Hundreds of thousands of people from different Ukrainian cities are still on waiting lists for social housing; some have been on it since the 60s of the last century. Even though the very notion of “a waiting list for apartments” was inherited from the USSR, these lists are not getting any shorter, as one would expect; instead, they are growing ever longer.

About 70 thousand people are applying for free housing only in Kyiv; as for Lviv, in May 2025, the list includes almost 29 thousand people.

Both in Soviet times and now, the system of waiting lists for housing has been a field for corruption because the willing people are many, yet free housing is extremely scarce. The scheme, described in this material, looks like the very system envisaged its availability.

The people on the waiting list of the Lviv city council have been registered in it for decades, and the list is hardly moving. In five recent years, only two people from the total waiting list for apartments have received housing in Lviv. And then, all of a sudden, some people are given apartments free of charge, as if temporarily, and their place on the main waiting list is kept. Then, these people privatize these “temporary” apartments and re-register them with the relatives of the official who has made up this scheme.