Continuity and change: wartime housing politics in Ukraine

Abstract

Abstract The article analyses the war-imbued housing crisis in Ukraine and emergency response to it in the first four months of the full scale Russian invasion as embedded in the wider context of Ukrainian housing politics. As in other countries of Central and Eastern Europe after 1989/91, the Ukrainian housing sphere has been shaped by mass giveaway privatisation, which created a super homeownership regime that is characterised by high expectations towards the state in the support of homeownership. Despite the mass destruction of the war and scale of the displacement, housing politics continues to be shaped by institutional inertia and attempts to resolve the current housing crisis with existing instruments and the support of homeownership. Such an ad-hoc policy approach leaves displaced households without coherent assistance in finding shelter. Only rather sporadic and insufficient options provided by communities at local level and international aid organisations are available. However, while lacking institutional and policy adjustment in the first months of war, the Ukrainian housing sector is changing. Growing importance of renting in the tenure structure and the pressing need to shelter those who lost access to homeownership as a result of war call for the development of a new, more comprehensive, housing strategy.