An enjoyable stay for Ukrainian guests and Dutch hosts

Abstract

This graduation project is conducted in collaboration with the Dutch Council for Refugees. It is a foundation that stands up for the refugees’ interests and helps them to build a new life in the Netherlands. In this project, it is researched how private housing (with a matching agency) can be better facilitated in the future.

♦ Project objective ♦

Focus on private housing with a matching agency for Ukrainian guests and Dutch hosts
24 February 2022 is the day that Russia invaded Ukraine. The invasion caused a big crisis, with around 12 million Ukrainians fleeing the country and 7 million people being internally displaced.From the 86.850 Ukrainian displaced people in the Netherlands, 12.000Ukrainians joined private housing without a matching and only 3.000 Ukrainians joined private housing with RefugeeHomeNL (a matching agency). Although many Ukrainian people joined private housing without a matching agency, it is preferable to facilitate hosting arrangements that are visible as it offers the possibility to humanitarian organisations to provide help to the guests and hosts.

Guests and hosts have difficulties expressing their expectations, needs and irritations
Based on research on the experiences of Ukrainian guests and Dutch hosts on private housing, it is found that they have difficulties expressing their expectations, needs and irritations when living together. This is understandable as they do not want to be a burden to each other. However, it is valuable to deal with conflicting interests instead of ignoring them. By acknowledging their needs and expectations, they have the possibility to discuss and align them to enjoy living together.

Value of acknowledging clashes due to different lifestyles
To protect the mental wellbeing of the guests and hosts, it is essential that they reflect on what they need and value when living together. Their needs and expectations could be different or similar. They should understand that their differences and similarities could cause conflicts when living together. It is okay to have a conflict. What matters, is the way to manage it. The first step in managing, is being aware of their different or similar practices. At the societal level, it could help us to feel confident to discuss serious topics instead of avoiding them. Only by acknowledging the differences and similarities, we can find a way to deal with it.

♦ Design concept Form: a welcome package ♦ 
Form is a welcome package and a conversation tool for guests and hosts that live together to support them in setting social living agreements together by sharing their expectations about different situations with the use of emotions. This way, they communicate how they prefer to interact with each other at the beginning of living together.

Introducing Form at the matching conversation
Before living together, guests and hosts go to a matching conversation to get to know each other before living together. During this conversation, the matchmaker will introduce the purpose of the welcome package: their different lifestyles could cause conflicts, but is okay to have a conflict. They should be prepared on how to manage the conflict. The welcome package will help them to do that.

Interacting with Form when living together
In the first week of living together, a welcome package will be sent to the guests and hosts. Guests and hosts are presented with situations that are known to be possible incentives for conflicts. They should choose one trigger card and describe the situation.Then, they are asked to choose two emotion tokens that they relate to their experience with the situation, explain why and discuss. For example, they like to cook together but get a bit annoyed when the kitchen counter is not cleaned after cooking. Choosing two emotion helps them to focus on both positive and negative aspects. Based on their conversation, they set social living agreements. By already expressing how they would prefer to deal with uncomfortable moments, they are prepared and feel more comfortable to communicate their concerns in the future.

♦ Future of Form ♦

Form for guests and hosts with various cultural backgrounds
It is proposed that Form will not only be used by Ukrainian guests and Dutch hosts, but also by people from various cultural backgrounds. The welcome package will be offered to them by a matching agency.The goal of Form is in line with their vision (providing a safe temporary home)as well: Form helps guests and hosts to give a voice and protect their mental wellbeing when living together. It helps guests and hosts to manage conflicts which means that the concerned matching agency could invest less time and energy to mediate with possible conflicts. Furthermore, Form offers something to hold onto for the matchmakers that evaluate the hosting arrangements.

Impact on the amount of hosting arrangements
Currently, there are almost double the amount of guests than hosts in the database of RefugeeHomeNL and Takecarebnb. It would be desirable to equalize this. Evaluating Form on the long-term would provide insights in whether more hosts would register for private housing if Form would be implemented on a larger scale. More positive housing arrangements could result in more registrations by hosts. And, more hosting arrangements help us to embrace cultural diversity.

Impact on the mindset of the Netherlands
Form helps to advertise the notion that we should discuss differences and similarities. Discussing uncomfortable moment might be unpleasant, but eventually it helps us to create positive impact for those serious topics.