by On a dark Christmas evening, Frieda Schicker and Robel, the Eritrean refugee she has hosted for the past two months, are squabbling over who should be relaxing on the sofa and who should be making cups of tea.
“He thinks I’m too old to make tea, and he doesn’t like to serve it,” says Frieda as Robel tells her: “I’ll do it. Let me do it.” She insists on boiling the kettle herself, asking him to sit down and relax after a tiring day studying construction at a local college.
It has been many years since Robel lived in the family home and he is slowly getting used to it again. “I’m taking a breath, trying to prepare myself for what’s next,” he says, stroking Frieda’s cat. “I feel peaceful here.”
“Try not to mumble when you’re talking,” says Frieda, smiling kindly at him, wondering how he’ll come across when he starts interviewing for a job.
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A room in this warm and welcoming home is a potentially life-changing stroke of luck for Robel, who was sleeping in a field in north London in early October. He was unable to find a tent or sleeping bag and was wearing several layers of clothing to keep warm. Most passersby ignored him or quickly averted their eyes, but one woman stopped to ask if he needed help.
He explained that he had recently been granted refugee status, after spending two years waiting for a decision from the Home Office. He was quickly issued with an eviction letter from the Home Office accommodation where he had lived for 24 months, but with no job and no money for a deposit to rent somewhere he found he had nowhere to go but the local park. Council staff were meant to offer help but never returned his calls and seemed too complacent.
The woman told him to contact Refugees at Home, one of three charities the Guardian and Observer is supporting this year in our charity appeal for refugees and asylum seekers, along with British Refugee Councils and Naccom ( the No Accommodation Network). Within days he had bonded with Frieda and was invited to move into one of her grown children’s long-abandoned bedrooms.
The charity, which matches homeless refugees with hosts, is under unprecedented pressure after a policy change from the Home Office in August significantly reduced the time given to asylum seekers to find new homes when they are granted refugee status on them. Thousands have become homeless and sheltered in recent months as a result. (The policy was quietly reversed at the end of December.)
“I don’t have the words to describe them. There is panic everywhere,” says Carly Whyborn, the charity’s interim executive director, at the charity’s Brixton headquarters. “Every day we have desperate people on the phone.” In November 2022, the charity hosted 78 non-Ukrainian refugees (the Ukrainians are being resettled under a different scheme); last November he added almost four times more.
On the day I visit, there are 53 new referrals in need of homes, most of them from Sudan, Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan, and staff are checking references, discussing which hosts are best to suit the refugees. Computer files show the charity has 698 approved hosts, but not all are immediately available and many are in less popular parts of the country. “We would give our back teeth to new hosts in Brighton, Hastings, Manchester, South Yorkshire,” says Whybourn.
“We spend time getting it right, it’s not just putting two random people together,” she says. “We ask what they love, what they don’t love. We have to make sure the game works.” The charity does not ask about the refugee’s journey to the UK or the grounds for their asylum application. “We are not the Home Office.”
After Robel contacted the charity, Whybourn asked him to submit two testimonials. One was from a member of staff at the Home Office hotel who described how Robel had helped younger asylum seekers during his time there. “It was one of the loudest references you could get,” she says. When asked to describe his hobbies, Robel wrote: “I like to watch football, and movies in my spare time, I like to meet new people and I am very friendly.”
Whyborn knew Frieda and her husband had already successfully hosted eight refugees in the past three years, and was hopeful that he would welcome another. “They have a very good understanding of what refugees need. Frieda said yes immediately.”
In Robel’s case, what he wanted most was to go to sleep, to recover from the ordeal of living in a park recently, and from a deeper exhaustion caused by the years spent in search of asylum. When he got out, he enrolled in two college courses, and began offering to cook Eritrean meals for Frieda and her husband (they appreciated the gesture, but admits they were scared by the intensity of the spices) .
Frieda’s father was a refugee who fled Austria in 1938, and that helped her volunteer with the charity. “People were always coming from other parts of this country; they are usually more dynamic people. You need a lot of courage and initiative to make it this far,” she says. “I feel like I’m helping people who are going to make a huge contribution.”
The arrangement was to last for two months but has been extended to give Robel a little more time to find work and somewhere permanent to live. He is hesitant about his future, saying he feels too old to have real dreams or ambitions and just wants to find someone to hire him. Having a home and, essentially, an address while doing so is essential.
“Frieda understands what it’s like for us,” says Robel. “I felt good as soon as I arrived.”
