Several organizations that serve refugee and immigrant populations are searching for new homes after an announcement by the St. Joseph Community Health Foundation that it will close its resource center.
Catherine Kasper Place at 2826 S. Calhoun St. will close by the end of January because both newly arriving refugees and grant dollars have dwindled.
The foundation opened the Community Resource Center for Refugees in 2008 as a one-stop shop for newly arrived refugees.
The resource center was rechristened Catherine Kasper Place last year in honor of the founding sister of the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ.
The building houses the administrative offices of the St. Joseph Community Health Foundation and Catherine Kasper Place, as well offices for the Burmese Advocacy Center, Allen County Lead and Healthy Homes Program, the Burmese Muslim Community, Crime Victim Care, Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic, Super Shots and the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration.
St. Joseph Community Health Foundation executive director Meg Distler was unavailable for comment Monday, but the foundation offered a written statement from Distler, co-signed by Catherine Kasper Place director Holly Chaille.
The statement said all programs located in Catherine Kasper Place will relocate.
The statement said the number of refugees arriving locally has dramatically decreased since the center’s establishment in 2008, and simultaneously, the support through federal grants has significantly decreased this year.
From 2007 to 2009, several thousand Burmese refugees were relocated from refugee camps to Fort Wayne by the U.S. State Department.
The St. Joseph Community Health Foundation established the center to address the needs, especially health-related needs, of newly arriving refugees.
At the time, foundation officials said many refugees from Southeast Asia had never seen a doctor and had been living in environments where they were susceptible to parasites and tuberculosis.
In its statement, St. Joseph Community Health Foundation said the center and its agencies have served more than 25,000 refugees and immigrants annually since the fall of 2008.
It’s unclear what will become of the South Calhoun Street building, which was on loan from the AWS Foundation. A representative for that foundation could not be reached for comment late Monday.
St. Joseph Community Health Foundation said it would relocate and focus on the community health issues of low-income people, with a component focused on medical translation and health literacy of refugees. Catherine Kasper Place also will relocate to be near refugee neighborhoods and continue to provide ombudsman services, a job development training program and a gardening initiative.
Meanwhile, agencies that grew out of St. Joseph Community Health Foundation’s original refugee initiative will venture out on their own – including the Burmese Advocacy Center, said executive director Minn Myint Nan Tin.
The Burmese Advocacy Center has not settled on a new location; an ideal one would be close to the current location, Nan Tin said.
The flow of new refugees – a number determined by the U.S. State Department – has slowed, and the Burmese Advocacy Center has seen decreasing visitors since 2009.
However, it has seen an increasing need for vocational and language training programs.
Nan Tin is confident the organization has the grant support necessary to continue to grow those programs from another location.
“There’s still a lot of need out there,” she said.
