Mayor of Kharkiv: 14% of the country’s entire housing stock damaged or destroyed

Direct losses of Ukraine's housing stock from Russian aggression as of the end of 2025 year reached 61,1 billion dollars, which is almost a third of all losses the country has suffered. In the past year alone, this amount grew by another 3,5 billion. This was stated by Ihor Tereshov, the head of the Association of Frontline Cities and Communities and the Kharkiv mayor, at the Association's Board meeting dedicated to the topic “Forming a New State Housing Policy of Ukraine.”

Today, roughly 14% of the country’s housing stock has been damaged or destroyed, and the war's consequences have affected more than 3 million households. In Donetsk, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy, Mykolaiv, and Kherson regions there are about 73% of all direct housing stock losses.

At the same time, Tereshov emphasized, official statistics do not reflect the real scale of the problem: about one million Ukrainians cannot use their own housing because their homes are destroyed, are in occupied territories, in active combat zones, or have become uninhabitable.

“The state should count not only officially registered homeless people, but everyone who, due to the war, has lost the opportunity to use their own housing. Otherwise no state program will correspond to the real scale of the problem,” Ihor Tereshov stressed.

According to him, current programs have already helped hundreds of thousands of families. Specifically, under the ‘eRecover’ program, almost 232 thousand families received compensation, for a total of over 119 billion hryvnias, and about 33 thousand have already purchased new housing. At the same time, out of more than 161 thousand applications for destroyed housing, only one third have been replaced with new housing under certificates.

The issue remains with the ‘eHouse’ (yeOselya) program in frontline regions. Since the program’s inception, in 9 frontline regions only 3,5 thousand loans have been issued — on average about 11 per region per month. In Mykolaiv region this is 2 loans per month, in Zaporizhzhia — 4, in Sumy — 6, and even in Kharkiv — only about 20.

Of particular concern is housing accessibility for veterans: in the first half of 2026 year they received only 22 loans nationwide and only 3 — in frontline regions.

“We are talking about people who defend the country, return from service, and often start life essentially from scratch, but the current housing system still does not provide them an answer commensurate with their needs,” Tereshov stressed.

The head of the Association is convinced that Ukraine needs not another separate program, but a holistic system of affordable housing that combines different instruments: affordable mortgage, rent-to-own, municipal and social housing. A person should have the opportunity to choose the mechanism that meets their needs and financial capabilities.

A key task for the head of the Association of Frontline Cities and Communities is to create a permanent source of funding for affordable housing through the capital market, as well as to utilize European experience, in particular Austrian housing associations with limited profit that build and professionally manage affordable housing.

A separate direction should be the development of social rental housing for people who cannot use mortgage. Ihor Tereshov proposed to provide that 10% of proceeds from land plots sales at auctions would be directed to the purchase or construction of social housing for internally displaced persons.

According to him, housing issues are directly linked not only to social policy but also to economic recovery and the return of people to Ukraine. This is especially important for frontline communities where businesses, hospitals, and schools lack specialists.

“For people, housing is a sense of security and confidence in tomorrow; for the community, the ability to attract specialists and restore the economy; for the state, the condition for the return of Ukrainians, preserving human potential and long-term development. Therefore, we must not only state the scale of the destruction, but determine that housing has become one of the main challenges for the state in wartime,” he summarized.

Following the meeting, Board members will continue joint work on forming proposals for a new state housing policy. The developed decisions should form the basis for a systemic approach to providing Ukrainians with affordable housing, rebuilding communities, and creating conditions for people’s return.

“Housing policy must become an institution, not a temporary program,” summarized Ihor Tereshov.