Welcoming Refugees

Many in Falls Church support the resettlement of refugees in the area. Falls Church's Eden Center shows that we can successfully welcome refugees. Many Southeast Asian refugees settled in the area the 1970s and 1980s. That wave of resettlement eventually led to Eden Center becoming the center for Vietnamese culture and commerce on the East Coast. This is fascinating local history, worth exploring, and inspiring for those that would like to see the community welcome more refugees.

Falls Church responded again to the call to welcome refugees through our Welcoming Refugees initiative! We welcomed five refugee families to the City of Falls Church in 2022-2024 - all families from Afghanistan, each with three children. We took a holistic approach to welcoming, including rent assistance through an innovative Renting to Refugees program (in partnership with the City of Falls Church), onboarding support for the families and children as they started in local schools, job search support, and lots, lots more.

Welcoming Falls Church Support Teams. Our vision is to build a community of neighbors in Falls Church. Consistent with that theme, our approach to Welcoming Refugees started with bringing together a Support Team of amazing neighbor/volunteers to welcome each family. Support Teams of six to 10 volunteers led organization of move-in day, furnished the family’s apartment, helped with practical day-to-day issues, offered connections of kinds in the community, and eventually became very close to their families. We are very grateful to the extraordinary commitment of the 42 volunteers who served at some point on a Support Team, and especially to the Team Leads who took on the significant task of leading those groups - Samira Davis, Kevin Hurst, Valerie Houchin, Lynn Roche, and Deb Spero. Support Teams dedicated over 4500 hours to caring for their families and are continuing in those relationships.

Mobilizing the Community. Beyond the volunteers who served on Support Teams, dozens more helped with apartment furnishing on move-in days - including groups from Insight Property Group and BSA Troop 349. BSA Troop 349 deserves special thanks, as their volunteers helped us on nine move-in, move-between, and move-out days! We are also deeply grateful for the support of the City of Falls Church and the Falls Church City Public Schools; the welcome that was extended by Insight Property Group and the team at Bozzuto/Falls Green apartments; the extraordinary commitment that Temple Rodef Shalom and its members made to this initiative; partnership with resettlement agencies CCDA-MRS, Lutheran Social Services, and ECDC; the support of Falls Church Presbyterian Church and the Li-Huang Family for summer camps for those kids; and the many, many others who participated in some other fashion.

Falls Church Welcoming Refugees Fund. Financial support for newly-arrived families was also been a big part of the Welcoming Refugees story in Falls Church. Federal government refugee resettlement support for newly-arrived families in the 2022-2024 timeframe was limited to coverage of approximately three months of rent. That’s not much, especially in an area as high cost as Falls Church. In an innovative, public-private effort to make housing more affordable for refugees. Welcoming Falls Church and the City of Falls Church partnered to create a Renting to Refugees affordable housing program. The City supported this initiative by allocating $50,000, and private donors more than matched that, contributing over $60,000 towards housing support. The Fund paid part of the rent for newly-arrived families through their first two years in Falls Church, to make rent more affordable and support their resettlement in the community, and when they moved supported move costs as they moved to their next homes.

GET INVOLVED. We hope to welcome additional families when refugee resettlement restarts in the U.S. We do not have specific plans at the moment, but we hope to one day organize again to welcome refugees well in Falls Church, starting with the Support Teams that engage directly with each family. Would you be interested in getting involved if we organize to welcome refugees again? Please consider the following ways to get involved. Click on the links below to learn more, get in touch, and let us know of your interest.

LEADOrganize a “Support Team” to support one of the five families

JOINa Support Team that we organize

TEACHor tutor in our Adult & Family Literacy Center

RENTyour home to a refugee family (as part of the Falls Church Welcoming Landlord Network)

DONATEhousehold goods/furniture

GIVEto the Falls Church Welcoming Refugee Fund

We continue to care for the families we welcomed. Our priorities at the moment are to 1) address the limited supply of affordable housing by developing our Welcoming Landlord Network to permit us to welcome more families over time, and 2) focusing on employment and helping employable adults - especially a second employable spouse - in the newly-resettled families find jobs and advance in their careers.

Contact us. Would you like to learn more about and maybe get involved in Welcoming Refugees in Falls Church? Email us with questions or about your interest.