Ukrainian refugees still welcome in many private Swiss homes

Many refugees are also housed in publicly-built centres, such as this one on the outskirts of Bern. © Keystone / Anthony Anex

Six months after the Russian invasion, the commitment of Swiss citizens who took in Ukrainian refugees is proving more persistent than expected, a media report says.

Quoting an estimate by the inter-cantonal social services body, Tamedia publications write on MondayExternal link that some 60% – or 40,000 – of all registered Ukrainian refugees in Switzerland are still housed privately, and only 5-10% of them had been relocated by the summer.

Some of the 26 cantons contacted by the paper, including Basel City and Geneva, said they were surprised by the stability and persistence of the citizen engagement, which was widely seen as a temporary solution that would only last a few months.

A minister from canton Zurich – Switzerland’s biggest, and also the one hosting the most Ukrainian refugees – already said last month that “many host families are keeping people longer than expected”.

‘Exaggerated’

The Director of the Swiss Refugee Council told the newspapers that “the panic [that the commitment of many hosts was waning] before the summer break was exaggerated”.

Of course there were households who ended the arrangement after a shorter period, she said; but this could be for a variety of reasons, not just a case of conflict or tension with the lodgers. The refugees might also have found a place of their own in the meantime.

As a percentage of the overall numbers, cases of conflict leading to a breakdown in the arrangement are rare, she said.

According to the latest figures published last Friday by the State Secretariat for Migration, 62,941 Ukrainian refugees have been registered in Switzerland since the beginning of the war; 60,793 of them have obtained the S permit that allows them to live and work in the country for at least a year.