When Liudmyla Sysoliatyna fled the war in Ukraine for the UK this summer, she thought she and her ten-year-old son had at last found safety.
Now they would rather go home and risk Putin’s bombs than continue to cope with homelessness and uncertainty here.
“This month two families died when a shell struck our city. There’s no light or electricity, and they’re bombing us because we’re close to Kherson — but it’s coming to the point where we’re preparing to go back there anyway,” she said.
The 49-year-old and her son are from Kryvyi Rih — President Zelensky’s home town in southern Ukraine and one of the targets in a spate of missile strikes last week. Both spent most of the Christmas period ill with a fever in a hotel in Bury St Edmunds, awaiting permanent accommodation.
They had arrived in the UK in July to stay with sponsors. After two months the sponsors moved them into an unfurnished rental house, and by the end of November Sysoliatyna was told they had to leave that home too.
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They spent two weeks in a hotel before volunteers found them a new host in Beccles, near Norwich. Although very grateful for the roof over her head, Sysoliatyna feels isolated in the town, which is two and a half hours away by public transport from her work, her son’s school and other Ukrainian-speaking refugees in Bury.
“Permanent stress and nerves are not good for our health. If this is us being saved, then we’re tired of being saved. We just want to be left to live,” Sysoliatyna said.
She had never left Ukraine until this year. “Now we are thinking of just taking our things and leaving England because these stresses are simply not possible to bear. Many of my friends I met in Bury have gone home — they didn’t have the nerves to put up with it — we’re constantly moving and we don’t know where we’ll be tomorrow.”
The UK government set up the family visa scheme on March 4, eight days after the Russian invasion, prompting thousands of applications from fleeing Ukrainians who already had relatives in the UK, even if their family had nowhere for them to stay. Safety was more important than space.
On March 18 the Homes for Ukraine scheme began, allowing British people to invite Ukrainians into their homes for six months — with the onus on councils to check the accommodation was suitable.
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Now hundreds of refugees whose sponsorships under the scheme have broken down are spending weeks or even months in hotels as they wait for social housing. As of November 18, government data shows, 2,985 Ukrainian households had told councils they were homeless, up 30 per cent in just a month. Over half blamed the accommodation or a breakdown in their arrangement with a sponsor. Only 40 per cent of cases had been resolved; 15 per cent had been matched with a new host.
Affluent Buckinghamshire has recorded 70 households who arrived on the Homes for Ukraine scheme and are now in need of help. The next-highest numbers of families asking for assistance after sponsorships broke down are in the suburban and rural areas of Cheshire East (48), Wychavon in Worcestershire (38) and Bromley (35). The full figure is likely to be higher as only three quarters of councils have kept records, and many sponsorships will have ended since November 18.
Since the war began, 152,200 Ukrainians have arrived in the UK: 43,300 on the family visa scheme and 109,000 through Homes for Ukraine. Those on the family scheme are slightly more likely to need homelessness prevention or relief from councils: they make up 35 per cent of cases but only 28 per cent of arrivals.
The government has announced a £150 million funding pot for councils to support Ukrainians at risk of homelessness, and sponsors will receive £550 a month to help with bills — up from £350.
Last week we spoke to dozens of Ukrainians in the UK about their housing problems.
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Nadiia Hladun, 34, who ran her own business in Kyiv and has cancer, spent a month in a hotel for the homeless in Belfast after the relationship with her sponsor broke down. She said it had harmed her mental and physical health: “I was the only Ukrainian woman there, and there were a lot of people with mental health and alcohol problems.”
When the war began, Tatiana Harlinska, 34, chose to come to the UK with her son Ivan because of the sponsorship scheme. She believed that living with a family would give her the best chance of adapting to British culture and learning the language. But since her sponsorship broke down in June, Harlinska and her son have been living in a hotel in Taunton.
“I don’t know where to turn. I’m like a rabbit in a wheel and I don’t know how to escape. We escaped from war. I didn’t bring him here to be homeless. We live in one room. He sees my tears; he sees my frustration,” Harlinska said.
Another single woman in north London has been relying on the kindness of strangers and her local church after her “sponsor” put her to work as a domestic servant for less than the minimum wage.
In affluent and rural areas, where British hosts have been the most generous — such as Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire and Cornwall — work, public transport and affordable rent is sparse. While plenty of sponsors are keeping their homes open for a further six months, many of them and their guests would like to see a route to independent living. But, under Homes for Ukraine, those seeking social housing or help with their rent have to turn to the council in the area where their host family is based. If they move away to find work or cheaper housing, they risk losing that aid.
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Young mothers are also baffled that some councils do not allow them to apply for one-bedroom flats, on the grounds they are too small, even though two- bedroom flats are unaffordable.
Valentyna Shelepova, 44, a Polish-language teacher in Ukraine, works in a hotel and lives with her “brilliant” sponsor family in Tonbridge. They have invited her to stay for another six months, but she has little hope of settling in the town, where a one-bedroom flat costs about £1,000 a month before bills.
She has considered moving to Scotland or the north of England, where rent is cheaper, but fears becoming homeless as she would have to find a new job: “If you have no job you have no housing, and if you have no housing you have no job.”
Alice Good, the founder of Sunflower Sisters, which supports about 12,000 Ukrainians, said: “The lack of availability of housing, the lack of sponsors and the difficulty in complying with rental housing requirements is forcing some to return to the war zones of Ukraine.”
