Ukraine Migrants to US Are Becoming Homeless as Funding Dries Up

A number of migrants who sought refuge from Russia's invasion of Ukraine in New York have been left homeless, after the state government stopped funding a Ukrainian-supporting charity.

Since March 2022, some 460,000 Ukrainians have entered the U.S. through Uniting for Ukraine, whereby displaced Ukrainians with sponsors enter the country for two years on a temporary basis, and other schemes, after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Many have settled in New York, which has a thriving Ukrainian population of 137,764 residents in 2022, according to census data.

Speaking exclusively to Newsweek, Lydia Kokolskyj, vice president of development at the charity Razom for Ukraine, which supports Ukrainians in the city by running community centers, setting up food and clothes drives, and by providing other support services, confirmed that the $200,000 in funding it received in April 2022 wasn't renewed by the city after the grant expired in July 2023.

Since then, she said that a few families the charity had supported have ended up in homeless shelters.

The funding was distributed from the New York Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs to the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), an umbrella policy and advocacy organization that represents over 200 immigrant and refugee rights groups in New York. NYIC then redistributed the funding to Razom for Ukraine.

"Volunteers and staff working with Razom Ukraine Response Initiative were saddened by the change in funding from the city and have been working with different Ukrainian and local community organizations to support the displaced Ukrainians in NYC," Kokolskyj said.

She added the government hadn't communicated why the funding was cut.

"We didn't really get any response from the city other than the funding was not going to be renewed," she said. "We have heard however, a number of programs have shifted to focus on other immigrant issues related to the border crisis but that's anecdotal."

She added that when the funding was cut it "created a huge vacuum" and that Razom for Ukraine has since been forced to send those seeking support to other organizations. Since the charity can't follow-up on those it turns away, it can't assess the outcomes of those people.

"The government should be doing more," she said.

Reed Dunlea, press secretary at the NYIC, told Newsweek the city government hadn't communicated why the funding was cut.

"We were disappointed that this city funding (from the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs) was cut, but we weren't given insight as to why it happened," he said.

A spokesperson from City Hall told Newsweek that $2 million city funding initiated by Mayor Eric Adams in April 2022 filled a temporary gap in federal funding by providing resources to support displaced Ukrainians in the city.

They added that the program ended because of shifting priorities and because the federal government provided a group of charities with $21.4 million of funding in November 2022.