[ad_1]
More than 146,000 Ukrainians have found a temporary home in the UK since the war in Ukraine began.
Natalia Parkhomenko came to the country with her two sons through a sponsorship scheme that relies on the good will of strangers for at least six months.
“Now I live here and I’m happy to be here. I’m lucky to have a really nice woman. She helps me, she’s like my mother,” said Parkhomenko.
But others are not so lucky. Some local authorities have had to step in to help 2,175 Ukrainian families in England avoid ending up on the streets.
And 45% have had problems finding money to rent housing.
Ellada, an architect from Kiev, is among those who have struggled to pay rent.
“Unmarried women, like me, either don’t work or don’t work but earn a minimum wage that doesn’t allow them to cover the full rent, and in this case they either end up with homeless status and trust the state,” she said.
“Either they try to find a new sponsor, which is almost impossible now, or they decide to leave England forever and return to Ukraine.”
While there was an initial wave of public interest in housing Ukrainians at the start of the war, the number of sponsors has since declined.
Now there are only 30 sponsorship offers for every 1,800 requests.
“There aren’t a lot of sponsors left, one way or the other,” said Stan Benes, a trustee of the Opora charity, a group that works with Ukrainian refugees.
“It’s not even to say that there was a little bit of a downward slope in interest, there was a lot of interest in the beginning. And a lot of them got people in. Since then, unfortunately not a lot of people have come forward, for various reasons.”
Adding to the problem is the country’s cost of living crisis which continues to deepen with a concrete impact on the cost of housing, potentially leaving refugees in desperate need out in the cold.
[ad_2]
Source link
