The keys had already been dropped off at the leasing office for La Mirada, a modest beige stucco apartment complex located on Northern Avenue in Sunnyslope.
Bilad Yusuf and her seven kids were on their way to Minnesota, less than two months after they arrived in Phoenix.
"We didn't know how to get jobs here, and even if we did, we didn't know how we'd get to them," she explained through an interpreter who translated from Somali to English.
After waiting for six years in a refugee camp, Yusuf and her family arrived in the United States this winter amidst the chaos surrounding the Trump administration's attempt to block Somali immigrants like them from entering the country.
Following a brief stop in Houston, they were transferred to Phoenix. There, stranded in the urban sprawl without a car, they found themselves lost: Where were they supposed to get groceries? How did they go about setting up long-overdue doctor's appointments? How would they pay rent after their initial stipend from the U.S. government ran out?
The Somali Association of Arizona stepped in, providing groceries and setting up doctor's appointments for the refugees. But they couldn't do anything about the fact that the fact that with limited English and no training, Yusuf and her older children weren't qualified for many jobs.
So, worried that her rent would be cut off soon, Yusuf ultimately decided they should move to Minnesota, where she, like virtually all Somalis, has family.
The hope is that there will be more job opportunities there, as well as a larger support network. But Yusuf says she'd like to return to Phoenix one day.
'If opportunity calls in Arizona, I'm coming," she said in Somali.
Mukhtar Sheikh, the program coordinator for the Somali Association of Arizona, says that Yusuf's story is a common one.
Between 1981 and 2017, Arizona took in 7,351 Somali refugees, according to Department of Economic Security statistics. But how many of those refugees actually stay in the state is another question.
Sheikh estimates that as many as half the Somali refugees resettled in Arizona end up leaving — typically for Minnesota, or other parts of the country where there's a large Somali community — because they're unable to find jobs here.
"I think Arizona is able to do more for refugees, to be honest," he says. "If Arizona invested in these families, it would actually benefit the state, because they're really hardworking."