"The realtor said that today there were more than 300 requests and found only 5 apartments"

"We searched all over Lviv region, nothing came out in Lviv, we found it in Lutsk, we are going there"

"I will probably have to return to Kharkiv"

I hear similar words in Lviv every day. I think that they are heard in many places throughout western Ukraine and eastern Poland, and then they will be spoken in many other places where those fleeing the war go. Over the past month, thousands of people have been temporarily accommodated in Lviv, and it is unknown how many have failed.

Watching how difficult it is now to find a home for a few months for people who have fled the bombing, I want to shout: "We told you about social housing and problems with the rental market, and you did nothing!" But anger will not lead to any progress in providing at least some of the needy. Therefore, I will try to understand the example of Lviv, what is happening now with housing.

According to official data alone, 200,000 people came to Lviv, in fact - 2-3 times more. The local rental market has reacted in the same way as an unregulated market. One-room apartments are sometimes rented for $ 1,000. Due to the sharp increase in the demand for housing, refugees are unable to stay in the city, and tenants are either illegally raising prices by pushing for evictions, or violating their rights altogether by evicting them.

How did those responsible for housing policy react to the crisis?

All that the city authorities have managed to do is the moralizing intimidation of landlords. The need to receive people in Lviv existed even before the full-scale invasion, but only on March 3, Mayor Andriy Sadovy drew attention to the problem and stated:

"Prices for living in Lviv should remain as they were in the pre-war period. A landlord or hotelier who sets an inflated price for an apartment is a looter! Report such cases to the City Hotline - 1580. We will act as required in wartime: check and make the names of looters public, as well as pass data to the SBU.

Although such symbolic gestures are better than ignoring the problems altogether, they have little effect on the realities of the rental market. After all, if you are an IDP (internally displaced person) and need a roof over your head, then first of all you spend precious time looking for housing that you can afford, not at exorbitant prices. If you are evicted, raising the price, then no public lists or fear of the SBU will outweigh the private ownership of the apartment. The landlord may even call the police to evict you.

Those who rent housing under a contract are a little more likely to put pressure on the landlord. But even in such a situation, it is easier to use the right of private property than to prove in court that eviction before the expiration of the contract is permissible only under certain conditions. Legal mechanisms that would protect tenants were difficult to apply before the war. The Civil Code guarantees the protection of tenant rights, but the actual implementation of such guarantees requires litigation, the involvement of lawyers. At the same time, the mechanism for protecting the landlord's private property rights is quite simple - you only need to call the police and show documents proving ownership of housing. Thus, the rights of the tenant are in practice more difficult to protect than the rights of the landlord.

Old sledges are not driven

Social housing policies would work better if they developed in peacetime. Moreover, why are the regional military administrations and the Ministry of Culture addressing housing issues, and not the relevant Ministry of Regional Development, Construction and Housing and Communal Services or officials directly responsible for housing policy?

Because they are busy with something completely different. As before, the main efforts of the authorities are not aimed at providing affordable housing to as many citizens as possible, but to support construction. The Ministry of Regional Development, the Confederation of Builders of Ukraine, DIAM and other actors responsible for developing and implementing housing strategies are only pretending to respond to the needs of IDPs and people whose homes have been destroyed.

Their vision of solving the problem is:

1) creating a system of construction financing based on risky financial mechanisms, such as securitization (creation of a mortgage debt market),

2) purchase of housing from developers at public expense,

3) subsidizing the purchase of IDP housing.

If some of those in need are able to access housing through such policies, there will not be too many wealthier people. Developers will be the real beneficiaries of such policies, because all financial flows are directed to them. Affordability and income from construction are mutually exclusive, and the latter is now the predominant policy. Neither local nor central authorities can or do know how to respond to the housing needs of hundreds of thousands of refugees. Therefore, housing problems are largely solved by grassroots self-organization. The example of Lviv shows how many citizens live with their relatives and acquaintances, how public organizations and initiatives redevelop various spaces for housing, how many landlords keep the "old", already non-market price for housing.

The initiative I joined is trying to help refugees with special needs find long-term shelter. And it's hard, despite the fact that we have familiar realtors and plumbers, we know the city and we have communication skills. How should newly arrived families with young children and people with limited mobility deal with this chaos?

Such practices of solidarity are an example of the principle on which housing policy should be based: housing is a basic need, not a source of income, not a financial asset.

Unfortunately, the case of Lviv does not differ from other Ukrainian cities. The countries of the European Union are not ready to provide affordable housing for Ukrainian refugees. Although social housing and rental market regulations are more prevalent in the EU than in Ukraine, in recent decades the privatization and financialization of housing has gradually made it less accessible even to EU citizens, not to mention migrants and refugees. In the conditions of a small quantity of available housing there can be conflicts between conditional "own" and "new". Therefore, in addition to the question of whether EU countries want to accept Ukrainian women, it is worth asking whether they will be able to provide them with affordable housing, decent work, and social services. And with this question arises the question of how to create conditions that would equalize the rights of citizens and non-citizens, Ukrainians and Syrians. Answers to such questions can save lives.
Time to shout

There are mistakes that are better not to learn from. One of these mistakes is Ukraine's real estate-oriented housing policy. The consequence of this policy is that people are not only forced to move to another part of their city, but also to return or stay in places where they may die from the actions of the Russian army.

Before the war, I called these processes displacement. I don't know what to call it now. But I am convinced that it is vital to continue to shout at those who make decisions about housing at the local, national and international levels, to shout in Ukraine and in the EU. Research, developments, recommendations are needed, it is necessary to exert political pressure. Shout about social housing, the protection of tenants' rights, the inadmissibility of the dominance of private property over the right to shelter, the urgent need to plan social and democratic housing policy for the future.

Shout with me, because it's not just about Lviv and not just about Ukraine.