For asking my Ukrainian guest to get a job so they can move out?

[Erith1985]

Wondering if anyone else is going through the same thing.

I’ve been hosting a Ukrainian guest at my house for six months. I’m appalled by the war and I have a big spare room with its own bathroom and so although I normally live alone by choice, I offered up my room. The first few months were ok, they are clean and tidy and were out and about a fair amount so we didn’t get in each other’s way. We didn’t discuss length of stay when they first arrived because I didn’t want them to feel unwelcome. I figured I would bring it up when they got a job.

That hasn’t happened. They say they have been sending off their CV and getting some interviews, but they haven’t secured anything. It seems they have only been looking at jobs in their previous sector, and that they have pretty high salary expectations since they’re complaining about the 45% tax rate. In the meantime, they’ve now settled into a routine that means they are at home nearly all the time - coming down to cook three times a day and only seeming to leave the house to go to the gym or the job centre, and spend most of the time in between instagramming. It feels like the heating and / or the oven is constantly on and they aren’t very communicative so when we’re in the shared space at the same time it feels awkward.

We finally had the conversation a month or so ago to say that I would like my hosting to end at the end of November, which they accepted on the basis that they were sure they would have secured one of the jobs they were going for by then, but there’s no sign of that being the case. When I ventured that they might need to look at work that wasn’t their first choice sector, they looked at me like I was mad and said that they’d rather start her own business (!) They’ve also mentioned several times how expensive flats in our area are and how they needs the big salary they want to be able to afford it.

I’m really just at a loss for how to handle this situation - I obviously won’t be turfing them out on the streets but how do I make them see that they might have to accept work that is not their ideal and work towards it? And / or rent a room that is outside of London to be able to afford it? They have great language skills, and there’s no reason they couldn’t find work other than they aren’t willing to consider something which isn’t their “dream job” and furthering their career; I totally get wanting that, but not at the expense of being able to support yourself. I’m worried that I am now just stuck hosting as long as they want me to, and the Council have been no help (basically got a letter saying “no other hosts available and we hope you’ll help them as long as they need you”.)

Am I being unreasonable for wanting them to work harder at getting a job (any job) so that I can have my house back?

@pixie5121 - So what is your actual point in all of your ranting? Other than the British are all elitist twats. What do you actually want the British public to do here?

Just to pick up on this. The council won't do anything to help make somene their legal responsibility. They will be obstructive to you to try and prevent you from doing it.

However the second your guest becomes legally homeless, they legally have to step in.

This is why that deadline is so important. Because it shows that the guest is legally homeless on the day they are homeless.

On that day the council has to suck it up.

I would give him a deadline and if they were still there, I would be turfing them out on the street. You're very kind to be helping them but you're not helping her by letting her do nothing. She is clearly taking advantage... possibly sliding into a depression, and seem to need 'motivation'

My friend took in a Ukrainian refugee. She was extremely proactive getting herself a job even though she is overqualified. She has made sacrifices to get work and embraced her situation for what it is. She now lives in her own accommodation and sleeps on my friends sofa once a month. She also cooked/cleaned and babysat for my friend when unemployed.

"You can't treat someone like an invited, wanted guest and then suddenly turf them out and tell them to clean loos."
Plenty of British nationals have to clean loos for their livings, and do all sorts of other tough jobs. All their lives. What are you going to say to them, if cleaning loos isn't a 'good enough' job for other people?
Many of us here have, at points in our history if not at the present, done tough jobs, long hours, and/or for low wages. Many of us have lived in little better than slums in our time- I worked my socks off on low wages for over three years to keep myself in a grotty bedsit where I shared a loo, a cooker, and a sink with six other bedsits and a shop downstairs. Don't get me wrong, I don't think anyone ought to have to live like that, and it's great people are opening their homes to refugees. And if refugees can get better jobs, great. But if not, they have to do the best they can and take what work they can get, just like the rest of us.

Don't feel guilty you have been very kind but it's time for this person to stand on their own two feet. If they want the professional job they will have to attend intensive English courses and work in a menial job until then. I've heard many western Ukrainians have been fleeing when the bulk of the war is in the East.

Some chancers were certain to come but you shouldn't feel guilty.

Is this not just a clear case of denial?

Your guests are looking for well paid jobs in their chosen fields, because that's what they used to have, so they should get the equivalent here. Except... they're not comparing like with like.

Say I moved to France - I'd expect a job that allows me to have a similar lifestyle to one I have here. I've worked hard my whole life and I speak the language of the country. I wouldn't want a low paid job. I'd be comparing things to life in the UK. But the difference is, I would be an economic migrant. I wouldn't be fleeing death and destruction. If I was, I'd be grateful for anything to survive.

That lifestyle that your guests used to have just doesn't exist anymore, because their country is at war. It's not a pleasant thought to have, and it forces you to think that you might never go home. That this isn't a temporary jaunt abroad. This might end up being your new home.

What they need to think about is what kind of job they could hope to get back home right now and use that to manage their expectations of what jobs they can get here that are better. They're comparing their old lives with their new lives and unsurprisingly, their new lives are falling short. But in reality, they should be comparing their new lives with the ones that they got to run away from.

I suspect there's also a lack of understanding around how their accommodation in the UK is being financed or that an end date was always expected.

Thing is, it wasn't a well thought out scheme. People took in Ukrainians because there weren't enough council homes to house them - there haven't been enough council homes for the existing population for years. A the end of the six months, what was going to be different, if the council hadn't spent that time building new properties?

So, I'm going to add in a case of denial from our Government, not just the guests.

Some of the people who left Ukraine left largely unscathed, and need to adjust their expectations. Others witnessed things that are bound to have had a lasting effect, and is six months really enough time to process that trauma, integrate into a new country with a different lifestyle and somehow find paid employment and somewhere to live?

I mean, work and housing are both top causes of stress. Work, housing... and a war. And probably deaths of people you know... I'm not saying six months wasn't a reasonable time for an average person in the street to offer to host, but I am saying it was wildly optimistic for the UK Government to expect everything would be magically resolved at the end of that period.

It's a tricky situation for the OP, and I do sympathise, because the offer to host was made with compassion and kindness. I don't have a spare room myself, but if I did, I don't think could have been as generous. Our Government has put you in this position, and I hope you can find a way to bring the situation to a satisfactory ending for all parties.

People have empathy, enough to open their homes to complete strangers, and to spend millions on donations for Ukraine. People do not have limitless resources in the face of extreme price rises or patience. People are not trained trauma counsellors. You obviously have a big chip on your shoulder about British people. Fuck knows why, but the only thing appalling here is your attitude. I am so glad being a host is working out for you though.

I'm a HCP. If I was a refugee I wouldn't expect to be able to flee to France and take up the same job. I don't know any French !!

That's it. If you lost your job and a parent said, 'I see you're having a difficult time, why don't you come stay with me until you're back on your feet again?' you would have a very different attitude to finding another job if you were completely on your own. Because your options would be get more money, or potentially live on the streets.

The Ukrainians have been told that people here are happy to house them until they're back on their feet, and what that means hasn't been clearly defined. There are different expectations on each side - it's not that either set of expectations is wrong, rather that the lack of alignment is wrong.

I lost my job once, and I was told by the job centre that I had a set period of time in which I could look for a similar job before I had to abandon all hopes and dreams and look for any job. Fortunately, I found a similar job (actually, it paid more money!) before I had to start applying for low paid menial labour jobs, but I knew I was hunting against a clock, because expectations were clearly set on both sides.

I wanted a similar lifestyle. The job centre was happy for me to look for a similar lifestyle. But only within a set period of time, because their generosity and patience had limits.

Dont know if it sounds realistic, but perhaps struggling hosts could try and find British Ukranians as these potentially can relate better to the people from their home country and explain/adjust the expectations of the guests?
A former colleague is hosting a family but his wife is Ukranian and they dont have problems widely discussed in this (and similar) topics

Actually, although black and brown refugees have to take menial jobs it also can work the same way in some 'white' countries too.

ex NDN of mine went with her DH to Toronto about a year ago, he has a job and is setting up a new sort of IT company there... complex and a bit outing. They're going for 2 years initially to see if they like it out there or not, and can return home (her choice apparently) if they do like it.

She is an experienced geography teacher, in her mid 40s and has taught at good girls' secondary schools.

She's been told she will have to completely retrain to get a job as a teacher in Canada and jobs as teachers are hard to come by. She's lucky that her DH is on a very good salary so she can afford to be SAHM/W. She'd dearly love to be able to teach though. I don't think she can even get volunteer work in Canada either!

Are you honestly telling me that if you were a management consultant here, with a six figure salary, that you'd hit the ground rolling in a foreign country with a different language, excited to clean toilets, while your family back home are getting bombed and killed in a war?

I wouldn't be excited by doing that, but I'd get on with it if I had to, albeit with lots of loud moaning and complaining, no doubt.

You do realize that the husbands, sons and brothers of these women are fighting for Ukraine, dealing with shocking deprivation, hardship, risk and exhaustion, day after day?

Can you imagine if the commanders decided to adopt an attitude of "OK, lads, it's alright to just sleep in late/eat the other soldiers' rations/run away/not turn up/steal army equipment if you want to--after all, you're traumatized and missing your family, innit? The silly old defence operation will just have to take care of itself."

It's not asking too much to ask their wives and sisters to "clean up after themselves and get a less-than-ideal job," frankly.

In the near future, these refugees are going to have to go back to Ukraine and rebuild the bloody place and it's going to be utterly hard and thankless and exhausting work. Letting the refugees slide into worklessness and spending their days on Instagram is not doing them any fucking favors. People who are having a hard time benefit from having some structure in their lives, and the self-respect that comes from paying your way.

So you aren’t hosting then?

Given that most people in the UK won’t have experienced a war zone, based on your definition empathy is not possible. But I suspect you actually give zero fucks about people’s empathy levels, you just seem to want to stick the boot in to middle class British people for some reason, and I am guessing no amount of help or support for Ukrainian refugees would have been enough to satisfy the keyboard warrior in you. Well I hope you feel you have achieved something with all your frothing.

So, you're quite condescending to anything foreign, aren't you?

I see what you mean by a 'better life', quite condescending. People emigrate to the UK or anywhere, for many reasons.

Yes, these reasons might be war, it might be a traumatic, difficult move.
Saying that these adult emigrants will be incapable to adapt to their new environment is just really condescending.
These people were not FORCED, OP, they had limited options and a difficult choice to make and they made it. You can at least, give them that. They made the choice to come to the UK, rather than move somewhere else in Ukraine, or to a neighbouring country, or anywhere else that accepts refugees. They're quite capable to conceive that the UK is different to the Ukraine.

Your views strike me as very UK-centric and xenophobic, so I'm quite sure you haven't hosted yourself.

Again you've assumed. I moved down following three years of domestic violence. I worked my butt off to get a great life together for myself following that. I know what trauma is and it takes guts to scrape yourself together but you also HAVE to be realistic and get out there. Nobody cares what happened to you in the end. You just have to crack on. No British exceptionalism going on here, just toilet cleaning for seven years in the evenings whilst I scraped my career and mortgage deposit together.

@pixie5121

Do I think the Ukrainians see themselves as above black and brown refugees? Yes, I do. But make no mistake - the British would be far, far worse in this aspect.

The British is not a homogenous group of middle class mums netters who don't want to break a nail. It is made up of, inter alia, immigrants, working class people
used to doing the shit work and yes, middle class white people who are all well capable of rolling their sleeves up and making the best of a bad situation where this is necessary. Since you have never experienced a situation where Brits have has to become refugees outside of Britain, you have no way of knowing, none whatsoever, how they would behave.

Your posts are patronising to people like me verging on the unhinged. Apparently I don't know my own community better than you do. Fuck off. I know full well - being the child of my parents- the misery and bewilderment of host country led expectations not matching up at all to the reality. Any black or brown people coming to the UK post WW2 into the 1980s, either invited or reluctantly taken in as British subjects, economic migrants or refugees, will know this, as will their children, because we lived it. I wasn't just a weekend visitor like you.