According to a study conducted by the Depaul Ukraine charity organization, 22% of surveyed homeless people in Ukraine turned out to be internally displaced persons (IDPs). This highlights the complexity of the situation for people who find themselves in crisis due to war and other socio-economic factors.
In 2021, a year before the full-scale invasion, according to the Ministry of Social Policy, more than 50,000 people were officially registered as homeless. Fresh data were not collected, and some experts believe that even the pre-war figure is greatly underestimated.
In any case, the scale of homelessness increased dramatically as a result of the war. There is no doubt that there are hundreds of thousands of homeless people in Ukraine, and millions of people are at risk, but due to the lack of reliable data, it is impossible to give an exact figure.
Among the causes of homelessness in Ukraine, respondents name a number of factors. Cross-cutting factors such as layoff, trauma, family or other relationship breakdown, eviction, and addiction are commonly mentioned. Some people had nowhere to go after being released from prison, an orphanage, hospital or discharge from the army. Many of those interviewed said they had become homeless overnight – a direct result of the full-scale invasion. People tell that their homes were destroyed by shelling, or that they had to flee from the frontline and occupied territories.
