The Fund celebrates its 28th Anniversary!

Dear colleagues and friends!

The State Fund for Support of Youth Housing Construction is 28 years old.

The State Fund for Support of Youth Housing Construction has turned 28 years old. 

Almost the entire past three decades of the institution’s activities have been very different in terms of the level of attention of the state and local authorities towards housing policy, and, respectively, towards the amount of funding for housing programs. There were times when the Fund barely had time to allocate the money to people for housing programs. There were also times when we struggled dealing with the wall of bureaucratic indifference, which we had to break through.

But in general, our friendly and hard-working team has a lot to be proud of. The main result of our work is that in the past 28 years 40.5 thousand families have bought their own apartments while participating in our housing programs. A number of state housing programs have been modernized, and a pilot trial of the program of preferential lending to ATO participants and IDP’s has been launched  - its further development depends on the State’s decision makers.

The activities of the Fund today are transparent to the public. The conditions of housing programs and detailed instructions for clients are posted on the Fund's website. There is an electronic registration form for participation in the programs, and the participant’s status on the queue can be traced online. Not only front-end experts but also the members of the board of the Fund are willing and open to communicate with citizens: for several years now, a telephone hotline has been up and running every Friday, which is of great interest to citizens.

A few touches on the financial condition of the establishment. In 2019 alone, the Fund attracted UAH 1.5 billion in financial resources for construction. As a result, 1,647 families now have somewhere to live due to the programs we administer. Among these are the participants of the ATO / OOS — as many as 435 families (a total of 880 such families in 2017-2019), internally displaced persons - 782 families (totally 1055 IDP families in 2017-2019).

The loan portfolio of the Fund has reached UAH 1.63 billion. The assets of the establishment as of December 31, 2019 amounted to UAH 1.717 billion. According to this indicator, the Fund has taken 14th place in the TOP-35 financial companies of Ukraine.

At the same time, it would be naive under the current conditions to wait for a systematic solution to the housing issue. The housing problem remains one of the most acute for our citizens. Moreover, its relevance has been growing every year. Hence, we seek to restore the active stage of implementation of housing programs, we set ourselves challenging tasks that can not be done without the support of State authorities and local government. We want the number of Ukrainians provided with housing to reach tens of thousands of families rather than merely hundreds. Maintenance of housing programs, modernization of their conditions in accordance with people's requests and demand, resumption of financing of housing policy from the state budget and preservation of funds from local budgets — all these remain the necessary conditions for our endeavour.

This year, we expect an increase in funding from local budgets for housing programs, which in 2019 exceeded UAH 252 million. The activity of the authorities of many cities and regions of Ukraine in this good cause should become a factor that will urge the central government to make up for lost time in previous years.

Our plans for the current year are to further deepen cooperation with international partners both in the direction of the final transfer of all processes of the Fund's activities to digital rails, and in order to find solutions to the financial content of housing programs.

I can't help but admit that 2020 is a turbulent year for our entire state, and the Fund is no exception. In fact, we largely depend on the scenarios of the economic situation in Ukraine in terms of the scale of the COVID-19 epidemic. But we are trying to overcome the objective difficulties by working systematically and by constant efforts to establish a dialogue with the state authorities on the implementation of housing programs.

We are trying to maintain a working dialogue at the level of governmental and parliamentary structures. We are convincing them of the need to restore attention paid to the housing policy and joint search for sustainable solutions in this area. This movement is not as brisk as we would like, but it has not come to a halt, and under the current conditions it leaves room for hope.

Upon congratulating the staff of the The State Fund for Support of Youth Housing Construction, our clients, partners, friends and everyone who cares about the housing sector on the 28th anniversary of the Fund, I am wishng every one of you good health, optimism, peace and comfort. And also I am wishing our citizens to have their own roof over their heads, if it comes with the little help from the state, then so much the better. Over the past years, we have turned the State Fund into a service for people. And in this direction, we continue to work for you!

With sincere respect and best wishes,

Serhiy KOMNATNYI,

Chairman of the Board of the State Fund for Support of Youth Housing Construction