Housing for Windsor asylum seekers is changing. These refugees say they are just happy to be here

Valentina Sirminto came to Windsor, Ont., via Roxham Road in Quebec.

She says her family fled Colombia for Canada because of violence in their native country.

Sirminto has been in the city for five months.

"I would like to study in college," said Sirminto, who arrived with her parents and her younger sister.

"I would like to get a good job and support my family."

Sirminto's family lives in one of three Windsor hotels set up for housing asylum seekers. And that number of hotels — housing more than 800 refugees — will shrink to two later this month. 

Stephen Lynn, the city's manager of social policy and planning, says the decision to move to fewer hotels came down from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).

"I'm assuming that part of it is based on the amount [of people] that have left the hotels and they're able to bring it down to two hotels," he said.

In a statement to CBC News, IRCC could not confirm exactly how many claimants were in the hotels, but said it has leased 645 rooms in the hotels.

IRCC also said it would not be opening new hotels in Windsor to house the remaining asylum seekers.

"Instead, IRCC will be closing down one of its hotel sites in Windsor and consolidating remaining claimants into the other two hotel sites until all claimants have departed," the statement continued.

Lynn says there haven't been any new transfers to Windsor from other areas of the country since the end of March.

"What we're seeing is people are leaving the hotels, and to the best of our knowledge, we know that some of them are leaving to go to larger metropolitan cities and others are sort of filtering out elsewhere." 

At its peak in the winter, Lynn says Windsor was housing more than 1,400 people due to an influx of asylum seekers via Roxham Road.

Shair Aryan arrived in Windsor from Afghanistan in January.

Since CBC News last spoke with him earlier this year he's secured a job — saying his dream has now come true.

"This is my second home country," said Aryan.

"I will serve this country till the end of my life."

One of the organizations assisting asylum seekers is Matthew House, a temporary home and settlement support service for refugee claimants.

The organization has helped resettle people throughout the city after they leave the hotels.

"Since Jan. 1, Matthew House has sheltered over 200 [people] and not including anyone at the hotel, we've provided settlement support for an additional 200," said its executive director Mike Morency.

Morency says after approaching the IRCC to see how they could help, Matthew House set up a satellite office at one of the hotels.

That office will close on Friday, he says, coinciding with the opening of their new facility in the Sandwich neighbourhood on Saturday.

"It is a nice central location for people at all the hotels to be able to still gain that settlement support from our staff," he said.

"But our staff will have the greater convenience of being on-site with our own network and our own systems in place."

One volunteer helping new Matthew House residents is a refugee himself and still resides there.

"It has been my calling," said Ugandan asylum seeker Kassim Damusi.

Damusi says the provincial government has assisted, providing health-care services and employment assistance.

Local English-language and French-language immigration organizations have planned a celebration for World Refugee Day on June 20 at Charles Clark Square.