Where in Dnepropetrovsk IDPs are not “allowed” to rent housing? Why many people don’t want to lease apartments for people from Donbass? Why many Donbass residents have to go back to occupied territories controlled by fighters? Volunteer-psychologist and IDP from Makeevka Irina told Informator.lg.ua about her personal experience in search for flat in Dnepropetrovsk and about ways to solve IDPs’ problems.

I work as children psychologist in Centre “Dobre vdoma”, my husband has two qualifications – furniture maker and builder. I work with children from unhappy families. Also I voluntarily provide psychological aid for IDPs-children, who saw horrors of war, or who was injured during the war.

At first, me, my husband, my child (he is 5) and my mother in law lived at the center of the city for a year. Kind people gave us their apartment for free. Now we are moving to a suburb. Now housing is cheaper than last summer. But there is another problem — people at the center of the city don’t really like IDPs and don’t want to lease them apartments. IDPs can rent houses without central sewage of houses in a suburb. There are many advertisings, where owners ask IDPs from Donbass not to disturb them. Realtors ask: “Where are you from? – Because owners are against people from the East of Ukraine. Workers of estate agencies told us right away that they wouldn’t find places at the center, only in a suburb”. There are elite apartments at the center and owners are afraid that we are uncivilized and will spoil their flats.

We knew a family, which had to leave Kharkov and move back to occupied territory because people pointed at them on streets … Neighbors forced owner of the flat to drive them out.

In hospital, kindergarten – people ask me why my husband doesn’t fight at the war. I tell them that he is a soldier in reserve. Sometimes people ask: “Why do you live at the center and we – native residents of Dnepropetrovsk – in suburbs?”

It means that people imagine IDPs in bad clothes, without manicure … They feel sorry about IDPs. But if IDP knows something about his/her rights, looks good and smells good – people attack him/her. They don’t believe in IDPs, who feel good. You have to look bad and people will feel sorry for you, or you look good – and people attack you. That’s kind of a rule …

But we have to calm about this. First of all, we have to understand that people just retranslate what they watch on TV, where they see a lot of negative information about IDPs: like we don’t want anything, don’t want to work, etc. At second, due to a lack of information people say things based on guesses and rumors. People don’t consider the fact that IDPs are stressed right after resettlement…

My advice for IDPs is to stay calm and persistent. Just as you still live in your native town, where you always faced refusals, rudeness and boorishness, where people also were waiting in queues to get some certificates … Take life as nothing has changed. Because it is partly truth.

Prepared by Denis Matsola for the Informator.lg.ua