Slava Saderin doesn’t remember how he actually became homeless, it was such a long time ago. He can hardly even remember his age, though after a while he ventures that he’s 38.
“How did I end up on the street? Like all the others — fate brought me here,” Saderin says.
Saderin lives outside on Khreschatyk Street, one of the main streets in the Ukrainian capital. His daily fare is usually rummaged out of dumpsters, though sometimes he goes to a church near Kyiv’s Central Railway Station where free meals are available.
The war, internal displacement, and economic malaise affecting Ukraine means there are more and more people like Saderin ending up homeless in Kyiv and in other cities in Ukraine. There are no precise official statistics on their number: many people can’t or won’t register as homeless with the authorities.
So while 30,000 people are officially registered as homeless in Ukraine, charities and aid groups reckon the real number is closer to 200,000.
No safety net
There a various reasons people end up on the streets in Ukraine – a country in which the constitution stipulates that the state is to provide housing to socially vulnerable people. Some lost their houses when they were destroyed in fighting in the east of Ukraine after Russia launched its war of aggression on Ukraine. Others, affected by the economic turmoil that wracked Ukraine following the start of the war, were unable to keep up with rent payments, and were evicted. And still more have ended up on the streets due to alcoholism.
Ukraine is hardly unique in Europe in suffering from the problem of homelessness: Germany, in fact, has more homeless people than Ukraine – some 380,000 are now thought to be living on the streets there, though again there are no reliable official statistics. Many of them are recent immigrants to the country, according to reports in the German press.
But unlike in Ukraine, all German citizens are entitled to a 364 euro minimum benefit payment, and those under the poverty line are provided with housing by the state.
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With double the population of Ukraine, Germany also has two times more homeless people.
In Ukraine, there is no such safety net to catch people before they end up living on the streets, according to the secretary of Kyiv City Administration’s Committee for Health and Social Welfare, Yulia Loban. A registered homeless person does qualify for the minimum state monthly benefit payment of Hr 322.20 ($13), and they may get more if they have work records that show they’ve paid pension contributions. But in order to qualify for benefits or pensions, they need to have a passport, which many don’t have, Loban says.
“Unfortunately, most of these people don’t want to get passports,” Loban says. “They’re not interested in registering, that’s the problem. These people are used to eating whatever they find in the streets, and they don’t want to change anything — they prefer to live this way.”
“Sadly, we don’t have any special program for dealing with homeless people at the moment, but I try to contact all the NGOs we have in the city to find out what they’re doing and if they need any help from the city council.”
Charity groups
As the number of homeless people increases, a range of NGOs and special charity centers have been set up by citizens to help provide food, accommodation and medical care to those without a home. Several online projects also raise money for the homeless from the public.
Yevhenyia Tokovenko is a member of one such charity group, called Youth for Peace. Group volunteers gather in central Kyiv three times a week, bringing food and tea to give to the homeless in various parts of the city. While some of the funds for the aid is raised from the public, mostly the volunteers pay for the food and drinks themselves.
“The homeless are people who did not have families and friends around them at the hardest times in their lives,” Tokovenko says.
“They’re frustrated, with no hope left. There’s no special social program for such people in Ukraine. In a city with a population of almost four million, we have only one state shelter for the homeless, which is not free, and that you need to have documents to enter. It’s also located in a place that it’s almost impossible for homeless people to get to.”
Press the buttons to find out where you can fundraise for homeless in Kyiv.
State shelter
The city’s single state shelter is located on Suzdalska Street in Kyiv’s south-western fringes, not far from the capital’s second airport, Zhulyaniy. Getting there from other parts of the city, other than by foot, means a ride on the metro and a city bus. But public transport is inaccessible to most homeless people, who can’t afford fares.
Even then, it costs Hr 10 (40 cents) to enter the shelter. Once there, however, the homeless are provided with a supper of porridge, stewed meat and canned vegetables, and can stay for one night. The shelter has a social work service, which offers help in getting a job. The homeless are also given a medical check-up for tuberculosis, syphilis and HIV.
Unsurprisingly, the shelter is never full. While 150 beds are available, only 70-75 people turn up on a typical day, and the shelter’s deputy director, Viktoria Seleviorstova, says she’s never seen the shelter completely full.
“We’ve already been open for 11 years, and we’ve never had the shelter full,” says Seleviorstova. “We’re able to have an additional 20 places in winter, but we’ve never had to use them up to now. Unfortunately, some homeless people are addicted to alcohol, and they prefer to go somewhere they can drink, rather than stay here for the night.”
Along with the state shelter, in winter the government sets up tents with heaters in the streets where homeless can go to get warm, but Tokovenko says even these are inadequate.
“These tents are located in places that are hardly accessible even by public transport,” she says.
“Last year, the government announced that 150 tents would be set up in Kyiv, though when the members of our group searched for each of those 150 tents, it appeared that there were actually a lot fewer of these tents than there were supposed to be on paper.”
Civic activism
With little or no state protections stopping people from becoming homeless in the first place, individual citizens step in to help where the state doesn’t — as has become common since civic activism came to the fore in the wake of the EuroMaidan Revolution.
For example, Dmytro Verkhovetsky, a barber, goes out into the city practically every weekend to give haircuts to homeless people for free. For him, this is a better way to help than just giving the homeless money.
Barber Dmytro Verkhovetsky gives client a haircut. He gives homeless people haircuts for free on the streets at weekends.
“These are people who don’t have the chance to care about their appearance, because they have to think more about what they’re going to eat or where they will sleep,” says Verkhovetsky.
“So I decided to help them this way. With a good haircut, they can get the motivation to start a new life. Maybe this will change their fate.”
