"We know Europe is tired of us."
The past 48 hours have been very intense as we try to help behind the scenes. I have the feeling several things are imploding at once.
Note: if while reading this today, you feel like pieces of the story are missing — names, locations — you are correct. This is intentional, because as a private person and a volunteer now working investment banker hours but on negative pay, I cannot afford a defamation lawsuit. Therefore think of my blog post today as a story, a story which could and should be brought to light by the professionals, and fixed by those in charge. Speaking of those in charge, today seems like as good a day as any, nearly six months into this horrific war, to highlight that I have never met nor been contacted by Austria’s refugee coordinator, neither past, nor present. I heard there is some group meeting today, but I wasn’t invited. My feelings are not hurt. I am long beyond that. I am only a bit perplexed that as an individual with an incredible volume of contact to Ukrainians in Austria, my inputs are not sought. It is what it is, as they say.
A few nights ago, I received a message from a fellow volunteer. “Are you fucking kidding me?” she wrote. The link was to a large Telegram chat in Austria of over 20,000 Ukrainians. A woman had posted a simple statement “in (location omitted) I asked to see the contract, and was told there will be three contracts, under which they will collect all of our social payments including the Familienbehilfe (child benefit) to cover the cost of utilities and even the 40 Euros of pocket money are in question.” And then there is this moment when you know you have stumbled across something bad, something not right, something that may lead you to more bad things, but you cannot ignore it because now you saw it and you know you have to follow whatever path it takes you down.
So I send a message to the woman who wrote the post. I talk with her. I learn there is a large group home with over 100 Ukrainians and it has been in operation for months. For months, they lived there, not entirely clear under what terms, because the region of Austria (this state) didn’t appear to have ever had an official contract with this housing provider, but unofficially someone must have been covering their room and board? They were fed three times a day. Not great, but it got better after some early negative press reports. There was work, which is an interesting detail because that is totally illegal. Two women (I have spoken in total with four families from this place) told me the exact same story: you are given eight “shifts” per month, each shift was officially supposed to be 10 hours long, in practice it was always 14 hours, and per shift the residents who worked, cooking their own food, were paid €45. Cash in hand. Never anything signed, never anything written down, never of course any taxes paid on cash in hand. So €3.20 an hour. Yes, really. The stories lined up exactly in two separate conversations.
So then comes August. And something has changed because in August the owner of the facility or the management or whatever we should call them — boss, let’s say. Boss, who by the way has a few Ukrainians of the opposite sex helping in these endeavours and delivering messages to the refugee community of residents, announces everyone must sign three new contracts. I am sent 17 pages of contracts. The sum total of the contracts is that everyone should agree to hand over any and all money they would be entitled to receive from the Austrian state, and the 40 Euros per month “pocket money” for those on Grundversorgung would be subject to discussion based on if the said resident was “working” or not on site. I paraphrase on purpose, but you understand the intention.
Now, it gets even more interesting because in each Austrian state there are caps on how much people under state care can pay out in monthly rent. Hence, suspicions that perhaps three contracts are being used to circumvent this. Residents report extreme pressure to sign or “leave within 12 hours”. This causes panic, and chaos. Under what sounds like duress, many sign. I was told by one resident the facility has 120-130 Ukrainian residents, and perhaps already half of them signed, fearing being essentially rendered homeless. I was told by two separate individuals about a €660 total rent charge to a single adult for a bed in a room shared by four people. Which is totally crazy, of course. I received a message at 4am from a resident sleepless with stress, describing a family of 6 (grandma, mother, father, 3 children) who are packing up to leave rather than hand over €1800 per month in rent, food & utilities. This particular family fled war twice. 2014, that city whose name translates as “Happiness”, Luhansk region, and then now, from Odesa.
So why would a “well meaning” (sarcasm) refugee landlord increase room & board so high as to capture all the money residents are entitled to from the Austrian state, and then not care when resident pack up and leave? Well, it seems, there is a steady flow of “new customers”. A flow of buses from a specific city in western Ukraine where there seem to be connections (remember I mentioned a few Ukrainians involved), where refugees are convinced to come to Europe. Western Ukraine is home to many Ukrainians who fled the east and settled in the west but perhaps have run out of money and think it might be better in the EU. Vulnerable people who have fled active war zones. The perfect target.
So behind the scenes I do not do any of this alone of course. I begin communicating with people who I think can help. We talk to each other. We share information. Phone calls are made. I learn the authorities and NGOs are somewhat aware of this situation, but I don’t come away with the impression that any one organization is in charge or willing to step forward and fix it. Current residents may leave and ask for help to be rehoused, but they will have no idea where and under what conditions. Some have signed the three contracts and resigned themselves. I am told there are many elderly and small children. Some told me with little kids, they can’t pick up again. Others have local jobs (legal, as workers in what sounds like proper employment), and have begged for more time to find new accommodation. The police where called yesterday by Ukrainians after thing got heated in a discussion with the boss’ representative in charge of the contracts. The police apparently de-escalated on site. Residents who refused to sign the 17 pages of contracts were told they would no longer be fed this weekend: no food for you lot on Saturday and Sunday. You have until Monday morning to leave. So we have tried to share the word about where residents can go and ask for help in the meantime.
This has all been very stressful for me, and I cannot imagine how it is for them. I talk, I listen, I hear the tears, I try to assure that I will get their messages to those who can help. I pray (and I am not religious) that my messages are heard by those in the power to do something. I was silent on this for nearly 48 hours trying to get to the bottom of it, but I too could not sleep last night, and told the team I am working with I will write about this because the Ukrainians have no voice and the world and Austria should know how they are being treated in Europe, and what kind of people exist who try to, I suppose, turn a profit on the souls of vulnerable people who have been to hell and back.
So what are we talking about? Murky residential agreements, not clear for the past months who paid for whom and how much. Someone must have been compensating this boss for feeding and housing all these folks, even if an official agreement was never signed. And someone in July must have decided not to continue, but didn’t think about what to do with the 130+ Ukrainians now stuck with this private landlord dictating new terms. Residents tell me they never signed anything ever until this month when these new contracts were produced. They were rushed to sign quickly, not allowed, in many cases, to take the papers back with them to review in peace. Illegal work, because people in “Grundversorgung” (Austrian for care of the state) are not allowed to earn more then €110 per month, and no one in this country works for €3.20 per hour, and now an attempt to force residents to hand over basically all the financial payments they are entitled to while in Austria. As one resident explained to me, “they provide us toilet paper and soap, but how would I buy everything else? The kids need clothes for winter? We cannot survive with no money at all.”
We have offered group transportation to centers from which rehousing will be possible, but of course it is a giant question mark, what will that be, where, what conditions. I would not be surprised if most people decide to hand over all their money and stay. And a continuous flow of new arrivals seems secure, so this kind of despicable business model needs to be stopped at the source. I am also told workers of other nationalities (Austrian, Hungarian) also live somewhere on site. I do not know their terms and conditions of room and board.
I fast tracked Hofer cards. I try to stay in contact. I am available to provide guidance to the extent I receive it from people who know more than me right now. Unfortunately one NGO only has office hours on Monday, but I am told some people were going to go to the location today to try and provide guidance. I have the impression there are many people aware of this situation, or at least part of the story, but no one dares, so far, to step in fully and tidy the whole rotten mess up. Which is a problem. Because then dirty businesses think they can continue. The supply chain is anyway apparently sorted. There is a special place in hell for such people, I texted to one Ukrainian today. She send me back a thumbs up emoji. She and her children will leave. Into the unknown. Months after arriving in Austria.
This morning I also translated for a local magazine journalist after having put together a group of Ukrainian women in Austria for an interview to talk about the most pressing issues affecting their lives here right now, several months into this awful war. The article will come out and I don’t want to duplicate it, but I want to share a little bit of what I heard this morning, as I translated for a few hours, because I am afraid it will not all make it into the article, as surely we will both walk away from the group discussion with different impressions.
Five women.
Iryna from Kharkiv. Husband has brain cancer. Here with her young child and mother. Husband is being treated in Vienna. They have an apartment, have been very much helped by Austrians once their situation was understood. Her husband has less than a year to live. Second floor no elevator. She is stoic but you see the sadness in her eyes. They will stay as long as they can. You cannot go back to Kharkiv right now.
Ira from Kyiv. Left very early with her three kids — twins in kindergarten and an older son in gymnasium, and her adult sister. They were given a flat in Vienna for free for several months, but now the “for free” has run out, and no one can help them find a new place to live. They cannot afford to pay a commercial rent, the landlord doesn’t want to sign an official contract (would take €500 or so in cash but not provide a document they could show to get reimbursed for the €300 per month rent support Ukrainians are eligible for), and her sister cannot find a job despite having applied everywhere: IKEA, Lidl, McDonalds, etc. Ira works online with her job in Ukraine, but for no salary, because…war.
Inna. Husband is in the Ukrainian army. A communications specialist in Donbas. She is a teacher of Ukrainian language and literature. Has been trying since May to get a teaching job in Vienna. Has applied everywhere. No luck. No answers. It’s a maze of websites and links but no one ever writes you back, you cannot see which schools are actually hiring Ukrainian teachers. Has a small child, is in kindergarten. Came here with her mom, who had a very bad leg wound. They received excellent medical treatment. That is one thing you hear a lot — medicine is usually working well.
Katya. Here from Dnipro with her nine year old daughter. Came to my place to get a my daughter’s old bike last week. Her daughter loves it and they go for long rides in Prater. It breaks up the day. Living in a student dorm for Tirolean students in Vienna’s 17th district. They have to move out on September 15. The students are coming back and need their rooms. But her daughter loves her local school. It wasn’t easy to get the school place. First the city department of education said no, then the director of the school said yes, then they wrote the city again, only this time with an address and name of the school, then the city said ok, then they met the director again. But if Katya doesn’t find a new room to rent, she will go back to Ukraine. Dnipro isn’t in an active war zone, but there are air raid sirens every day. The Dnipro region is very dangerous now, and the nuclear power plant isn’t so far away. Trucks drive around Dnipro now measuring radiation levels, Katya says. She looks very sad. She is in shock as she listens to Anna. We were all in shock.
Anna. I leave Anna for last because as she spoke we all sat almost in tears at the end. Anna and her 13 year old son are from Kyiv. They left in March, and went to Spain. In Spain, they applied for protected status, on March 15. They were notified, the temporary protection status ID cards are ready, only yesterday. Anna left Spain because they were living in Red Cross faciliites and it was 47C and they didn’t put on the air conditioning to save money and she was very sick (some history of cancer) and cannot remember anything from a two week period of time, and in short — Spain happily sent her to Austria in early August.
Only in Austria, no one was waiting here for her and her son. They would like to go back to Kyiv, but cannot yet, because they need the Spanish card to explain how they stayed more then 90 days in the EU (Ukraine visa-free agreement), and the card was only produced yesterday. So Anna is desperately trying to get Spain to mail her the card here, she even went so far as to rent a PO Box. Anna and her son live in a temporary dorm run by the BBU. I thought it might be bad, but I didn’t know how bad.
The BBU dorm is intended to be only for 72 hour stays. Residents are reportedly threatened on a regular basis they need to leave, “anyone who can walk is told to move on”. They arrived on August 5, and are only allowed to stay because one volunteer keeps arguing on their behalf. Anna says they offer to do cleaning jobs and other tasks to be able to be in good graces. They are fed three times a day, except when there is no food, like last Sunday and Monday, when it was a long weekend, and no food was delivered, because someone forgot to order it. Ukrainians are in the minority there. The dorm is mostly men from other third countries, and they don’t stay more than a few days. The showers are in containers (one for men one for women, with several stalls in each) outside, and there have been problems with these men from other countries trying to watch the Ukrainian women shower. The room doors don’t lock, ever, you have to take your valuables with you at all times. If refugees arrive late, the showers don’t work past 9pm and you miss breakfast the next day, because all meals are accessed with a QR code, and if you arrive too late in the evening, you don’t get a QR code. One neighbour has an electric tea pot and can offer tea. It is something at least, Anna says. Keep in mind “arrivals” mean people who fled Russian occupied territories (Kherson, parts of Mykolaiv, Mariupol, Donbas), traveled by bus for days (if not months, as one family did via Crimea, Rostov, Moscow for interrogation, then onto Europe), arrived at Train of Hope at Stadion, where they get a meal and then are apparently handed a ticket to this BBU dorm, but have to get there on their own, using public transport, with all their stuff and kids. I don’t doubt it. I’ve seen this scenario in front of another dorm in the 11th district when two completely exhausted elderly Ukrainians from Donbas and Kharkiv arrived with bags and a cat in 35C covered in sweat and asked us for help, having just taken the subway and bus across town on their own.
But the worst was what Anna said about her new friend, another Ukrainian mom she met in Vienna. This woman arrived alone with 3 kids: aged 7, age 3, and a baby still breastfeeding. With all her luggage. She was sent to Arena Nova (a shelter in Lower Austria which is reportedly being closed at the end of this month although I cannot understand why when people are still arriving). From Arena Nova, they are told with no warning to get on a bus. Bus drives to a sugar factory. Driver says get out. The Ukrainians, seeing it is a sugar factory, refuse. Bus drives back to Arena Nova. Arena Nova says sorry, that was the wrong address. Here is the right one. Bus goes to a small town in Lower Austria. I know the name of the town am not writing it, because, see above.
The bus leaves this young mom with her three small kids in front of a hostel. The hostel says it is full, has no room for her. She doesn’t know what to do, calls the police. Police arrive, try to help sort it out. The hostel says we only have room for you in two different shared rooms. Police intervene that a mother cannot be separated from her small kids. A room is cleared for her and her kids. She is told this miserable place will be her home until next March. She has no resources, no NGO on site, she is just alone in an unfriendly, unwelcoming hostel in the middle of nowhere with three young kids. No, there are not bombs falling from the sky. It is my understanding, per Anna’s retelling, that they are “fed” in this location, meaning the mom will not receive any cash at all, perhaps only 40 Euros per month pocket money.
We took some photos. We thanked each other. I gave Anna a Hofer card. She didn’t know about the program. She got teary with gratitude. She needs to see a doctor and then get her card from Spain and then go home. “We know Europe is tired of us.”
My own girls returned from walking Anna’s son around Vienna. They hadn’t been in the city center before. We told them to go see the Albertina museum, a short walk away. Monet, Picasso I said. Really? I nod.
Beyond all of this heavy stuff, I have been getting message after message. Cancer patients. School problems. Job searches. Housing. Please I am begging you for a Hofer card. It is a never-ending cry for help.
It has been nearly six months. It should not be like this. I do not believe there are no empty apartments nor rooms in Austria. I just think there is no political or societal will to pay for them. The Ukrainians are not wrong when they say Europe is tired. And for those who abuse people in the most vulnerable situations, may they truly rot in hell. I try to set my anger aside so I can help, and work, and focus, and not lose my cool, but it burns inside on behalf of all of those about to get on buses right now, somewhere in Ukraine, desperate for help.
I am really scared, they write me.
I know, I reply. It will be ok.
I don’t know that, but one thing I learned at the train station: you have to say that. You have to say over and over: it will be ok. I know how important it is to listen and to try to help, even if I personally cannot solve these horrible situations, and to try to let them know that there are people out there who do really care, that what is happening to you right now is not correct. It should not be like this.
As always, my little Hofer card pile of pre-addressed envelopes is empty, funding would be much appreciated here and here. Going off to buy four more cards now; thank you.
Thank you for reading. I know today was heavy. It felt very important to share now.