center. Her program has been transferred to the county’s Compton office.

Alimatu Iscandari, a refugee resettlement coordinator, who now has to conduct counseling sessions at the county office in El Monte 12 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, stressed the need for a site “to assemble the families in one convenient place.”

When Alem Mirrach, a refugee from Eritrea, turned up at the center last week to seek advice from Iscandari about adjusting her residency status, she was shocked to find the doors locked.

“I felt bad, because this is my home,” said Mirrach, 37, speaking in fragile English, her 13-year-old daughter, Belul, clinging to her side. “Alimatu is like my mother, like my helper. She understands how I feel, because she is African like me.”

Tim Mechlinski had been teaching free English classes at the resource center four days a week since May. Now he doesn’t have a classroom, so lessons take place on a blanket on the grass at a nearby park, or on a concrete bench outside the entrance to the center.

“I keep all the books on the back seat of my car and use that as my office,” Mechlinski said.

Many refugees said the center’s closure had caused personal hardship and trauma.

“When I first came here, I was homeless, I didn’t know where to go, I was without any family,” said William Bongo, 29, a refugee from Cameroon who came to the U.S. four years ago, and depended on the free weekly food parcels of canned products, bread, butter, rice, beans and fresh chicken. “The community center provided me with any kind of help I wanted. They helped me find a job. I receive all my mail here. They are my family.”

Amin Gholami, 33, a refugee from Iran, said the center had played a vital role in his resettlement in the U.S., and although he no longer needed its services as much as when he first arrived four years ago, he still often sought the staff’s assistance to read official letters and documents.

“These people take care of us,” said Gholami, who works in construction, a job he said center personnel helped him find. “They do everything for us. I really want this center to come back.”