‘You have no rights here’: Ukrainian refugees in Georgia struggle to find affordable housing

In an old Soviet dormitory outside of Tbilisi, Georgia, Marina Radevich, who fled Ukraine last year, lives in a small, one-bedroom apartment with her mother and two small children. 

She sleeps on a couch with her kids. They don’t have a shower, and there’s not even a lock on the door.

Radevich said that she misses her old apartment back in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Housing is so hard to find here, that she wishes the international community would step up: “Someone should build a refugee camp here for Ukrainians,” she said. 

In the chaotic first weeks of the invasion, millions of Ukrainians fled westward to the safety of the European Union. But a smaller number of Ukrainians fled east — toward Russia.

Russian troops forbade many Ukrainian families from leaving Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, or traveling west toward Kyiv.

So, with no other escape route, thousands of families crossed into Russia, and then headed south into Georgia.

The Georgian government has offered Ukrainians fleeing war some temporary support with free housing in hotels but much of that aid is drying up.

Georgia is still struggling to find housing for the thousands of internally displaced Georgians who left breakaway regions still occupied by Russia during separate conflicts that occurred decades ago.

One young Ukrainian woman whose name isn’t being used to protect her safety came to Tbilisi last year hoping to start over in a safe city with relatively affordable housing.

But after thousands of Russians escaping the draft at home started pouring into Georgia, rents in the city skyrocketed. A lot of the Russians coming in are wealthy tech professionals, Reuters reported, contributing to an economic boom in Georgia while also driving up prices and squeezing some out of the rental market and education.

To listen to another story on The World about Russians fleeing to Georgia, click on the audio player below:

Last fall, the woman said her landlord told her he would double her rent from $300 a month to $600 despite their contract.

“He just told me, you don’t have any rights here, you are not a citizen of Georgia,” she said.

Georgia lacks legal protections to safeguard renters from a landlord’s demands.

Luckily, the woman has maintained her remote marketing job in Georgia and managed to find a new, more affordable apartment. 

But other Ukrainians in Tbilisi aren’t as fortunate.

Monika Jaranowska, who directs a new Ukrainian kindergarten operating out of an old arcade inside the central train station in Tbilisi, said that she witnesses firsthand the financial problems Ukrainians in Georgia experience both inside and outside the school.

“We don’t have a vacuum cleaner, and I’m bringing my own from my home because we don’t have money for that,” Jaranowska said during a rehearsal for an upcoming Mother’s Day event.

Some of the mothers who send their kids to the school, most of them now single parents, she said, have been told their rents are doubling and face possible eviction if they can’t soon find a way to pay the increased housing costs.

“Ukrainians in Georgia have been left behind, they are forgotten,” Jaranowska said.