Accommodation by British families and Ukrainian relatives is running out of steam. By the end of the year, according to the British government, some 3,000 Ukrainian households were thus homeless.
She arrives with a determined step with her two children, a large black suitcase in her hand. Dana Karabinenko enters a “council” in London. The request of this Ukrainian refugee family is urgent. The day before, Dana, Dasha and Hlib slept in the living room of a friend, also a refugee. On this morning of January 30, this mother does not know where she will put her suitcase tonight. She comes to register in this British local authority as homeless.
>> TESTIMONIALS. War in Ukraine: in the United Kingdom, the British “sick” of no longer being able to accommodate refugees
Like this family, around 3,000 Ukrainian households were homeless at the end of the year across the Channel, according to British government data. 70% of these households had minor children, like Dasha, 9, and Hlib, 12. “It’s a growing risk”, warns Adis Sehic, researcher at the NGO Work Rights Centre* and co-author of reports on the reception of Ukrainian refugees in the United Kingdom. After being hosted, upon their arrival, by British families or Ukrainian relatives living across the Channel, these exiles find themselves in a dead end.
“Families can’t afford to host Ukrainians any longer. There’s the cost of living, inflation… Some families were counting on the fact that they had been asked to host them for six months, not indefinitely.”
Adis Sehic, researcher at the Works Right Centerat franceinfo
For the Work Rights Centre*, the situation is all the more critical in London, where the number of homeless people between June and September increased by 24% in one year, as reported by the Guardian*. “Homelessness teams are under pressure. There is a lack of social housing in London, and it is extremely difficult to get to the rental market”continues Adis Sehic.
“We have nowhere to go”
Dana, petite and restless, left the day before from around Bury Saint Edmunds (United Kingdom) where she lived for seven months. Upon their arrival this summer, this Ukrainian family was housed thanks to the “Homes for Ukraine” program (“houses for Ukraine”), which allows British people to house people displaced by the war with a monthly aid of 350 books (392 euros). Dana and her children were received by “the best of families”, slips Hlib, but this welcome was coming to an end. The Ukrainians left for London in search of professional opportunities and to get closer to a refugee friend. Without knowing under which roof they could live.
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After two hours of waiting, Dana manages to speak with a council agent. “An apartment is very important to me, for stability”, she explains in recently learned English. The agent consults her documents, asks her why she is now in this part of London. “To have many possibilities.” With the help of a translator by telephone, the conversation continues but an impasse emerges. The “councils” have a duty of emergency accommodation, it is explained to him, but Dana must move closer to the one where she comes from, near Bury Saint Edmunds. Without a link with a London district, she cannot hope to be housed there. “Why don’t you want a respectable, hard-working family?” Dana asks him with the help of Google Translate, hugging her son. “There is no work where I was. (…) We have nowhere to go.”
That day, Dana waited from 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. looking for emergency accommodation. Thanks to a refugee friend who came to support her, she was able to speak to several agents, until she obtained a first night in a London hotel.
“It’s a very difficult challenge. I feel completely lost and hopeless.”
Dana Karabinenko, Ukrainian refugeeat franceinfo
“I’m in survival mode”, confides two days later the Ukrainian, after recovering food from a food bank and things left at her friend’s house. The day before, Dana again spent the day at the “council” and ended up getting a week’s accommodation at another hotel in south London. A room with three beds where the family belongings accumulate at the entrance. Dana placed some dolls for Dasha next to her bed and her drawings on the desk. The exile, smiling, speaks quickly, a sign of her nervousness: “I don’t know what strategy to follow, what to do next.” A few days later she will get another week at the hotel, but the relief proves to be short-lived.
“I just want a room”
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This emergency accommodation situation, Yuliana Zaichenko has been living for several months in London. The search for accommodation had however been “easy” in April, upon his arrival from Ukraine. Welcomed by her uncle, the young exile had been able to rent a property from a Ukrainian owner, in South London. “A very nice apartment, I really liked the neighborhood”, she relates. But in October, the owner needed it to house his parents. “I started to experience a depressive state”, she says. When massive Russian strikes targeted several Ukrainian cities, “the war has begun to break me”. “Right now someone is getting shot, someone might be raped and I don’t understanddespairs the Ukrainian, trembling. The Russians have invaded our country, bombing maternities. This violence, ruthless and stupid… It’s horrible.”
While suffering from post-traumatic stress, Yuliana Zaichenko had to deal with the search for a new home. Two weeks in an apartment that she had to leave again, then hostels, one after the other. From now on, the young refugee lives between two addresses near Edgware Road in London: a youth hostel, and an emergency reception center for homeless women, the “sanctuary” of the Marylebone project.
That morning, Yuliana Zaichenko greets the staff at the hostel, a place she loves “the atmosphere” And “people’s sympathy”. The employees know her well and have become friends. The young Ukrainian then takes us to the reception center “very comfortable” where she feels safe. “There are no beds, but comfortable and practical armchairs.”
“I’m not strong enough to hold on but I have no other choice. I have to keep going, keep doing something.”
Yuliana Zaichenko, Ukrainian refugeeat franceinfo
With the help of the “council” and the Marylebone project, Yuliana Zaichenko hopes to get housing soon. Finding an apartment on the rental market is not an option, because “Rents are too high and landlords want people with stable jobs.” But the young woman, who is studying business and entrepreneurship, hopes for only one thing, “a simple room where I could rest every night”.
A rental market out of reach
Right in the heart of London, the Ukrainian Welcome Center is facing this problem head-on. “Today alone, I made two files for homeless displaced people”illustrates Iryna Terlecky, one of the centre’s volunteers. “VSis really a challenge”continues the director, Andriy Marchenko. “When you lose your accommodation, you have to start all over again. You find new accommodation 30 kilometers away, you can’t keep your job because transport is too expensive, and the children have to change schools.”
“It’s not just losing where you live, it’s losing everything. Housing is the most important thing, on which everything else depends.”
Andriy Marchenko, director of the Ukrainian Welcome Centerat franceinfo
Within the organization Groundwork, whose “Impact” project helps refugees to find employment, the issue of housing is also “a huge problem”, points out Irina Bormotova. That morning, in a church near Waterloo, this employment counselor receives Ukrainian refugees to help them, among other things, to prepare their CVs. Behind her, other exiles are taking an English course. “Each of the participants has housing problems”she summarizes.
This January 31, Daryna, a 34-year-old Ukrainian refugee, is impatiently awaiting a visit to an apartment. “Our Last Chance”, blurts the mother of two children, the laughter made nervous by the situation. “I’m so stressed, so tired of it all”, discreetly whispers the exile, hosted by a relative in a residential town in Kent near London. He has two weeks left to find a new home.
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When she arrived from kyiv in December, Daryna and her two children were able to share a small room in this relative’s house. The family arrived through the Ukraine Family Scheme, which allows Ukrainians residing in the UK to host relatives displaced by war. But for Adis Sehic, “refugees who arrived with this program are more at risk of becoming homeless. They live more in small accommodation, and there is no financial support for the relatives who host them”.
“My relatives tell me that I can stay if necessary, but I don’t want to take advantage of their kindness. I thought that a few months would be enough to find accommodation, but that’s not the case.”
Daryna, Ukrainian refugeeat franceinfo
The Ukrainian, who says she has applied for more than twenty apartments, is looking for a property for six months, the time to see how the war is progressing. “An owner told me he wanted someone long term. Everyone says it’s hard to find for six months here”, describes Daryna, who fears having to move away from her loved ones in order to be able to find accommodation. Near his family, the rents, which fluctuate between 1,500 and 2,000 pounds (1,600 to 2,000 euros), “are impossible for me”.
If she gets that apartmentDarina will have to advance six months’ rent from the outset, an unthinkable expense without her savings and the help of her husband who has remained in Ukraine. Daryna works remotely for a Ukrainian e-commerce site, with a weekly salary “equivalent to a daily wage in the UK”. “They ask for a salary equivalent to three times the rent. When you are alone with two children, you do not have this level of income. They ask for credit history, recommendations… But I just have my relatives here .”
Without a positive answer, Daryna will pack her bags to return home to her country at war: “I’m afraid to go home, but we’ll be home.”
* Links marked with an asterisk refer to pages in English.