An amber cockroach scurries across the wall in Mohanad Al-Ani’s one bedroom Burnaby apartment, where he lives with his wife and two sons.
The 39-year-old father shrugs it off. What can he do? There are rats, too, he says, speaking through an interpreter. But they seem to be the least of his worries. Al-Ani just wants a new home so one of his sons can have his own room, and the desperate father is at his wits’ end.
“I want to sit outside the Parliament so the Prime Minister knows my case,” he says. “Maybe he will find me a solution.”
Al-Ani’s problem is housing. He shares a single bedroom in an Edmonds apartment complex with his two kids, 8 and 9, and his expecting wife. The four of them came from Iraq to Canada in 2014 as government-sponsored refugees. That means they get government help, equivalent to welfare rates, for the first year they are here. After that, they’re on their own.
Al-Ani is on disability for a slipped disc, and he can’t afford a bigger place. He doesn’t want a house, he doesn’t even want enough rooms for each of his children, even though the four all share a bedroom. He just wants one extra room for his oldest son, who was traumatized when militia men raided his home in Iraq and took Al-Ani away to one of the infamous secret prisonsin Baghdad’s fortified green zone. Al-Ani was gone for a year, held in a cell with 20 other men and tortured regularly. The boy’s mental health child and youth clinicians here in Canada are suggesting a separate room would help create a healthy sense of boundaries.
“My feelings right now are as if someone has his hands tied and his feet tied, and he doesn’t know what to do,” Al-Ani said through an interpreter.
Al-Ani has been on B.C. Housing’s wait-list for more than a year. With the recent influx of Syrian refugees, housing for large families is all the more in demand.
Everywhere Al-Ani turns to for help, he’s told nothing can be done and to contact his MLA, which brought him to Raj Chouhan’s office. The Burnaby Edmonds MLA has contacted Housing Minister Rich Coleman about Al-Ani’s situation.
“He is not just one unique case,” Chouhan said. “We have housing situations so bad in Burnaby Edmonds, we’re dealing with these kinds of cases almost on a regular basis. The frustration is the government has not built enough affordable housing units to accommodate people like him. We have to pay attention to this, otherwise the situation is going to get really out of hand.
“We have new refugees from Syria. They also need new accommodation. The government has to move really quickly to make sure people are housed,” he said. “Some people have been waiting for years, but by the time there’s a unit they could move into, their kids are grown up.”
Chouhan wants to see the provincial and federal government build more affordable housing. The NOW reached out to B.C. Housing for data on the number of people waiting for homes and the number of available units but had not heard back by press time.
“In Burnaby, especially in Burnaby Edmonds, we have the highest number of government sponsored refugees and privately sponsored refugees. The housing situation is really bad. We need help from the provincial and federal government,” he said.
As for Al-Ani, all Chouhan can do is wait and see.
“Hopefully, we’ll get a positive response from both the Minister of Housing and B.C. Housing. He’s in a very bad situation, he needs help now. It’s just not working.”
The NOW asked B.C. Housing for numbers on available units and people waiting. As of Dec. 31, B.C. housing had 1,334 people in Burnaby waiting to get into B.C. Housing. The agency directly manages eight buildings in Burnaby.
