Housing, Jobs, Services: The Association of Frontline Cities and Communities Calls on the Government to Change IDP Support Policy

The Association of Frontline Cities and Communities has developed and submitted proposals to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine for the State Policy Strategy on internally displaced persons through 2030. The document is currently under public consultation.

The proposals draw on the practical experience of communities that, since the start of the full-scale russian aggression, have been receiving, housing, and integrating displaced people under difficult security conditions. These include communities from Kharkiv, Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv, Poltava, and Odesa regions.

“Today, a person who has lost their home is forced to navigate a complex path across different institutions on their own, from applying for assistance to finding housing and employment. This is not a system, but a collection of fragmented procedures. We propose building an integrated model centered on meeting people’s needs and expectations. It should be a system in which the government supports a displaced person from the moment of displacement through to full integration into a new community and a stable life,” said Ihor Terekhov.

The proposals emphasize that more than 4.6 million Ukrainians currently have the status of internally displaced persons. This is not only a humanitarian challenge but also one of the country’s systemic challenges, affecting its economy, labor market, and government policy. Despite this, the current system of support for IDPs remains fragmented and ineffective. Housing, social, and economic instruments operate separately, without a unified logic, and responsibility is distributed among different agencies.

The Association of Frontline Cities and Communities (Association of Frontline Cities and Communities) underscores that the key problem remains the absence of a single coordination center for government policy on IDPs. Decisions are developed and implemented by different public authorities without synchronization, which makes it impossible to build a coherent support system.

Moreover, the prolonged absence of a coordinated government policy has led to a situation in which a significant share of the burden has effectively been shifted onto communities. It is at the local level that most solutions are delivered, from accommodating people to their social and economic integration, without sufficient resources and without a clear government framework.

The Association’s central proposal is the introduction of a unified IDP support pathway, a system that covers all stages following displacement, from initial assistance to integration into a new community or return. This model is centered on the individual and their personalized support. In particular, it proposes assigning each displaced person a responsible specialist, a social case manager, who will accompany the individual throughout the entire pathway, coordinate access to assistance, housing, employment, and services, and ensure interaction with all government and local institutions.

Separately, it is proposed to establish a comprehensive integration model based on “housing + jobs + services.” This approach means that issues of housing, employment, and access to services are addressed simultaneously as a single system, without which genuine integration is not possible.

Significant attention is devoted to housing policy. The Association proposes moving from temporary solutions to a systemic model that includes the development of social and municipal rental housing, the creation of housing funds, support for new construction, as well as integration with compensation mechanisms for destroyed or lost housing.

Substantial changes are also proposed in financial policy. This involves transitioning to a model that takes into account actual living conditions, the security situation, and the cost of living. In particular, it is proposed to introduce mandatory annual indexation of payments for internally displaced persons to ensure their alignment with real expenses and to make the support system more predictable.

Another package of proposals concerns frontline territories, for which a special support regime is proposed. This includes increased levels of funding, as well as a mechanism for direct subventions from the state budget for each internally displaced person who actually resides in and receives services within a community, as a basic instrument to compensate for the additional burden on local social, educational, healthcare, and housing and utilities infrastructure.

It is also proposed to significantly strengthen housing instruments and incentives for employment and business development in such communities.

It is further emphasized that return policies for IDPs must take into account not only an individual’s willingness to return, but also the actual capacity of a community to provide basic living conditions, including housing, employment, access to services, and security. The balance of these factors should determine the effectiveness of return decisions.

The Association notes that without such systemic changes, government policy on IDPs will remain a collection of separate instruments and will not ensure either the integration of people or the recovery of communities.

The Association expects that these proposals will be taken into account by the Government in refining the Strategy and will form the basis for developing an effective government policy capable of ensuring real integration of IDPs and support for communities.