As of the third year of the war, there are 3.7 million IDPs in Ukraine.
Today most of these people need to rent an apartment facing numerous challenges on the way. The more people want to rent apartments, the higher the rent gets. Since February 2022 the rental price of a one-room apartment in Lviv has increased by a third.
The price is by no means the only challenge in the search for an apartment. Many landlords refuse to host people from the Eastern regions, people with children and pets.
The coordinator of the crisis department Katya participated in the film shot by Vita Schnaider, the researcher of the NGO “New Housing Policy”. It is based on the stories of internally displaced families renting houses in Lviv.
“In our shelter, the same people may live for six months, for a year… There are not the people from the Internet, proverbial “successful IDPs” who fled their cities to immediately open the restaurant downtown. Most of them are elderly women, 45 years or older. They have comorbid chronic illnesses, kids, and disabilities. They can’t quickly find the opportunities and live on their own…
Why do people stay in the shelters? Because they can’t earn that much money which will cover rent in Lviv…
Recently I attended a UN meeting. We’ve been told that the intervention of international partners regarding the temporary housing needs to stop. The time has come for government and local authorities to provide solutions focusing on long-term response.
The shelter as part of the crisis response needs to be closed as well,” Katya says.
Learn more in the video by the Ukrainian analytical media “Commons”.