Thinking ahead (Day 99)
A recap of the last few days and thinking about the many months to come. Recommended reading on the war in Donbas.
I spend a ridiculous amount of time each day texting in Russian. When I say texting I mean chatting over all sorts of platforms for internet-based text communication: Telegram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, sometimes they even try me on Instagram or over ordinary text message. I try, when I have time, sitting on a bus or at home for a few hours, to reach the bottom of those inboxes. But as soon as I answer 20 messages, and write down 20 new names, address 20 new envelopes, book some in-person meetings as necessary, another 30 messages appear. You never emerge, you keep digging, and someone keeps on throwing sand in the hole. So I try to be zen about it. Each family we manage to help — and our help isn’t life-changing — it is simply €50 worth of groceries, one time, is a family for whom we perhaps removed some food anxiety for a brief period of time. Not insignificant, and very much appreciated, but by no means changing the bigger, dire picture.
And dire it is indeed. To recap, because I spend a lot of time trying to explain this to journalists who are some very informed about what is happening to asylum-seekers in general in Austria (and Ukrainians have been lumped into this category in terms of the social support they qualify for, despite the EU having said Ukrainians should be seen as already having been given protected status): the money the Austrian state promises Ukrainians who arrive in Austria is a) insufficient for survival b) often not paid out for months and c) not paid at all to those who are considered “fed” by the state in dorms or hotels where they receive “meals” 3x a day.
I put those words in quotation marks because many of the requests we receive for grocery cards are from families living in such accommodation who say the food is not good and not enough. Breakfast can be two pieces of bread with a little butter and jam. Many say there isn’t enough fresh fruit. In some cases, over the past few weeks, I published photos on my Twitter, and I now hear the food has improved slightly in certain locations. Imagine that. What a coincidence.
The next challenge is all those Ukrainians living in housing provided by the state, for which they do not pay rent, face a limit on how much money they can earn each month if they get jobs. That limit is a ridiculously low €110/month. Which means if you live in a dorm managed by the Red Cross, such as the one in Vienna’s 3rd district which must house hundreds of Ukrainians judging by the requests for Hofer cards from there (dozens!), you do receive social payments of €215 per month per adult and €100 per month per child and you may cook yourself using shared kitchens, but if you get a job which pays more than €110/month (so basically any job), you will lose your housing and your social payments. So basically, everyone living in housing provided by the state is prevented from working. Because the mathematics do not add up. As one Ukrainian woman living in a (former?) nursing home in Vienna told me: “they said if I get a job my tiny room would cost €600 per month in rent, the one I share with my daughter, but I know people who rent apartments for that much.” A social worker told her “it doesn’t make financial sense for you to work.” How lovely.
Then, this same Ukrainian woman told me (this was over a week ago but it doesn’t change the story) she met Syrians in a local park who told her they receive something like €800/month (I assume this means they have received asylum and are paid as any unemployed Austrian), so in their case, they also concluded it doesn’t make sense to work (sensing a pattern, anyone?), but because they get enough money.
My point in all of this? Blow up the entire system. Let people work. Ukrainians want to work. They will need access to jobs that do not require perfect German. They will need help with childcare. They will need access to the labor market without risk of losing the tiny benefits which are not enough for survival in Austria in any case.
But Austrian bureaucrats took it one step further. They added an extra layer. When an Austrian company or employer wants to hire a Ukrainian, the company or employer must apply for permission. An extra step that does not exist for EU residents. So you can imagine what that does when you are a Ukrainian mom of two living in a small village and want to get a job washing dishes in the local restaurant or hotel. Do you really think that business owner is going to want to fill out another form just so he can hire a refugee? I doubt it.
So it’s all a mess. Many mothers of young children will not have access to all-day kindergarten, they will not have childcare to go work full-time, and they will not receive enough money from the Austrian state to survive here. Their initial savings they brought with them is long gone. So what will they do? They will go home. They will go back to war. Provided, they still have a home. Not everyone does.
A thread:
So, basically, life in Austria as a Ukrainian refugee is only tolerable if you arrived with plenty of your own money (and of course there are many people like this — wealthy Ukrainians seem very happy here) or you have been taken under their wings by kind, generous Austrians, of which there are many, as well. Every time I write something personal, about a particular mom and child, I get lots of private messages asking how they can help those particular families.
Which is super nice, but we are dealing with systemic failures. The system is broken by design and likely also intention. We cannot fix it all with private messages and matching one Austrian to one Ukrainian. Nor with Hofer cards. It will either totally collapse (most likely) or it needs to be redesigned from scratch. The most obvious solution would be to do like Germany, where as I understand Ukrainians are treated with the same benefits as unemployed Germans, namely qualifying for Hartz IV. And Germany is by no means a walk in the park, but at least the money being offered is significantly (double) what Austria is paying out.
It also emerged last night Austria doesn’t even really know how many Ukrainians are here. Maybe 40,000. Maybe 75,000. Maybe something in between. Just blows your mind. And then I also got messages yesterday of thanks for a Hofer card from a Ukrainian woman in Carinthia. She wrote no one would get paid for June there because the local government suffered a “hacker attack”. I almost didn’t believe it until she sent me a press article. It was really true.
Now that we are all on the same page about how the big picture looks, let me tell you a little bit about the small picture. I took “Andrey” wheelchair shopping. We rather naively walked in a shop and proudly announced we have €600 in cash from two generous donors, and would like to buy him a new wheelchair. The shop employee just shook his head at us in disbelief, told us wheelchairs like the one Andrey wanted cost several thousand Euros, and if Andrey manages to get through the Austrian bureaucracy (are you all sensing a pattern?), maybe the health insurance will even pay for a new one. Andrey must see an orthopaedic doctor. Not a family doctor. Andrey says he has some kind of paper from the family doctor / social worker. The guy in the shop says that isn’t enough. He begins to measure Andrey (shop guy speaks Bosnian so it is a comical scene of Russian and Bosnian numbers being mixed together), and prepare some kind of paperwork, but I cannot understand what for given we haven’t even brought the doctor’s papers. But I shut up and watch.
Andrey asks if he can simply buy new wheels. The shop guy says no. Don’t waste your money, get through the paperwork, you will need those hundreds of Euros for all the “extras” the health insurance doesn’t pay for on the wheelchair. It is all very confusing. We left feeling rather deflated, to be honest. I would have felt better if we had simply bought new wheels, but even that wasn’t possible. “It’s just a showroom, you have to go through the process, we have no inventory, we have to order, it takes several weeks…”
Andrey was fine with the explanation and went home satisfied he knows what to do next. I left feeling skeptical but I always feel that way every time paperwork rather than credit cards are involved. I prefer to solve problems with credit cards. In that way, I am and will always be very American.
In between addressing envelopes, answering messages, stuffing envelopes, running to buy more Hofer cards, I also did a group podcast yesterday (in German which is like my worst nightmare) and spent several hours translating at the train station. The podcast discussion was good and the guests were interesting. And here is the link just saw it is now online. Apple podcast link here. I was not aware they would be filming and then got a message in the morning to come earlier for “make-up” and I was like what?!
I have to be honest, what surprised me the most was the Ukrainian guest, 35 year-old Alisa who fled Kherson on day one of the Russian attack on Ukraine, with her two children, and drove her car by herself three days to safety. What surprised me wasn’t her story — she is living rent-free in Vienna’s 13th district in housing provided by very kind Austrians and as she speaks excellent German (she studied in Germany), she is very involved here in several organizations and well-connected to the Viennese community and has done a lot of work spreading word to other Ukrainian refugees here in Vienna. What surprised me was: she was not aware of Ukrainians sitting in dorms and refugee hotels. She didn’t know about their struggles. She runs a Telegram group, but said the Ukrainians in her group are mostly like her, living in private accommodation. She wasn’t aware that some Ukrainians don’t qualify for any social payments. She is Ukrainian and wasn’t aware of this. She speaks immaculate German and does not have a full-time job here yet. That also speaks volumes.
Then I look across the table at Nina from Train of Hope, and she knows. She knows because the Ukrainians most in need come to her organization for a warm lunch and to ask for things they need (diapers, clothing donations, pet food). I know, because of the Hofer card program. I know, because the neediest families ask for help. I started to think about the wealth of information in Mario’s database here and in my iPhone. I am often overwhelmed by the volume of personal stories people share with me. Like when I want to sign off for the night last night, and instead I get several photos of a dog who just survived emergency surgery, from his owner who is herself in her 70s and living in a Vienna dorm in the 3rd district.
Very briefly I would like to share with you some links to incredible reporting from the Donbas where the situation is extremely grim and I really do have sleepless nights over what happens as Russia marches slowly but surely further west and when does it stop and when will Europe wake up and realise this isn’t just about Ukraine.
Russia advances in eastern Ukraine and threatens to capture Severodonetsk
This is what I lose sleep over:
Oh goodness I almost forgot. Spent several hours at the train station yesterday. Ukrainians are still arriving from Mykolaiv, where it is getting very dangerous, large parts of the city are no longer safe, am hearing parts of the region are without water and power. Odesa too still arriving.
Two women came up to me and asked for tickets to Dresden. They were sunburned and looked extremely poor. One woman had lost many of her teeth. They explained they want to work, don’t want hand-outs, they lost their homes. We asked for tickets and the seat reservations would cost €7. One of the women said Caritas said it would pay for it. Ok, I say, so she runs to tell the charity she needs the money. But she doesn’t come back quickly. So I pay with my cash and take the receipt. They thank me. They run back and say a different person says they cannot pay anymore. Ok, I say, don’t worry, I paid, good luck, grab some food before your train, etc. Half an hour later an Austrian from Caritas comes looking for me to pay me back. I give her the receipt, she gives me the cash. Who are you, she asks. I’m Tanja, I say. Oh, she says, you are that Tanja in the media. I thought, no, I am that Tanja who just paid for the Ukrainians you said you would pay for but then weren’t there when they came back. But I bit my tongue. So I ask, can you pay for all of their seat reservations? No, we can only pay for those who really look like they have no money. I see, I said. All clear.
I will continue to swipe my credit card when I can for those who cannot pay. I am not alone in doing so. A fellow volunteer translator, herself a refugee from Mykolaiv, also pays for those who cannot. Even though she herself has no paid job and is also on a very limited budget. It is what it is. And I don’t know how to fix it. I also gave €40 cash (all I had on me) to the young woman from Odesa who told me fellow Ukrainians robbed her of her cash on the train when she was sleeping. I of course cannot tell if she is lying or not. Honestly, I believed her. She looked like she had money, had a kind of fancy small purse with lots of little pockets, and went to sleep with it on her body instead of under a jacket. And even if she was lying, then I gave €40 to someone who needs them. Not a drama.
Alright, more than enough. Thank you for reading. Thank you for your continued support. Huge thank you to Mario who is sending out several hundred more Hofer cards this week. If you can donate via IBAN bank transfer or by sending him cards, please do. Another huge help is simply sharing Cards for Ukraine with new people. I feel like we have tapped out initial donors and now need to reach new audiences. I will attend a local Rotary Club event this evening in my neighbourhood, for example, to raise awareness and talk about what we are doing. I have my own little pile of empty envelopes, you can always send me cards (DM for address) or if you are international, my PayPal still works.
Thank you! I’m off to go back to my ever-exploding phone, and tomorrow I will meet German television at the train station. They will also interview some Ukrainian families here in Austria. It is a lot of logistical planning, but I hope it is ultimately worth it in terms of raising awareness. Have to give it the benefit of the doubt.