“I Want to Stay Here. At Home”: Rebuilding life in a new house, but own community
“I Want to Stay Here. At Home”: Rebuilding life in a new house, but own community
On one February night in 2024, a missile strike hit Tetiana’s neighborhood outside Mykolaiv city in southern Ukraine. Eighty-nine homes were affected, including Tetyana’s, which was destroyed and left beyond repair.
“I heard the alarm go off and saw the drone,” she recalls. “But this happens every night, so I continued to sleep. And then it happened – a huge explosion. All the windows were blast away, and the roof was gone. I just ran to my children. As we went out, we could see the significant damage to the neighborhood. There was fire everywhere.”
Tetiana is a single pensioner, who spent years managing her own production cooperative, located just across the street from her home. The missile didn’t only take away her house, it also destroyed her livelihood.
“I didn’t just lose my home,” she says. “I lost my ability to earn money.”
UNHCR and its partners responded swiftly by providing Emergency Shelter Kits, that helped families, including Tetiana’s to quickly patch up broken windows and damaged roofs, providing an urgent lifeline in the freezing temperatures. In addition, Tetiana was supported with emergency cash assistance to allow her and her children to meet their most pressing needs in the wake of the shock and destruction of the attack.
As assessments continued, it became clear that her house was beyond repair. That was when UNHCR stepped in with a more sustainable solution – a prefabricated house. This is a solution put in place for eligible families whose home have been destroyed entirely. The prefabricated house is Ukrainian made, and it is delivered and installed on their land or on locally available plots within existing neighborhoods and infrastructure, allowing the families to remain in their communities. The homes are simple to maintain and provide full functionality, including a standard kitchen, bathroom, appliances, as well as an electric heater and built-in boiler, ensuring that the families can stay warm during the winter months, and including during the occurring power outages.
“This house is so comfortable, and it is warm. We have two ways of heating, either electricity, but it is so expensive right now, so we are instead using the heating stove," says Tetiana.
Thanks to support from private and government donors, including Germany, UNHCR and partners are responding immediately after attacks by providing emergency shelter kits to impacted families. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, more than 410,000 people have received this crucial assistance. For families whose homes were destroyed beyond repair or for vulnerable internally displaced people, who are assessed to be unable to return home in the foreseeable future, UNHCR has so far provided and installed 248 prefabricated homes.
Despite everything, and the continuation of Russian attacks on Mykolaiv region, Tetiana refuses to leave. Her neighborhood, her cooperative, her memories – this is her home. And with UNHCR’s support, she has begun to rebuild her life.
“I don’t want to go anywhere,” she says. “I want to stay here. At home.”
