“Nadia, can you bring me the orange juice?“For a little over a month, Sandrine, who lives alone, has voluntarily welcomed Nadia, 21, from Odessa, Ukraine.
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If the cohabitation is going well, there is still a downside: by opening its doors to Nadia, the shopping budget of this forties who works in advertising has exploded. “I doubled my budget, or even a little more. There, I’m on budgets of around 150-160 euros per week“, she indicates.
And his main challenge so that the fridge does not empty too quickly, is therefore to set certain limits. “First week I bought a 2 liter bottle of orange juice and it’s been two days. So I made him understand that he had to put the kibosh a bit“, specifies Sandrine who will now plan everything. “I decided to make an Excel table: I plan lunch and dinner meals in advance over a week and I empty the fridge according to this agenda that I make.
Alongside this, other expenses arise. Nadia came with a suitcase of winter clothes. We will therefore have to go around the thrift stores, now that the temperatures are rising. To contribute to the expenses, the young Ukrainian would like to work, but she comes up against a major obstacle: “We tried to find me some odd jobs to work, but it’s complicated because as soon as I have to interact with people, I’m not able to because of my still insufficient level of French..”
The asylum seeker’s allowance that Nadia will start to receive in a few days should allow her to relieve Sandrine a little. Ukrainians are now temporarily entitled to it: it represents around 200 euros per month. Despite everything, for many, the situation remains uncomfortable, according to Alexandre Delavay. This lawyer at the Paris Bar voluntarily accompanies Ukrainians in their procedures. “The financial difficulties that Ukrainian nationals are facing today is aid that is released by the state, but which is insufficient as such”, he analyzes, acknowledging that unknowns add to the problem, such as “the fact that we have to rely on the solidarity of the French, which is necessarily uncertain, and at the same time, the fact that the funds available to people in Ukraine take time with technical problems to be repatriated to France.“
Unlike France, individuals who host Ukrainian refugees are compensated. In some countries, this amounts to eight euros per day per person in Poland.