{"id":20132,"date":"2025-07-01T16:59:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T13:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cedos.org.ua\/?p=20132"},"modified":"2026-03-30T18:38:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T15:38:19","slug":"housing-and-war-where-are-we-going-to-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cedos.org.ua\/en\/housing-and-war-where-are-we-going-to-live\/","title":{"rendered":"Housing and war: where are we going to live?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cThe country, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace,\u201d is a quote from Arundhati Roy\u2019s The God of Small Things<\/em> that, even though written in a different context, resonates strongly with me these days. These are the days between February and April 2025, when I read about the ceasefire while checking the updates on the Russian ballistic missiles flying toward Kyiv. These are the days of muffled explosions in the distance. These are the days overflowing with uncertainty, days when discussing the future feels almost delusional. Today, nothing frightens me more than war, and nothing petrifies me more than the so-called peace. Despite all-pervasive anxieties, I continue dreaming about the day-after-tomorrow when another reality is possible. This paper presents a step in that direction. Here, I discuss housing as one of the central pillars of Ukraine\u2019s recovery and argue that housing decommodification is a way toward achieving social and spatial justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Housing in Crisis<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

To understand the current housing challenges in Ukraine, it is first necessary to consider the historical context. As a result of the housing privatisation in the 1990s, most people in Ukraine owned their homes. Before February 2022, the commercial rental sector was relatively modest, and social housing practically did not exist<\/a>. Over the last three decades, housing policy focused on further supporting homeownership and, by extension, the construction business, ignoring broader needs for social housing and adequate rent regulation. Housing policy grounded in false priorities and values perpetuated social vulnerabilities and contributed to the geographies of inequality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The long-lasting issues became particularly salient with the start of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. In the previous three years, the war left approximately 13% of all the housing stock either damaged or destroyed and affected at least 2,5 million<\/a> households. With 4,6 million<\/a> internally displaced people, the housing needs increased and diversified. Today, access to affordable and secure homes is a cross-cutting issue for different social groups, especially the internally displaced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHousing is a foundation for everything,\u201d \u2013 an older internally displaced person tells me, an informant for one of Cedos\u2019 research projects<\/a>. The war forced this man to leave his home and flee for safety. Now, like thousands of others, he resides in a collective site \u2013 a temporary accommodation established in former dormitories, kindergartens, or sanatoriums. At the end of 2024, approximately<\/a> 61,063 people lived in 1,079 collective sites across the country. A collective site is not an ideal home. Given the chance, many would not have chosen such accommodation. However, the poorly regulated and overpriced rental sector hardly presents a safe alternative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy son works, but he cannot afford to rent an apartment. Housing rent simply does not match the salary,\u201d \u2013 argues another internally displaced person who lives in a collective site. As the gap between wages and rent widens, housing affordability becomes a challenge, especially for low- and middle-income households. Without access to adequate homes, people tend to remain in collective sites for prolonged periods, rent low-quality accommodation, or simply move to another neighbourhood or municipality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore, housing is also a prerequisite for integration. The assurance that there is a space for rest and recovery contributes to people\u2019s confidence in the future, enabling planning ahead and participating in community life. For internally displaced people, the decision of whether to remain in host municipalities, move to another city, or even return to unsafe territories often hinges on their ability to secure adequate housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, mitigating the current housing crisis requires solutions beyond the acceleration of construction. It requires a profound transformation of housing policy and its objectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Day After Tomorrow<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Build back better<\/em> is the guiding principle of Ukraine\u2019s recovery. Nonetheless, the principle\u2019s political potential depends on who fills it with meaning. An empty signifier cannot guide the recovery process. Thus, the discussion has to move beyond declarations and identify specific goals for each field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Setting such goals for housing might be particularly difficult, as housing remains a contested arena where different political, social, and economic interests intersect. The dichotomy between housing as home<\/em> and as real estate<\/em>1<\/em> <\/sup>might pose a formidable constraint to the transformation of the Ukrainian housing sector. However, now the country has a chance to prioritise a right to housing above opportunities for real estate speculation. The first step is to abandon the cruel optimism2 <\/sup>that housing needs can be addressed solely through market mechanisms. Hence, broad-based social and affordable housing has to become a key element of Ukraine\u2019s postwar recovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Channelling investment into social and affordable housing operated by responsible and financially sustainable housing companies is a way to mitigate both social and spatial inequalities. The public housing sector will serve as a check and balance on the commercial rental market. It will also allow internally displaced people to transit from collective sites and into long-term accommodation. For big cities, social housing is a chance to reclaim urban space and make life in central neighbourhoods affordable. It is also an opportunity to improve the quality of the built environment by introducing
higher standards in buildings, including energy efficiency. Finally, adequate housing is a critical infrastructure that enables economic and social life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless, overcoming the path dependence within the housing policy in Ukraine is challenging and will not happen overnight. Developing a viable social and affordable housing sector requires the arduous work of activists, researchers, urban planners, and policymakers. It also needs a broader societal and political consensus about the necessary degree of housing decommodification. There is now a basis to start such a discussion. Today, there are countless examples of housing solidarity. People continue to support each other, offer their apartments for free, and help internally displaced persons to furnish their new homes \u2013 these patterns of mutual help are more common than they seem. While relying solely on grassroots mobilisation to address the growing housing need is impossible, I hope such solidarity will pave the way for a radical political transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Marcuse, Peter, and David Madden. 2016. In Defense of Housing: The Politics of Crisis<\/em>. London: Verso.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Berlant, Lauren. 2006. \u201cCruel Optimism.\u201d A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies<\/em> 17 (3): 20-36. doi 10.1215\/10407391-2006-009.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    First published in \u2018Building Bridges for Ukraine: Pathways to Sustainable Prosperity<\/a>.\u2019 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \u201cThe country, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace,\u201d is a quote from Arundhati Roy\u2019s The God of Small Things that, even though written in a different context, resonates strongly with me these days. These are the days between February and April 2025, when I read about the ceasefire while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15258,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"topic":[20],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cedos.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20132"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cedos.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cedos.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cedos.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cedos.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20132"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cedos.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20147,"href":"https:\/\/cedos.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20132\/revisions\/20147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cedos.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cedos.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cedos.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cedos.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20132"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cedos.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=20132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}