Authors

Galyna Sukhomud¹;  ¹ Technical University of Berlin, Germany

Discussion

The Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine has led to mass displacement and widespread destruction of housing, making accommodation one of the most urgent needs for internally displaced people (IDPs), both in the short and long term. According to a World Bank assessment, more than two million housing units have been damaged or destroyed, accounting for 10 percent of Ukraine's housing stock. 
Despite an initial wave of solidarity and efforts by grassroots initiatives, NGOs, and international organizations (IOs) to provide shelter for the displaced, both national policies and local governance have struggled to offer long-term solutions. As a result, IDPs are largely left to address their housing needs on their own, relying on an unregulated rental housing market or a limited number of government-issued mortgage programmes.
This paper analyzes housing policies and shelter provision practices in Ukraine through the concepts of responsibilisation and solidarity. It argues that solidarity, on the one hand, is subordinated to the logic of responsibilisation, in which private actors and the displaced themselves are primarily responsible for resolving the housing crisis in the long term. On the other hand, the temporality and conditionality of shelter provision also practiced by NGOs and IOs further reinforce the logic of responsibilisation and the residualisation of aid, contributing to the mainstreaming of the “not a fish but fishing rod” narrative, which contrasts with living realities and socio-economic situations of the displaced.