Ukrainian mother ‘finally able to make a home for herself’ after consistent delays for housing

Ted Peskett, local democracy reporter

A Ukrainian mother who fled the war in her country is finally able to make a home for herself after waiting years, living in a small hostel room, for help from the local authority.

Kateryna Gorodnycha was living for three months in a hostel in Barry with her son, Timur, while they awaited news on when a new temporary accommodation site in Llantwit Major would open.

After a number of delays Vale of Glamorgan Council recently announced that the development was signed off and that it could start moving people in.

Temporary

The site, a temporary site made up of portable cabins, is made up of 90 units for Ukrainian families and families from the Vale on the council housing waiting list.

For Kateryna, it has provided space to start thinking about the future again for the first time in years, describing the comparison between her new place and the hostel she said: “It is like everything and nothing. It is like poles… completely opposite.

“It is life [here] and there. It is just waiting for life.

“It feels like a home just because actually it is our first own home here, not own house, but own home where I can create my personal space, [where I can] put some things that I bought or found… with my taste.”

Kateryna and Timur, 15, drove 1,800 miles across Europe with their two cats and other possessions to reach the UK in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Back home

Back then Kateryna said she was living in an apartment that overlooked the Dnipro River in Kyiv and was working as a TV producer and journalist.

She’d established a company that set up events for the film industry in the city and had a grant to film a documentary.

“We had lots of plans, plenty of them,” said Kateryna.

“But everything was falling apart during one night and since then I just don’t make plans at all.”

Kateryna said she was grateful for the hospitality her sponsors showed her and her son when they arrived in Wales.

When we spoke with Kateryna in October she said: “They waited and waited and they didn’t ask us to leave them but the circumstances [became] worse and we had to move this summer in July.”

Back then Kateryna was still waiting to move into the Llantwit Major housing site, which is called Heol Croeso.

She said she opted to stay near Cowbridge because it is her son’s last year in secondary school and finding rented accommodation was difficult while also having pets.

Before she moved to Llantwit Major, Kateryna said: “They are a part of our family so it is too hard to rent accommodation being a refugee and having pets. It is too much for landlords.”

“Dignified solution”

Plans for Heol Croeso were initially pushed through using special planning powers called permitted development rights.

However planning permission was eventually acquired in July 2024 to keep the site in place for a minimum of five more years.

Part of the idea behind the site is to decrease the council’s reliance on accommodation like hotel rooms and hostels.

The leader of the council, Cllr Lis Burnett, said Heol Croeso provides a more “dignified solution” to the demand for housing.

Describing what it was like living in a hostel, Kateryna said: “The room was much smaller than this – probably half of this room – but we were lucky to have our personal bathroom because, as I understood later, some other rooms didn’t have personal bathrooms.

“The main thing for me which I was surprised about was they have their own rules for children, for teenagers.

“My son is 15. He cycles for 100 miles by himself.

“He is allowed to go anywhere. I just trust him. But the rules of the hostel were… I can’t leave the hostel even for 10 minutes.

“I can’t leave him alone in a room because they don’t want to be responsible for him but he is 15.”

Talking about the moment she first entered her property at Heol Croeso, Kateryna said: “I came here and it felt like a home just because it was so bright and light.

“I watched the process. I came here to this place probably twice a month just to check how it is going and I saw all stages of creating this place and sometimes I was imagining what it was going to look like and from outside… you can’t really understand the size of everything.

“When I saw windows from outside, from the road, I thought it was going to be so small.

“It looks like that… but they are full-scale windows when you are here, when you can see it, when you can touch it.

“It is quite big and I think neighbours watching us from outside, they think that it looks like train coaches, but they probably can’t imagine that it is quite big inside.”

Visa

Kateryna said her visa will last for another two years before she has to decide what to do next.

She added: “Two years for me is quite a long period… it is life, it is plans, it is a period [for us] to create a nest.”

Vale of Glamorgan Council, like other councils across the UK, is dealing with a housing crisis and has more than 6,000 people on its council housing waiting list.

The local authority’s housing solutions and supporting people team leader, Kate Hollinshead, said the pressure the council is facing at the moment is “huge”.

Ms Hollinshead said: “No matter what we do the numbers just increase.

“Although we are constantly looking at new and innovative solutions on how we are actually going to address the homelessness crisis we are still getting the numbers coming through the door.

“It has been a huge pressure on the team.

“We have got a rapid rehousing plan in place, as has every local authority in Wales… and we are working through the solutions in there but people just keep coming through the door.

“The numbers are just increasing at a faster rate than we can actually house.”

Refugees

A number of schemes were put in place to support Ukrainian refugees following the Russian invasion in February 2022.

One of these was the Homes for Ukraine Sponsorship scheme, which saw many Ukrainian refugees temporarily moving in with a UK household.

Vale of Glamorgan Council also worked with Ukrainians to help them find other housing solutions like private rented accommodation.

However Ms Hollinshead said there were some families who had to move into a hostel or hotel because the local authority had run out of options.

On Heol Coreso she added that many of the families were “delighted” with their homes having come from “much less palatable settings”.

In two weeks about 40 Ukrainian households will have been moved onto the site at Heol Croeso, according to Ms Hollinshead.

The rest of the units will be occupied by homeless families from the Vale of Glamorgan.

Some of the units have gardens and there is some communal green space for those that don’t.

Ms Hollinshead said: “Everybody that’s moved in that I have spoken to… they have been absolutely over the moon.

“They have come from somewhere where they couldn’t cook…[where there were] not always the best people to mix with.

“They come to here where they have got completely self-contained [units].

“They can cook, they can do what they want to do, and they can live a basically normal life whilst they are waiting for their permanent housing solution.”

Concerns

A number of residents raised concerns about the planning process for Heol Croeso with many living next to the site complaining they were not consulted with on the plans.

Some residents’ homes are just metres away from the portable homes on site and campaigners opposed to the way that the council carried out its project have raised enough funds to pursue legal action against the local authority.

The council has assured people living nearby that the units at Heol Croeso are easily demountable and that there have been discussions with Cardiff and Vale University Health Board about the use of some or all of the site for a new health facility for Llantwit Major in the future.

It also said that any permanent development of the site will be subject to public consultation.

Ms Hollinshead said: “The properties are completely demountable. They can be put back on a lorry and literally moved to another site.

“They can be moved several times and then what we would do is, after the five years… we would look for perhaps smaller sites to be able to move several of the units but I doubt we will find a site which we could put all 90 units on at once.”