ost evenings, while Katya Zaikhchuk was waiting in Poland for the Home Office to grant her and her 15-year-old son, Sasha, a visa to come to England, she would get a video call from her host, Clare Birkbeck, as she cooked supper at home in. “I’d walk around the house, showing her the kitchen and the bedrooms, trying to make her feel comfortable, showing her what living in our house would be like. I was more worried for them than nervous for us,” Birkbeck remembers.
More than 104,100 Ukrainians have arrived in the UK under the sponsorship scheme, while another 40,000 came to stay with relatives. “We have never done anything on this scale. The Kindertransport brought around 10,000 children here in 1939. This is 144,000 people in just over six months – it’s unbelievable,” says Krish Kandiah, who this year launched the Sanctuary Foundation, which became one of the matching organisations helping hosts to find refugees in need of homes.
When the end of the initial period approached, Uttlesford council wrote to hosts asking if they wanted to extend the agreement for another six months. So far, 18 households have told the council they need help to find somewhere new for the refugees they are hosting. Nationally, 2,175 Ukrainian households have had had to register as homeless .
“They said you need to have £50,000 income if you want to rent here. I cried afterwards. I’ve got a job here, my son’s in school here,” says Zaikhchuk. Hosts here point to schemes launched elsewhere: in Bristol, a rent guarantee has been offered to Ukrainians, and a £1,000 thank-you payment promised to landlords; in Wiltshire, the council will put down a deposit and a month’s rent on behalf of Ukrainian refugees. Why, they ask, isn’t a similar approach being rolled out nationally?