Support thread for those hosting Ukrainian refugees.

[UltimateFoole]

I've started this new thread so that this support can continue for anyone hosting Ukrainians under the H4U scheme. Also for those thinking about hosting. And for anyone who has previously hosted and still needs support.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4552566-support-thread-for-those-hosting-refugees-and-advice-for-those-thinking-about-it?reply=122239451&utm_source=sendinblue&utm_campaign=Mumsnet_Watched_Thread_Notification_New_Talk&utm_medium=email

Thanks @UltimateFoole . I'm still happily hosting and all is going well apart from a few minor niggles (all the saucepans in the fridge and the children being kept home from school with the slightest sniffle). Our guests are lovely people and we've been hosting nearly 7 months now. It would be nice if there was an end in sight but unfortunately there isn't.

Our guests asked if they can stay longer. I’m not sure what the position is going to be with payments though. We can’t continue without the payments.

I have a positive update, after difficult hosting experiences I was dreading hosting a cousin. My last post was a whine about it.

He turned up with small gifts and was really pleasant. Job hunted really hard for a week or so then found something. After 3 weeks found a place to rent as he said. He generally kept his word and was easy to live around.

It’s actually been quite healing and settling for me after the mess of the last year, that it’s not me being difficult. He came from pretty hard circumstances too

@MumEeeee I remember your posts and always thought you were heroic in the face of an awful lot of demands! You certainly deserved an easier experience this time and I’m really glad it was cathartic.

Hellooo! Marking place.

marking

Payments continue as is for 12 months. The government has now confirmed that payments will continue for up to 2 years for each guest. And in the 2nd year the 'thank you' payment to hosts will be £500.

So whatever payments you are getting now you will continue to get for hosting for the first 12 months. For the 2nd year with that same guest you would get £500 from the government no matter where you are in the country.

That's my understanding anyway.

Important to note that the 2nd year means the guest's 2nd year in H4U. It's not to do with how long hosts have been hosting. IYSWIM. (Despite the misleading headline in this government press release.)

Details here...

www.gov.uk/government/news/new-over-650m-support-package-for-ukrainians-sees-increased-thank-you-payments-for-longer-term-hosts?fbclid=IwAR0Li9ETwnZKKD5GumfBlMO3CqqPLgOB9GedB3ivV4hfnBeXjyrCrECZ3Vo

Hmm interesting. Our council now makes extra payments to hosts (since they have no spare housing so they're desperate). I wonder whether this will continue if the government payment is increasing.

I'm relatively new to mumsnet, can someone clarify what the need is to make a post saying your marking place?
If I want to watch a thread, I click the Watch thread button. Am I missing something?

No, you're not.

What thread is just the same but I have never bothered to find that function so might sometimes just make a short post as I usually first go to Threads I am on. Glad to see people are working things out.

Our council has made a one off additional payment of £150. I don't know if that will continue this month. We have an acute housing shortage and no moving on support. It's all very short sighted.

My anger at the scheme extension is considerable. No idea why funding attaches to guests moving into their second year - the idea should be to support independence and this does the opposite of that. Why should a perfectly healthy adult with decent English be able to live somewhere rent free for two years funded by the tax payer? That is deeply unfair on other groups of people.

My guest works and can afford to rent a room. She isn't, currently, as I've said we will host for a year. As a result she isn't looking to move on right now though she needs to start looking soon. If we extended (we won't) the same thing would happen - her disposable income exceeds by a considerable margin that of many if not most people in this country as she has no housing costs.

I suspect when she leaves in April she may look for another host. And a single, tidy, pleasant woman who is fairly independent and undemanding is going to be very appealing to a new host who will then be paid £500 a month for hosting her so I expect she will find one. No need at this stage for the massive effort involved in navigating the visa system, organising accommodation and transport while we waited for a visa, the huge amount of effort involved in settling someone in and doing the paperwork.

Meanwhile she will be able to send money home and buy more clothes - her room is stuffed full of things she's acquired since coming here. And Afghan families are still stuck in miserable hotels. It's not fair and it is just short sighted lazy panic by the government because they don't want to deal with a wave of homeless Ukrainians.

All this does is kick the can down the road a year and actually make it worse - people with only a year left on a visa will be less attractive prospects as tenants than they would be right now with two years to go.

They should have:

• increased payments by a modest now to all hosts in proportion to the number being hosted to keep people housed in the very short term
• attached any increased funding to hosts going beyond 12 months for those hosting a second or third time
• terminated the scheme at 12 months but make it very easy to transition to a rental agreement where people want to continue the relationship (keep the council tax discount for single hosts, provide guidance on housing benefit etc, ensure payments are tax free etc) and promote that as the solution so guests are paying rent or having their rent paid via housing support
• issued clear guidance to the Ukrainian community through various channels on the need to make contributions to utility costs and provide guidance on the amounts: I am still seeing lots of people who are being told by guests when they have that conversation that they are "paid for hosting and the £350 covers bills".

i am also in an area where additional payments are currently being made. In our case it’s also per guest which is helpful. I don’t know whether this is going to be extended to year 2. If it is then we will continue to host but since our guests are in a separate house we will be telling them they have to take over the utility costs. They currently get just under £1500 a month and are living rent and bill free. It simply isn’t sustainable for us. If they were paying rent they would also get housing benefit so it would be more or less the same for them.

i’m relieved the scheme is extending since it saves a difficult conversation but it isn’t a fair system at all. My family is lovely but even so I do feel taken advantage of (mainly due to the fact that the husband is fit and healthy and working overseas).

Very articulate LaurelGrove, that is exactly how I feel about one of our guests who is moving to a new host family having been with us for 9 months.
Your suggestions for changing from a hosting arrangement to a rental agreement make perfect sense. I have no issue with England opening it's arms to Ukrainian refugees, but a year on I really don't see why the UK taxpayer should be paying housing costs for working Ukrainians.

We've been hosting a mother and her 12 year old son, since mid July. She's really nice and helpful around the house, she cooks one night, I cook the next. She also does quite a lot of cleaning.

They've really been no bother and are down to stay until next June. I'm not sure if she'll be able to get decent housing, as there is a significant shortage. Some of the other Ukrainians have been housed on a rough estate and aren't coping well. If we keep getting payments, I don't see why they couldn't stay another year.

The lad and my daughter get on well, which is a plus.

My guest left a few weeks ago virtually bang on 6 months after arriving. Found a job and managed to save up enough for a deposit. She works every hour god sends but says she's lonely and struggling to make friends. We are in a fairly poor northern town so very different from London. I suspect she'd like to move somewhere a bit livelier and at least is doing a bit of travelling (went to London last week, day trip to Liverpool a while ago) but as ever finances and COL will probably prevent that.

@LaurelGrove I guess the crux of it is it’s a temporary problem. The visas will expire. It’s I guess cheaper to pay out a bit longer than deal with the cost of admin of doing something else, or the cost of the fall out on housing. I guess it’s a decision made with calculators, not hearts and minds.

If I had a spare room I’d happily take £500 a month for it if I’m honest.

Other refugees are a long term issue for government, they require a more complex permanent resolution and paying for rooms isn’t that.

Is it temporary though? Our guests are certainly planning on staying here long term now.

Without visas they can’t.
I have loads of family members who’ve struggled to even visit the UK and get visas, it’s really not easy

Laurel, I agree. it is a bit like my graduate sons who live at home and don't pay rent - it is a massive financial advantage to live somewhere rent free which most people in the UK do not have once they are adults. Why would many choose to move on from that to be worse off? Plenty will stay - whether adult children or Ukrainian refugees until they are made to leave and who can blame them?

The system is a bit unfair compared to the UK homeless sleeping on the streets at Christmas for whom even the afghans in hotels have in a sense "more" (not that it is a race to the bottom of course)

@Xenia I was under the impression hardly any Afghans came here. The homeless on the streets tend to have drug or alcohol addictions so very different from refugees.

If they stay with hosts they are 'Invisible' to politics and don't come into direct competition with other groups for housing though either.

By hiding the problem it gets managed without exposing the acute nature of the housing shortage. Because the unfairness isn't seen directly by those needing emergency accommodation it doesn't create conflict in the same way.

It dumps the problem onto hosts and the taxpayer - but it's probably still a cheaper alternative than other emergency accommodation which would also be at the expense of the taxpayer.

Nothing is right about it, but it stops it blowing up in faces of politicians because you have to be 'in the know' to realise what's going on too.

The extension has been done surprisingly quietly...

It really has been done quietly. I'm very surprised there hasn't been any media coverage of it - or at least none that I have seen.

I think you are right about hiding it away from the public gaze. But when public finances are under immense pressure I find it very uncomfortable to think that one group - deserving for sure, but no more deserving than any other group -are being given such preferential treatment and that they have such high levels of disposable incomes (through no fault of their own, merely by playing along with the rules of a broken scheme) than so many other people.

I have thought long and hard about this because I don't want to sacrifice my guest on the altar of my principles, but I just don't feel comfortable extending hosting beyond a year even though the additional money would be welcome. I am going to have a conversation with her in January to reiterate my offer to host for up to twelve months but then she needs to find alternative accommodation. She's more than able to do that, financially, linguistically and emotionally. If by the end of April she hasn't found anywhere to live, then we will move to a rolling tenancy agreement where she will pay rent of £500 a month (well below market rent for a room round here) plus the increase in my council tax bill as a result of me losing the council tax discount. I think that will focus her mind (I hope).

As this is an anonymous forum I should be honest and say that while this all sounds very high minded of me, it's not just about that. I'm tired of sharing my space and having someone grilling fish at 11pm when I'm ready for bed and the impact it's having on my teenagers. Who have been largely very tolerant, but they need their space back as well.

I totally understand how you feel. We’ve swung back and forth about extending and have decided that from Feb (after 9 months with us) we are going to ask for two changes. Firstly we want the second living room to revert to being a shared space and secondly we want to ask for a contribution of £100/person/month towards utilities, household bits and food staples (we don’t buy everything but do get all herbs/spices/oils/rice/pasta/root veg as well as things like tinned tomatoes/beans & pulses, tuna and other storecupboard stuff)

We have 2 guest & we spend about £100/month extra on shopping & £100/month extra on utilities with our guests here so figure asking them to cover that so the £350/eventually £500 becomes their “rent” next year isn’t unreasonable. They are on universal credit due to low/no wages so would be funded to get accommodation regardless so seems silly to change how that’s paid & complicate things or I might do same as you.

The guest we have who isn’t working won’t consider lots of jobs and I’m concerned that she is spending her universal credit money on treats (not extravagant stuff but it’s just a bit unrealistic to treat it as pocket money). We were thinking if it were our adult kids and they wouldn’t apply for lots of things and didn’t have a job after 4/5 months at home we’d want to make sure it wasn’t perfectly comfortable for them to not work as we were covering everything. I worry we aren’t helping her by letting things stay as they are.

I figure either they will be happy to make a contribution and stay and we will feel happier with the situation/they will be more motivated to find Uk work or they will be unhappy with that and choose to leave to rent/to get a different sponsor in which case we get the house back. It seems fairer than just kicking them out after a year which is looking like our only other option

Our local authority (useless) has brought in the Refugee Council (not useless) who provide specific mentoring and support to hosts. They are very clear on the importance of asking guests to contribute, both to alleviate pressures on hosts and avoid the sense of resentment you hint at, but also to encourage independence in guests and redress (slightly) the power imbalance that exists, which they often allude to. It's been very helpful for me and encouraged me to ask my guest for a contribution. It's small (£15 a week) which doesn't cover her share of bills but does give her a meaningful sense of making a contribution and means I don't get quite so grumpy when I find that yet again there is no milk in the fridge.