After being picked up from the airport by Habitat for Humanity Romania’s team, the family was taken to a hotel where they were arranged to stay for four nights. In the hotel lobby, they recounted their experience.

The family later relocated to a UN-protected school, crowded with 7,000 people seeking safety. They slept in a classroom with around 100 other people, on just blankets and mattresses pulled from the ruins.

“With no electricity, food and water were scarce; I was only allowed to drink water in the morning, and sometimes I had to drink seawater out of sheer desperation,” Asma recalls.

On November 7, the family received news that they would be relocated to Romania. Before leaving, they returned to their destroyed home to salvage essential items like clothes, shoes and important documents. Just minutes after leaving, another rocket struck nearby, narrowly missing them.

The family was evacuated through the Rafah border in Egypt, then to Cairo, where they waited for 13 hours before arriving in Romania. Habitat for Humanity Romania’s team was there to welcome them as part of its partnership with the State Department for Emergency Situations. The organization’s support includes the provision of emergency shelter in hotels, cash assistance for rent, and a social rental program with ready-to-occupy apartments.

Now safe in Romania, Khaled and Asma are focused on building a new life. They are determined to find employment and enroll their children in schools, drawing strength and hope from the resilience and compassion that Hanan’s name represents.

More than 220 evacuees have been repatriated to Romania so far, many of whom have family in the country. Habitat Romania has been focusing on the most vulnerable groups, helping them secure temporary shelter, in line with Habitat for Humanity’s Pathways to Permanence approach.

Improving residential energy efficiency in Central and Eastern Europe

Habitat for Humanity addresses energy poverty in many ways. One example is through our work partnering with families to improve residential energy efficiency across Central and Eastern Europe. Nearly half of the housing stock in the region consists of large-scale residential buildings constructed between 1960 and 1990 with little-to-no consideration for energy efficiency. These aging, inefficient buildings combined with the region’s rising energy costs force families to spend a high share of their income on utility bills.

“In Europe, you’ll find energy poverty everywhere,” says Besim Nebiu, Habitat’s director of housing programs and regional operations for Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States. “In the winter months, your energy bill becomes your highest housing expense. Many families underheat their apartments and make compromises in their standard of living.”

Retrofitting old buildings can reduce energy consumption by 40-50%, which leads to direct savings and enables families to moderate the temperatures in their homes more affordably. Despite the advantages, building upgrades in the region require considerable investment and coordination among apartment owners.

Following mass privatization in the 1990s, residents became responsible for maintaining and managing their apartment blocks, a burden previously handled by the state. Without a proper system for upkeep, many buildings in the region fell into disrepair, including Mile’s 110-unit apartment complex in Skopje, North Macedonia.

Mile says his Yugoslavia-era building was a “horror situation” before partnering with Habitat. Pieces of the façade were falling, there was broken glass and the elevators had frequent outages. The building’s poor energy efficiency also left residents vulnerable to high energy costs.

Saving money and keeping warm in the winter

Mile rallied his neighbors to make a change. The municipality linked Mile to Habitat, who financed window replacements throughout the building by offering affordable loans to the apartment owners. “When the renovation of the façade and the windows were completed, we felt the effects through the heating bills. Our heating bills have been reduced by at least 30%,” Mile says.

For nearly 15 years, Habitat has been working in the region to empower and mobilize residents like Mile to make energy upgrades in their buildings. “We’re creating an ecosystem conducive of renovation at scale,” Besim explains. “We work with apartment owners, homeowner associations, municipalities, banks and financial institutions to bring about sustainable, mass renovation.”

In Europe, Habitat’s past and current energy-related projects span a dozen countries — Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Spain and Ukraine. This work has improved the energy efficiency of hundreds of buildings, helping thousands of homeowners save money and become more comfortable in their homes.

“Energy poverty is a housing issue”

Access to affordable and reliable energy is essential for meeting basic human needs, improving living standards and fostering sustainable and equitable communities. Besim says our expertise and thought leadership in the space puts us in a position to drive more people out of energy poverty.

“Energy poverty is not an energy issue; it’s a housing issue and a social issue. We know how impactful it can be to have access to affordable energy services. We’re well positioned to continue bringing actors together and making affordable renovations available to homeowners,” Besim says.