From Evidence to Reform

Building Housing Resilience in Recovering Ukrainian Cities Edited by Knut Höller, Yuliia Popova, Nataliia Korotchenko and Oleg Syabrenko This title is expected to become available in December 2026. Pre-order now! Ukraine is undergoing its most ambitious housing reform since independence, and the window for shaping it is already beginning to close. This book presents the findings of local housing strategies developed for four mid-sized Ukrainian cities such as Zhytomyr, Poltava, Kremenchuk, and Bila Tserkva, and makes a pointed argument:the war did not create Ukraine’s housing crisis, it exposed structural weaknesses that had accumulated over decades. Near-total homeownership, the absence of an affordable rental sector, chronic underinvestment in existing stock, and institutional frameworks never reformed since the Soviet era left the system fragile long before 2022. Drawing on housing-stock assessments, market analysis, institutional reviews, and the first comparable sociological surveys of internally displaced persons in receiving cities, the authors demonstrate that "building back better" demands structural change rather than isolated innovation. Their analysis is organised around four interconnected pillars: the existing housing stock and its renovation debt, institutional capacity for housing management, purchase and rental markets, and the housing needs of IDPs. The strategy is framed throughout by the concept of housing system resilience: the structural capacity of a housing system to attune supply to changing demand across tenures, population groups, and economic conditions. The result is a grounded, comparable picture of the realities facing mid-sized Ukrainian cities, and a clear strategic agenda for the donors, investors, policymakers, and development partners engaged in the country’s recovery. An Ukrainian edition will be available separately by early 2027. Further information available for download | Weiterführende Informationen zum Download Blurb | Waschzettel 210 x 230 mm 50 illustrations Softcover with flaps ISBN 978-3-86922-449-7