refugee is living. In a 2009 Post-Gazette article, a few volunteers with the Somali Bantu community said that refugees are overwhelmed and that groups are struggling to assist them. The biggest problems were the language and cultural barriers, and safe affordable housing in safe communities and with decent landlords, noting that the families have experienced vandalism and assaults in their homes and on the streets. The intentions of the resettlement programs were good but scattered with no one organization keeping track of this group or other resettled refugees or of the services that are being provided. “Nobody's talking to anyone else,” a source told the Post-Gazette reporter. “Too often the Somali Bantu families -- the men, women and children -- are seen as a colorful addition to the landscape of Lawrenceville [a Pittsburgh neighborhood], but not as individuals with hopes and dreams and not-so-different immigrant challenges and struggles to make it in America.” The Somali Bantu and other African refugees do seem to lack the same level of resettlement assistance. The Hmong, from southeast Asia, were given greater assistance from government and resettlement agencies. The Hmong who were resettled in 1982 were given three years of government assistance (to finish your education, be promoted o job; and stabilize family connections). In contrast, the Somali Bantu are pushed toward self-sufficiency in eight months. Without appropriate support, according to Boas’ report, people coming here are vulnerable and could be entering into “an intergenerational cycle of poverty, which is hardly a humanitarian act and could have dire consequences for both the African refugee and their American neighbors.”
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