Kim backs fixed-term housing model for specialists, with ownership after 5-10-year contract

Head of Mykolaiv Regional Military Administration Vitaliy Kim supports programs for building housing and transferring it into ownership to specialists who come to the region to work on recovery projects for a long period.

"I support a fixed-term model under which housing is provided to a specialist under a five- to ten-year contract. You live, work, and at the end of the contract the housing becomes your property," Kim told Interfax-Ukraine.

According to him, various options are being worked out to encourage specialists.

"This is already being done in many communities. The first implemented project was in Domanivka, where the neighborhood was named Copenhagen. The community invited a police officer, firefighter, medic, that is, the specialists it needed, from among IDPs," the head of the regional administration said.

Asked which scenarios are clearer to him – social municipal housing provided only for rent, or leasing with subsequent transfer into ownership – Kim replied: "A mixed model, so as not to repeat Chicago’s mistakes, when a neighborhood was built, a district was handed over to people, and then they ended up with a ghetto."

"We must disperse these residential buildings and apartments and provide for the investor to sell part of them. I am in favor of this being housing managed by the community. For example, as in Denmark, where a cooperative model works with a revolving fund. When you build, rent out cheaply to students, and then direct the payments received to the construction of new housing," he said.

Asked how the issue of providing housing in Mykolaiv region for displaced people from Kherson region is being resolved, the head of the regional administration said: "If we are talking about 100,000 displaced people and about 1,000 apartments distributed, then this does not cover even 1%."

"People, as everywhere, rent housing or live with relatives. Housing is one of the fundamental needs we are working on with the Association of Frontline Cities and Communities, namely the state housing construction program. I am convinced that housing programs for veterans, public sector workers and IDPs can be an economic driver," he said.

Asked whether the region plans to create a database of vacant facilities to accommodate displaced persons, Kim replied: "We have already done so. This database exists and has been transferred to the Cabinet of Ministers. We understand that it can be reworked."