Publication date: 10.06.2024
Social housing: ensuring affordability for the poor
Introduction
Ensuring housing affordability is one of the key challenges of today. This problem is especially acute for low-income groups of the population who do not have the opportunity to buy or rent housing on the open market. Social housing is designed to solve this problem by providing housing at affordable prices. In this article, we will consider the current state and prospects for the development of the social housing fund in Ukraine.
The situation with the availability of housing in Ukraine
According to the data of the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, the average cost of 1 sq. m. of housing in large cities as of 2023 amounted to about 25,000 hryvnias. At the same time, the average salary in the country is about UAH 15,000. Thus, the purchase of even the minimum housing becomes unaffordable for a significant part of the population. This problem is especially acute for low-income groups - low-income families, single pensioners, internally displaced persons, etc.
The role of social housing
Social housing is affordable housing that is provided to citizens who are in difficult life circumstances and need to improve living conditions. It can be provided in the form of social employment, preferential lending or housing subsidies. The key advantages of social housing are:
-Affordable rental or purchase cost
- Possibility of accommodation for low-income categories of citizens
-Improving the quality of life and integration into society
The state of the social housing fund in Ukraine
As of 2023, Ukraine has about 100,000units of social housing. Most of them are communally owned by local communities. However, this volume is clearly not enough to meet needs. According to various estimates, the waiting list for social housing is up to half a million Ukrainians.
The main problems of social housing development are:
-Insufficient financing of construction and reconstruction programs
- Complexity and bureaucracy of housing provision procedures
- Unsatisfactory technical condition of a large part of the existing housing stock
Development prospects
In order to solve the problem of housing affordability for low-income segments of the population, it is necessary to significantly intensify the development of the social housing sector. Main directions:
-Increasing the amount of funding for social housing construction and reconstruction programs
- Simplification of procedures for providing social housing
-Expansion of forms of support (social employment, preferential lending, housing subsidies)
-Attraction of private investments and development of public-private partnership
-Implementation of energy-efficient solutions to reduce housing maintenance costs
The implementation of these measures will make it possible to significantly approach European housing affordability standards and improve the quality of life of the most vulnerable categories of citizens.
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