Rental support for displaced families: a bridge from collective sites to private accommodation and a new start

22 days in Mariupol – and Yuliia was counting each of them: from the first hours of the Russian full-scale invasion until her evacuation from the besieged city on 17 March 2022. Together with her older parents, she survived massive airstrikes on Mariupol and a cold basement of the Drama Theatre where hundreds of people hid from the bombs. Then the aerial attack came that destroyed this city landmark, where many people were sheltering inside.

“The theatre was full of people, and I remember hiding behind a column when a bomb hit the building. There was unimaginable chaos. I reached out to my mother who was lying on the floor with blood pouring from her head,” Yuliia recalls. “The next day after the attack, volunteers helped to evacuate injured people, and I left city the with my mother. My father stayed behind and was able to flee Mariupol only in April.”

Yuliia tells her story, sitting in a bright apartment in Vinnytsia – the city that has become her second home almost three years after the start of the full-scale war. 

Thanks to UNHCR’s Rental Market Initiative (RMI), implemented with its NGO partner Medair, Yuliia and her family were able to find safe and comfortable housing in Vinnytsia. After months of living in an overcrowded apartment offered by friends and grappling with the costs of her mother’s medical treatment, they applied for rental assistance. 

“Without this assistance, we would not have survived last winter. It was not the end of our struggles, but the beginning of a new life. It gave us a sense of safety as we knew that we have a roof during cold months. We could not afford to rent such place at that time, but since then I have been able to find a job to support my parents, so we can now look into the future with hope,” Yuliia says. 

UNHCR’s Rental Market Initiative was initially launched in 2023, and the programme was extended in 2024 to 11 regions of Ukraine. So far, almost 2,100 internally displaced families have been supported to move out from collective sites or other short-term accommodation to homes that they can rent for a longer period. 

The assistance includes cash support to cover rent and utilities for several months, as well as legal counseling to conclude rental agreements and improvement of living conditions in the new apartments. In addition, the programme focuses on access to job opportunities and re-skilling as a way to enable the families to become self-sufficient and continue paying the rent, once the rental assistance from UNHCR ends. 

Similarly, the rental support was a “lifeline” for Nataliia who fled the occupied city of Bakhmut in Donetsk region with her daughter Tetiana. At first, they were evacuated from the regular shelling to a collective site in Lviv, then to Vinnytsia where they stayed in a 12-square-metre room in a shared apartment.

Without jobs, incomes and a network in their new community, having their own place to live was a dream which became a reality with UNHCR’s support.

 “In our rented apartment, we have a separate kitchen and a bathroom which is crucial for us as my daughter lives with a disability,” says Nataliia. 

The support was much bigger than just the cash for rent. Through the programme, Tetiana bought a tablet and also received counselling about job opportunities enabling her to find online employment and work from home. 

“Without this assistance, I cannot imagine what our lives would be now,” Nataliia adds. 

According to UNHCR and partners’ follow-up with the families who have received support from the Rental Market Initiative, 99 per cent indicated that they have financial stability to continue renting their home after the end of the cash assistance payments. Thanks to the support provided under the programme, 61 per cent of the displaced people who did not have employment before were able to find jobs and become self-reliant, which have both contributed to their inclusion in the host community and helped improve their mental well-being. 

One of them was single mother Ryta who was displaced with her son Andrii to Vinnytsia from Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region. Like many others, the family initially moved between several temporary accommodations. At one point, they stayed in a collective site in a dormitory, and later in a tiny room in a shared apartment, before they were able to rent a more spacious apartment through UNHCR’s Rental Market Initiative. 

With the rental expenses covered by the programme, Ryta was able to focus on what mattered the most – her son’s education and tuition fees for university. He has now graduated, and both mother and son are employed and able to independently provide for themselves.

“The programme lasted for six months, but it provided us with an opportunity to plan for the future, not thinking where we would live tomorrow, and start a new life. We were able to adjust to a new reality and preserve our faith in the future,” Ryta says. 

UNHCR and partners will continue the programme in 2025.