Councilmember Brewer questions home health aide training program for asylum seekers

Thank you.

First of all, Commissioner, thank you for showing up at Open Arms District 3.

They very much appreciated that.

Number two,

As you know, Ruth Messenger is very involved with people who are here seeking asylum.

And she has managed, thanks to money that you and previous Speaker Adrian Adams allocated to the Jewish hospital, to have a teaching program for homeowners.

Health aides.

Really successful.

So my question is, are you doing that elsewhere?

In other words, it's my experience because I have folks who are seeking asylum in my house, that the job situation is what they're looking for.

Obviously, people are delivering, but they would like something more secure.

Unfortunately, we're all getting older, and home health aides are desperately needed.

So my question is, are there other such programs?

Will money be allocated?

Is it something you're looking toward?

Yeah, thank you, Councilmember.

I actually had a very good and lengthy discussion with Ruth.

I'm sure you did.

Specifically about the success of this program, because it was a pilot, and talked a little bit about ways to expand that into other job opportunities as well.

So it is part of an ongoing conversation that we are hoping to continue with Ruth on that specific teaching hospital, but also just using that model to see if it's something that we can scale up and support.

Okay, and is there a sense of, I have no sense, I mean, I wish that every single person who came here was able to stay, who was seeking asylum.

We need the schools, we need them all.

That's not the case with the person in Washington.

So, my question is, do we have some sense of how many folks here are seeking asylum and who are, obviously not everybody's in shelter, not everybody is,

able to be found.

You can't find the people in my house.

I bet.

So my question is, how do we have any sense of the numbers, many of whom could use these programs that Ruth is trying to establish?

I don't have that number handy, but we will get it, and we can circle back with that.

Okay, because I think that would help us give some sense of where we're going in terms of those kinds of programs.

The young people I know just got jobs as security officers.

Very exciting, big deal, better than delivering, safer, et cetera, from their perspective, more steady.

Second question is, everybody has to learn English if you want to get a job.

Some of them are learning it from YouTube.

That seems to be a way.