Displaced Ukrainian Women in England Face Housing Insecurity That Erodes Mental Health

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the United Kingdom responded with two visa routes designed to move people quickly out of harm’s way. The Ukraine Family Scheme allowed British-based Ukrainians to sponsor relatives, while the Homes for Ukraine scheme matched British hosts with Ukrainian applicants who were promised at least six months of accommodation. By September 2025, these routes had brought 278,529 Ukrainian residents into the UK, and an estimated 70 percent of adult arrivals were women, reflecting the fact that most men aged 18 to 65 were legally barred from leaving Ukraine. Yet a new qualitative study published in SSM – Mental Health reveals that for many of these women, the journey from a war zone to a stable home in England has been anything but straight, with housing insecurity emerging as a powerful and persistent threat to mental health.

The research, led by Maureen Seguin of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine together with colleagues including Olha Fokaf, Tina Deinekhovska, Bayard Roberts, Caroline Sanders and Matt Egan, followed 19 forcibly displaced Ukrainian women through repeat semi-structured interviews. Initial interviews were conducted between April and July 2023, with follow-ups completed between March and October 2025, allowing the team to trace how housing trajectories and coping strategies evolved over years rather than weeks. From a larger group of 44 participants, the researchers selected those who had experienced insecure housing, defined as multiple involuntary, forced or reactive moves driven by poverty, encompassing temporary and emergency accommodation of many kinds. The scale of the problem is stark: forcibly displaced Ukrainians in the UK are more than four times more likely to experience homelessness than the general population, and as of October 2025, 12,260 Ukrainian households in England had asked their local authorities for help to prevent homelessness.

To interpret their data, the researchers applied Strong Structuration Theory, a framework that distinguishes between external structures such as laws, policies and institutional procedures, and the internal structures of knowledge, perception and disposition that individuals carry with them. This lens allowed the team to connect the macro-level machinery of English homelessness policy with the intimate, lived experience of women navigating it. The external structure in question is imposing. Local authorities owe a ‘prevention duty’ to eligible people who are homeless or will become homeless within eight weeks, followed by a ‘relief duty,’ and, for those judged to be in ‘priority need’ because they have dependent children, a disability or particular vulnerability, a ‘main housing duty’ to provide longer-term accommodation. Because long-term housing is scarce, temporary accommodation such as hotels, hostels and shared houses fills the gap, sometimes for years on end.

The interviews show how women fell through the gaps of this system. Tamara, arriving in Manchester with her son under a Homes for Ukraine placement, was told on day one that her host posed a danger and had to be moved immediately. Over the next 39 days she was relocated repeatedly, and after her brother was killed in combat and her home in Ukraine destroyed, she and her son spent 494 days in temporary accommodation and a homeless shelter where belongings were stolen and unqualified staff conducted what she called ‘health checks.’ She described the psychological toll in raw terms: sleeplessness, flashbacks, anxiety and exhaustion that recalled the beginning of the war. Only when the council finally provided a flat did she describe a return of calm, calling the simple fact of stable housing a happiness. Her account illustrates a central finding of the study: housing insecurity does not merely accompany distress, it actively compounds trauma carried from the war itself.

Other participants who diligently ‘followed the rules’ fared little better. Nika, aged 73, and her daughter Kateryna applied for social housing eight weeks before their hosting arrangement ended, exactly as instructed on their council’s website. On the morning of their move-out date, with no communication about next steps, they waited all day at the council offices until a security guard escorted them out at closing time. Kateryna recalled that at that moment she felt truly homeless. Nika was moved through three hotels over 157 days before being offered a room in a care home, a process she found nerve-wracking and destabilising for her care needs. Albina, who has a disability and a disabled school-age son, received no response to her housing application, breached her agreed move-out date with her host, and then endured months in a hotel while the council refused to reveal the location or move-in date of the social housing it had promised. She described the period as horrendous and said the gap between expectation and reality provoked a new level of depressive apathy.

Women judged not to be in priority need faced a different but equally damaging pathway. Irma, a single woman in her early forties, was placed in a homeless hostel for nine days after her hosting relationship broke down, an experience she described as frightening and depressing. A company then offered her a flat she believed was free, but the accommodation was ‘supported accommodation,’ a sector whose rents, because they are exempt from standard benefit caps, can run to more than double the market rate. After working full-time for four months, Irma was informed she owed half her rent retroactively, promptly quit her job, and negotiated repayment out of her universal credit. She said the arrangement pressed on her every day and made her want to return to the moment she was homeless so she could refuse the offer. Zoryana, deemed ineligible for support, spent more than a year in an asylum-seeker hostel with a broken window and mould-covered walls, while Kira slept on a neighbour’s old sofa for nearly 40 days after fleeing a conflict with her host, having been told by the council she did not qualify for help.

Across every housing status, the study found that pervasive uncertainty was the defining psychological stressor. Women in temporary accommodation had no idea how long they would stay or where they would go next; some reported attending council offices every fortnight simply to learn whether their hotel stay would be extended. Insomnia, agitation and a sense of being lost were common. Abrupt, unannounced moves disrupted children’s schooling and made employment impossible, and some women refused to unpack their belongings, keeping them ready for the next move they could not predict. Participants described feeling anxious, angry, depressed, powerless and stripped of self-esteem, emotions the authors link to a broader literature showing that repeated displacement and uncertainty consistently erode refugee well-being. Notably, the researchers point out that while Ukrainian visas grant the right to work, the financial penalties built into supported accommodation effectively prohibit work, and upcoming visa expirations in 2028 may further discourage employers from hiring this group.

Yet the women were not passive. The study documents a repertoire of coping responses that grew more assertive over time. Some became forceful self-advocates, challenging council staff over their rights; Albina’s pointed insistence on being told the address of her promised housing changed an official’s tone and produced the information. Others built support systems, drawing on charities such as Citizens Advice, sympathetic landlords persuaded to waive guarantor requirements, former hosts who stored belongings and vouched for them, and family members who steadied them emotionally. Irma eventually escaped supported accommodation when a housing charity found her a small flat, negotiated with a landlord, paid her deposit and cancelled her debt; she described the move as the difference between prison and freedom. Others coped cognitively, focusing on gratitude, identity-preserving work such as Albina’s remote lecturing job in Ukraine, or a garden planted outside vermin-infested shared housing. Two participants coped by leaving England altogether, one resettling in the United States and another returning to Kharkiv, judging the emotional benefits of her own home worth the physical risk.

The authors argue their findings carry direct implications for UK housing policy. The gap between what displaced people are promised and what the system delivers produces demonstrable harm to well-being, and the researchers call for affordable housing provision to be prioritised so that rights granted on paper match services in practice, all against a backdrop of austerity-driven funding cuts, diminished council housing stock and an increasingly unaffordable private rental sector. The longitudinal design is a key strength, capturing how attitudes and strategies shifted years into displacement, though the authors acknowledge that 19 accounts cannot represent all 12,260 households who have sought homelessness assistance. With Ukrainian visas beginning to expire from September 2028, the study warns of an approaching transition that demands further longitudinal research. Its central message, however, is already clear: housing is not a background condition for refugee mental health but one of its most decisive determinants, and insecurity in England has been severe enough to push some women to flee not once but twice.

Subject of Research: Housing insecurity and its mental health impacts among forcibly displaced Ukrainian women in England

Article Title: Insecure housing amongst forcibly displaced Ukrainian women in England: A qualitative exploration of mental health and coping responses

Article References: Seguin, M., Fokaf, O., Deinekhovska, T., Poppleton, A., Roberts, B., Sanders, C., & Egan, M. (2026). Insecure housing amongst forcibly displaced Ukrainian women in England: A qualitative exploration of mental health and coping responses. SSM – Mental Health, 10, Article 100660. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmmh.2026.100660

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.ssmmh.2026.100660

Keywords: Ukrainian refugees, housing insecurity, mental health, Homes for Ukraine, temporary accommodation, local authorities, qualitative research, forced displacement, coping strategies, England housing policy, refugee resettlement, uncertainty