Local authorities in Ireland will launch a campaign today asking people with unoccupied properties to offer them as temporary homes for people fleeing the war in Ukraine.
According to Irish state broadcaster RTÉ:
The appeal aims to support the work of the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, which is providing accommodation for those displaced from Ukraine.
Local authorities will take offers of houses, apartments, or holiday homes for temporary accommodation.
They will liaise with owners to assess the suitability of the property and coordinate the arrangements.
Of the total number of people fleeing the war in Ukraine who arrived in Ireland, 46,000 have been housed by the State and by citizens, according to recent figures from the Central Statistics Office.
The local authorities will also provide ongoing support to property owners and to the people taking up the offers of accommodation.
Property owners can offer homes at offerahome.ie or by contacting the local authority in which their property is located.
Meanwhile in the UK, there are reports that landlords are discriminating against Ukrainians living in the country and blocking them from accessing private rented accommodation.
According to LBC:
LBC has heard accusations of some refusing to allow refugees to arrange viewings or discretely turning them away, simply because of their status.
Eugenie fled Kherson in the south of Ukraine when the war broke out there and moved to Buckinghamshire with four of her children as part of the Homes for Ukraine scheme.
After the initial six month agreement with her host came to an end, she started enquiring about a place of her own and told LBC she was met with huge barriers, despite the family she was living with offering to step in as a guarantor.
“I was surprised because before all of the people here have been very nice with us,” she said.
“I thought maybe I’d said something wrong in the conversations we had.”
Rob Hamilton, who Eugenie had been staying with, told us he started making calls on her behalf to try and help make progress in her hunt for a new home.
He said: “They would be all sales to you about the property and then you’d explain the situation later on in the call – that actually you were calling on behalf of Ukrainian refugees – and the conversation would go dead.
“They’d say ‘oh I don’t think this property would be suitable for this’ and that happened with me calling multiple times and that was despite us, early in the process, agreeing to be guarantors.”
A survey by the Office for National Statistics earlier this week suggested almost half of Ukrainians who have moved to the UK since Russia’s invasion began are facing barriers when trying to access private rented accommodation.
The most common reason given was a lack of guarantor or references.
Russell Conway, a senior partner and housing lawyer at Oliver Fisher Solicitors in north London told LBC that in cases where a host family has offered to step in with a guarantee of rent, refusing them access could be proved unlawful.
“It would be unlawful because a landlord cannot discriminate against a prospective tenant on the grounds of ethnicity, country of origin or whether, in fact, the tenant is a refugee or asylum seeker.
“The problem is, however, people desperate for accommodation really don’t want to get caught up in satellite litigation, suing a letting agent or landlord for discrimination.
