UN4UkrainianCities at the Lviv Urban Forum 2024

On 28 June, the UN4UkrainianCities project, represented by project partner IWO e.V., successfully contributed to the Affordable Housing Session at the second annual Lviv Urban Forum 2024 (LUF). This significant international event brought together urban development stakeholders from various sectors, as well as renowned national and international experts and practitioners, to discuss and collaborate on the preservation and restoration of Ukrainian cities.

The project “Municipal Housing in Kharkiv: Affordable Rental Models for Housing Recovery in Ukraine”, implemented by IWO e.V. and the city of Kharkiv, supported the LUF in organizing a panel discussion on municipal housing and housing policy as part of the session – “Combining development with social resilience”. Moderated by project expert Pavlo Fedoriv, the session featured both foreign and Ukrainian experts and practitioners. They presented sustainable European models of affordable housing provision and discussed their applicability in Ukraine for housing recovery.

Dr. Andreas Hofer from Vienna University of Technology spoke about planning and successful implementation of affordable housing using the Viennese model. Experts working in partnership with the UN4UkrainianCities project, Mara Bahls and Arnt von Bodelschwingh from RegioKontext, a Berlin-based consultancy working with German municipalities on housing market analysis and local strategy developments, presented the German model of municipal housing and their recommendations for Kharkiv.

Ukrainian speakers Oleg Drozdov, Yurii Telipskyi and Anna Pashynska addressed the architectural, organizational, and societal aspects of affordable housing, respectively. They discussed how these aspects might be combined to ensure an economically viable and socially inclusive system of housing provision at the municipal level and reflected on the recommended housing provision models.

Specialized municipal companies providing safe, secure, and affordable rental housing enable the sustainable socio-economic development of communities, a point supported by all speakers. Its positive stabilizing effect on a whole rental sector and its leading role in energy-efficiency, social inclusion and good governance were also highlighted. As summarised by Yurii Telipsky, one of the first practitioners in social housing provision in Ukraine, to establish such a system, Ukraine needs a data base on projects and knowledge on this topic, to decentralize the processes of municipal housing management, and to allow international companies and professionals to enter this sector in Ukraine.

The session invited all LUF participants to consider the models of affordable housing provision as an integral part of Ukraine’s recovery.

The project “Municipal housing in Kharkiv: affordable rental models for housing recovery in Ukraine” is implemented by the city of Kharkiv and IWO e.V. in within the framework of the UN4UkrainianCities Project.