KATHY BROWN
‘A huge problem’

For more than a century, immigrants have brought their tired, poor and huddled masses to this country. But today, when immigrant families flock to the United States yearning to be free, they’re more likely to feel trapped by high housing costs.

According to a new national study, immigrant working families are more likely to spend over half their income on housing and live in crowded conditions.

The study, developed by the National Housing Conference’s Center for Housing Policy, found that immigrant working families are 70 percent more likely than native-born Americans to spend over half their income on housing and six times more likely to live in crowded housing.

The study’s findings strike a chord in the Bay State, which has the seventh-largest immigration population in the country, according to the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. More than 770,000 residents in the state are foreign-born, according to statistics from the most recent U.S. Census, which was taken in 2000.

Entitled “America’s Newest Working Families: Cost, Crowding and Conditions for Immigrants,” the study highlights the housing needs of immigrant working families, defined as low- to moderate-income families who work the equivalent of a full-time job and earn between $10,712 and up to 120 percent of the area median income.

The housing disparity between immigrant and non-immigrant working families was the greatest in the Northeast, the study noted. Immigrants in the Northeast had twice the rate of critical housing needs than native-born Americans (22 percent vs. 11 percent).

And the study revealed that more than 1 million immigrant families are crowded by the American-set standards of more than one person per room, per home. About one in five immigrant working families who rent are crowded, according to the NHC report, while slightly more than one in 10 immigrant families who own are crowded.

“This is a huge problem in Boston,” said Kathy Brown director of the Boston Tenant Coalition. “The national report pretty much reflects the local report.”

Extended Families

Two, three and even four immigrant families are sharing apartments in Boston neighborhoods like East Boston, Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Brighton and Roxbury, according to Brown. The families often face the threat of eviction, but see few other alternatives, said Brown, because they don’t want to send relatives or friends out on the streets or to shelters where families can be separated. Some aren’t even eligible to go to shelters or can’t find an opening, explained Brown.

Reshma Shamasunder, director of benefits policy and government affairs for the MIRA Coalition, said that immigrants’ definition of family often differs from the nuclear family definition that many native-born Americans hold. It’s not unusual for extended immigrant families, including aunts, uncles and cousins, to live together, particularly in areas like Boston where the housing costs are so high, she said.

“There’s a lot of immigrants who tend to be low-income who are working very hard but not earning enough money to pay for housing,” said Shamasunder.

Often, many of the immigrant working families are just one step of way from homelessness. A job loss, an illness or some other type of life-changing event can throw many immigrant families into homelessness, explained Shamasunder.

“If one small piece falls apart, a family can fall behind on rent and that could lead to homelessness,” she said.

Norma Rosario, the housing coordinator for City Life/Vida Urbana in Jamaica Plain, said 80 percent to 90 percent of immigrants that she sees live in overcrowded conditions, sharing apartments with relatives because they can’t afford rent on their own. Sometimes, families use the kitchen and living room for bedrooms.

“Usually, they make the minimum wage so they cannot afford to pay the full rent on their own,” said Rosario.

In some cases, immigrants are living in unhealthy environments – apartments infested with mice, cockroaches and other pests. Rosario has families referred to her by two health care centers in Jamaica Plain and has encountered children and adults who are suffering from asthma and lead poisoning as a result of living in such “terrible conditions.”

“I see a lot of families who have depression,” from the stress of their living conditions, she said.

About one-quarter of the roughly 4.8 million low- to moderate-income working families who pay more than half their income for housing or live in dilapidated conditions – or 1.2 million households – are first-generation Americans, according to the NHC study. Most of the immigrants with such critical housing needs, or 60 percent, are from Mexico or Latin America. About 20 percent are from Asia and the rest hail from Europe, Canada, Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere.

In Massachusetts, immigrants are eligible to live in state-aided public housing, because there is no residency requirement. But to receive federal housing assistance, such as Section 8 housing vouchers that are used to rent privately owned apartments, immigrants must have proof of residency.

While the state Department of Housing and Community Development doesn’t fund housing programs for immigrants per se, the agency does provide grants to community development corporations that offer housing and other types of services in communities with heavy concentrations of immigrants.

In regions with high home prices, like Massachusetts, purchasing a home can be a daunting task for immigrants who are predominantly lower-wage earners. The average selling price for single-family homes sold in the Bay State this past June exceeded $400,000, according to the Massachusetts Association of Realtors.

And if immigrants are spending more than half their incomes to pay the rent, it is very difficult for them to save for a down payment to buy a home, said Thomas Callahan, executive director of the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance.

“The high rents and the low wages combine to create a less-than-perfect environment for saving for a down payment,” said Callahan.

Some immigrant groups in the Bay State end up pooling their money together to purchase homes. “A lot of cultures do seem to have these formal, sometimes informal, arrangements where they pool their money,” said Callahan.

Some banks have gradually come to understand those types of funding or savings arrangements as a “legitimate source” for a down payment on a house, according to Callahan.

Fausto Darocha, director of the Brazilian Immigrant Center in Boston’s Allston/Brighton neighborhood, said one of the challenges that Brazilian immigrants often face when it comes to purchasing a home is a lack a credit history and proper documentation.

Darocha said his center refers immigrants to Brazilians who work for banks so they can receive counseling on how to go through the mortgage application process. The immigration center also offers homebuyer workshops once or twice a year.

In recent years, many Brazilians have been successful in purchasing homes in Framingham and Brockton, said Darocha, who noted that most Brazilians do not like renting and prefer to buy their own homes. But some newcomers to the United States are forced to live with four or five other immigrants because they’ve spent thousands of dollars to travel here, he explained.

“We don’t like to live bad. We like to have comfort and have the good life,” said Darocha. “In our community, we really worry … about trying to improve our lives.”