This year’s International Day for the Eradication of Poverty advocates for a fundamental human right: Safe Homes for All. A stable, secure home is a foundation for human development. It supports children's education, protects family health and facilitates access to employment opportunities. Within a household, people share more than a roof: they share resources and care. And when challenges arise, they are affected together, even if in different ways.

For millions of Roma* across Europe and the Caucasus, the home is also where multiple vulnerabilities meet. Substandard housing, precarious and informal work, interrupted schooling, poor health conditions and unequal care responsibilities do not exist in isolation. Despite decades of progress, social and economic exclusion continues to affect Roma communities, with disadvantages often passed from one generation to the next.

The EU enlargement process, with its fundamental rights framework, provides important leverage to advance Roma inclusion. However, translating these high-level commitments into better lives requires policies grounded in the lived realities of Roma communities, supported by evidence to track progress.

Standard administrative data and surveys often fail to adequately capture Roma populations, leaving their daily circumstances invisible to policymakers. To help fill this gap, with funding from the European Union, we launched a multi-country Roma well-being assessment in Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine.

The harmonized household survey, based on a regional adaptation of UNDP–OPHI's Multidimensional Poverty Index, combines qualitative personal accounts from Roma (micro-narratives) with geospatial analysis of access to services.

Together, these three data streams provide a new toolbox for understanding the multidimensional vulnerabilities that perpetuate Roma exclusion. They also equip governments, municipalities and development partners with evidence to design more targeted and effective policies and measure progress.

Housing security for Roma households goes beyond ownership

Safe and adequate housing shapes people's ability to pursue the futures they aspire to. In our assessment, housing conditions were one of five key dimensions examined, helping identify the challenges Roma households face and how these affect their opportunities.

We found significant disparities in overcrowding, sanitation and economic security, putting health, access to services and everyday well-being under pressure.

In Ukraine, 9 out of 10 surveyed Roma live in a home owned by their household, on par with their non-Roma neighbours. Yet home ownership can create an illusion of equal living conditions, while access to amenities and infrastructure differs substantially.

More than 70 percent of surveyed Roma households in Ukraine live in overcrowded conditions, compared with around 22 percent in Moldova and 55 percent in Georgia. In all three countries, overcrowding is more prevalent among Roma households than among their non-Roma neighbours. In Ukraine, the rate is almost 50 percent higher.

Similar disparities emerge in access to sanitation, the internet, food and financial security. For instance, 83 percent of surveyed Roma households lack indoor toilets, compared with 27 percent of non-Roma households in the comparison group.

Housing location can further compound these challenges, limiting access to public services and economic opportunities. In Ukraine, 83 percent of surveyed Roma households had no public transport line within one kilometre.

Disadvantages accumulate as vulnerabilities intersect

Within the same household, housing conditions can affect people's lives differently. For children, overcrowding reduces the space and quiet needed for learning, while frequent moves can interrupt schooling. In Moldova, 22 percent of surveyed Roma respondents who had dropped out of school cited frequent mobility as the main reason.

Inadequate sanitation can undermine the health of those requiring care and make care work more demanding, particularly where access to healthcare is also unequal.

Unequal care responsibilities illustrate how these vulnerabilities intersect and compound. Care needs and limited access to services put pressure on women's time, often restricting their opportunities for paid work.

Fewer than one in three Roma children surveyed are enrolled in early childhood education, with enrolment reaching just 6 percent in Ukraine. Meanwhile, fewer than one in five Roma women are employed in Moldova and Ukraine, well below employment rates among their non-Roma neighbours.

In the micro-narratives, unpaid and unequal care responsibilities frequently emerged as barriers to stable income, adequate living conditions and access to services.

Without accessible and affordable public care services, efforts to increase women's employment will continue to fall short. That is why UNDP proposes treating care as economic infrastructure.

Roma make efforts to manage immediate pressures, relying on support from broader family and community networks. However, these can even deepen longer-term insecurity. 

For instance, Roma men and women often take temporary or informal jobs that offer flexibility to balance care and household responsibilities. But this flexibility comes at the cost of economic security.

Informal employment among employed Roma reaches 70 percent in Moldova, 78 percent in Ukraine and 94 percent in Georgia, even though unemployment rates do not show similarly large disparities between Roma and non-Roma populations.

Without formal contracts or access to social safety nets, Roma households have limited financial resilience. When faced with an unexpected expense, 76 percent of surveyed Roma households in Georgia, 86 percent in Moldova and 82 percent in Ukraine report being unable to cover it.

In situations like these, individual coping strategies cannot replace structural and institutional solutions.

From poverty to prosperity: a way forward for Roma inclusion

As UNDP's Poverty-to-Prosperity Transitions report argues, expanding economic opportunities and strengthening protection against shocks are two sides of the same coin.

For Roma communities, a safe and adequate home is where many of these challenges converge. Poor housing conditions can reinforce other barriers, undermining people's ability to withstand setbacks and pursue better opportunities.

Countries have different starting points, and Roma communities face varying demographic and socio-economic conditions, but they have much to share and learn from each other. With this data toolbox, now expanding to the Western Balkans, UNDP stands ready to facilitate a wider dialogue on Roma-inclusive policies and support governments, municipalities and development partners in designing, delivering and monitoring policies as countries progress toward EU accession.

Ultimately, the goal is to break the cycle of poverty and ensure that Roma families can live in safe, secure homes, free from the barriers that have limited opportunities for generations.

*The term ‘Roma’ is used to refer to a number of different groups (e.g. Roma, Sinti, Kale, Gypsies, Romanichels, Boyash, Ashkali, Egyptians, Yenish, Dom, Lom, Rom, Abdal) and includes Travellers, without denying the specificities of these groups.