CHUBYNSKE, Ukraine — Natalia Popova has found a new purpose in life: Rescuing wild animals and pets from the devastation wrought by the war in Ukraine.
“They are my life,” says the 50-year-old, stroking a light-furred lioness like a kitten. From inside an enclosure, the animal rejoices at the attention, lying on her back and stretching her paws up toward her caretaker.
Popova, in cooperation with the animal protection group UA Animals, has already saved more than 300 animals from the war; 200 of them went abroad and 100 found new homes in western Ukraine, which is considered safer. Many of them were wild animals who were kept as pets at private homes before their owners fled Russian shelling and missiles.
Popova’s shelter in the Kyiv region village of Chubynske now houses 133 animals. It’s a broad menagerie, including 13 lions, a leopard, a tiger, three deer, wolves, foxes, raccoons and roe deer, as well as domesticated animals like horses, donkeys, goats, rabbits, dogs, cats and birds.
The animals awaiting evacuation to Poland were rescued from hot spots such as eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, which see daily bombardments and active fighting. The Ukrainian soldiers who let Popova know when animals near the front lines need help joke that she has many lives, like a cat.
“No one wants to go there. Everyone is afraid. I am also scared, but I go anyway,” she said.
Often she is trembling in the car on her way to rescue another wild animal.
“I feel very sorry for them. I can imagine the stress animals are under because of the war, and no one can help them,” Popova said.
In most cases, she knows nothing about the animals she rescues, neither their names and ages nor their owners.
“Animals don’t introduce themselves when they come to us,” she joked.
For the first months of the war, Popova drove to war hot spots alone, but a couple from UA Animals recently offered to transport and help her.
“Our record is an evacuation in 16 minutes, when we saved a lion between Kramatorsk and Sloviansk,” Popova said. An economist by education with no formal veterinary experience, she administered anesthesia on the lion because the animal had to be put to sleep before it could be transported.
Popova says she has always been very attached to animals. In kindergarten, she built houses for worms and talked to birds. In 1999, she opened the first private horse club in Ukraine. But it wasn’t until four years ago that she saved her first lion.
An organization against slaughterhouses approached her with a request for help saving a lion with a broken spine. She did not know how she could help because her expertise was in horses. But when she saw a photo of the big cat, Popova could not resist.
She built an enclosure and took in the lion the next morning, paying the owner. Later, Popova created a social media page titled “Help the Lioness,” and people began to write asking for help saving other wild animals.
Yana, the first lioness she rescued, has become a family member since she could not find a new home due to a disability. Popova took care of her until she died two weeks ago.
The shelter is just a temporary stop for the animals. Popova rehabilitates them and then looks for new homes for them. She feels a special connection with each big cat, but says she does not mind letting them go.
“I love them, and I understand that I do not have the resources to provide them with the comfortable life they deserve,” says Popova.
At first, she bankrolled the shelter with her own funds from the horse business. But since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the horse business has not been profitable. With more than $14,000 a month needed to keep animals healthy and fed, she has turned to borrowing, and seen her debt grow to $200,000.
She gets some money from UA Animals and from donations, but worries about how to keep everything together have kept her up at night.
“But I will still borrow money, go to hot spots and save animals. I can’t say no to them,” she said.
Popova sends all her animals to the Poznań Zoo in Poland, which helps her evacuate them and find them new homes. Some animals have already been transported to Spain, France and South Africa. Her next project is sending 12 lions to Poland this week.
With no end to the fighting in sight, Popova knows she will still be needed.
“My mission in this war is to save wild animals,” she says.
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Follow all AP stories on the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.
This is a beautifully refurbished and tastefully extended stone home with beautiful gardens and situated in a picturesque village location.
The current owners carried out an extensive, high-specification programme of building works which was completed in March 2020 and brought the original period property into the 21st Century.
Home Cottage today offers a well-proportioned, contemporary accommodation with a character of its own.
It features south-facing double-glazed windows, a multi- zone heating system, UK oak doors set in solid oak frames with matching skirting boards and architraves, a bespoke Nurlex kitchen with a full range of appliances and stylishly refitted WC, bathroom and shower rooms.
Making the most of the south-facing gardens, the interior has fitted blinds throughout:
Entering from the back double glazed door, you are greeted with a reception hall with sloping ceiling. Leading off, there is a cloakroom/WC refitted with a contemporary white suite, a utility room with plumbing for a washing machine and cabinets and a beautiful triple-aspect lounge room with an electric log-effect stove and windows overlooking the extensive garden and paddock beyond.
A study with feature glass screening to the hall and an open plan kitchen diner and sitting room also lead from the hallway.
The bespoke kitchen has a range of units and integrated appliances inckuding a dishwasher, Neff electric oven and hob and microwave. A fridge freezer is also included in the sale. The room also benefits from a full-height ceiling with exposed timbers and recessed spotlights and French doors opening to a south-facing patio.
The sitting room is stunning and flooded with light provided by a gable end window and enjoying views overthe garden.
Two bedrooms and a recently refitted bathroom complete the ground floor.
On the first floor, an attractive master bedroom has a window with built-in seat overlooking the gardens and an en-suite shower room also refitted with a contemporary white suite including a walk-in shower. Another bedroom also has an en-suite bathroom.
Outside, the property is approached through a traditional five-bar wooden gate leading into the garden and grounds believed to be in the region of 1.9 acres.
The garage has a boiler serving the advanced central heating system, light and power.
A separate workshop off the garage also has light and power.
The gardens and grounds extend to the south, east and west of the property and incorporate an expansive paved patio area, lawn with ha-ha separating paddock, a side garden bounded by stone walling with further lawn stocked with huge range of colourful shrubs and plants.
A gravelled driveway provides car parking for numerous vehicles. To the east of the driveway there is a further lawned area with shrubs and bushes, a log store and a productive vegetable garden.
Within the grounds is a fully insulated garden building with light and power and sliding patio doors ideal for a home office, studio or gym.
Beyond the garden is a grass paddock with separate gated access, enclosed by post-and-rail fencing and featuring three inset trees.
The paddock is bounded in the east by a further wildlife area with a pond.
Home Cottage, in Main Street, Teigh, is on the market with offers over £1.1m asked for. For details call Murray on 01572 755555.
I am a 66-year-old high-school teacher in Tucson, Ariz. I have a home downtown, near the University of Arizona, which is valued at $610,000. I have about $105,000 left on my mortgage. I have two roommates who pay rent, which helps me pay off my mortgage.
It’s my ambition to retire in four years, and move closer to my daughter in Brooklyn. I’d like to be a snowbird, and keep my home that I own in Tucson, and possibly buy a condominium or co-op apartment in Brooklyn to spend spring, summer and fall. I want to keep my home in Arizona, so I can be around my son and my granddaughter in the winter.
Should I sell the house in Tucson in four years when I retire and put all the money toward buying a home in Brooklyn? Or should I keep the house in Tucson and rent an apartment in New York while I am there?
I am a little concerned about the lack of water in Arizona over the next 30 years, and summers are getting even hotter. I love Tucson. It’s a progressive place in a red state. Also, things could change for the worse.
Sincerely,
Big City Dreams
‘The Big Move’ is a MarketWatch column looking at the ins and outs of real estate, from navigating the search for a new home to applying for a mortgage.
Do you have a question about buying or selling a home? Do you want to know where your next move should be? Email Aarthi Swaminathan at TheBigMove@marketwatch.com.
Dear Big City Dreams,
I love that you’re moving to New York to retire. From personal experience, I’ve seen more college students or early career types move to the city, eager to make a mark. But I get that you want to be closer to your daughter, and also avoid the crazy heat in Arizona!
To answer your question, on whether to buy or rent: It really depends on how long you plan to be a snowbird and stay in Brooklyn. If you plan to stay for a long time (or forever), it may make more sense to keep the Tucson home and buy in Brooklyn, if you can afford it.
But if you’re not fully sure about moving to the Empire State for an extended period of time, it may make sense to rent and feel the city out before you plunk the cash down for a home.
“Renting in New York City right now is a horror show. ”
But a big red, flashing warning sign for you: Renting in New York City right now is a horror show.
One real-estate agent, Frances Katzen, who is with Douglas Elliman, told me that it’s gotten so competitive in the city to buy or rent that it’s really “Darwinism at its finest.” In Katzen’s view, the rental market is on a “sugar high.”
According to data from Douglas Elliman, the average rent for a studio apartment in Brooklyn is $2,824, as of this June. A one-bedroom would set you back $3,240 a month. Landlords can hike the rent much further, “because supply is so limited,” Katzen added, with demand rising as the back-to-the-office picture evolves.
Not only are you going to pay through the teeth in rent, you’re also going to be stuck with the mortgage on the Tucson home.
If you’ve got the financial means to do so, consider keeping — and renting — the Tucson home and investing in a home in Brooklyn as well.
Sure, buying a property in the city is a pricey proposition. Inventory is low. The median sales price for an apartment (whether in a condominium or a co-op and regardless of size) in Brooklyn as of the second quarter of this year was up by 8.2% to a new high of $985,000, according to another report from Douglas Elliman.
With rates averaging around 5.54% for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, that’ll push your borrowing costs up further.
But if you’re planning to stay in Brooklyn for a bit, given how high rental prices are, it may be a good move to put that money toward a second home.
You mentioned that you had roommates — so you’re familiar with running a rental. Since you’re planning to spend winters back in the desert, you could always rent out your New York place on Airbnb
ABNB,
or do a short-term lease in the winter, to get some income from the property.
And if you decide to keep the Tucson home, you’ll probably get around $1,800 in rent per month that could go toward your new mortgage (for what it’s worth, some investors are still banking on people moving to the Sun Belt). You’ll also have the flexibility of pulling the plug on Brooklyn, should that not work out.
Additionally, if you are intending to share your home with your daughter, perhaps she can help out with the bills, making the option to purchase a home a lot more attractive. She can also save a little bit of money on rent, if you decide to charge her below market rate!
Living in the city will be a special experience for you, as you’ll definitely have no shortage of entertainment options during your retirement. And living near your daughter will make it even more special.
Letters may be edited for style and space. By emailing your questions, you agree to having them published anonymously on MarketWatch. By submitting your story to Dow Jones & Company, the publisher of MarketWatch, you understand and agree that we may use your story, or versions of it, in all media and platforms, including via third parties.
The Value Gap is a MarketWatch interview series with business leaders, academics, policymakers and activists on reducing racial and social inequalities.
People who want to buy homes increasingly have to compete with corporate owners who, armed with powerful tech tools, are pricing them out of markets and then renting back to them, according to a new report.
“Proptech,” short for property tech, is helping private-equity firms and venture capitalists exacerbate housing inequality, says a new report by TechEquity Collaborative, a member-based organization in the Bay Area whose mission is to inspire tech employees and companies to help address inequality.
Proptech includes property-management software, data trackers and algorithms that maximize profitability used by companies known as iBuyers, which allow for the buying and selling of homes online. Institutional investors are in turn using iBuyers like Redfin, Opendoor or Offerpad to scoop up single-family homes, outmaneuvering individual buyers because they’re privy to proprietary data and, in some cases, they can bid in cash, the report said.
The effects of all of this are most stark for communities of color, according to the report, which cites studies showing that corporate landlords are buying and renting out homes “concentrated in ZIP codes that average 40.2% Black, three times the national Black population of 13.4%.”
A Redfin spokeswoman said the company lists all its properties on the open market. “We want to give every buyer a fair shot to make an offer on the homes that we own,” she said. “Redfin has not made inside deals to sell homes directly to institutional investors and large single-family rental companies.”
An Opendoor spokeswoman said the “vast majority” of the homes it has bought were sold to individual buyers. “We are reinventing the traditional real estate transaction to be simple and certain for buyers and sellers across the country,” she said.
Offerpad didn’t immediately respond to a MarketWatch request for comment.
TechEquity Collaborative chief executive Catherine Bracy spoke with MarketWatch about the report, titled “Sold to the Highest Bidder: How Tech is Cashing In on the American Dream,” which shines a light on the growing problem and calls for more awareness and action.
“It’s depressing to me that decades after the civil-rights era, the racial wealth gap is worse,” Bracy said.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Catherine Bracy is the CEO and co-founder of TechEquity Collaborative, a Bay Area-based nonprofit that works with the tech sector to help address inequality.
Ed Pingol
MarketWatch: How would you explain the problem in a sentence or two?
Bracy: The most fundamental element of the American dream, which is homeownership — with the white picket fence — is being pushed further and further out of reach for everybody. It’s being driven by economic forces coming from both Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Everybody has an interest in figuring out how to solve that problem.
MarketWatch: What is the public’s level of awareness of this issue?
Bracy: People have a high-level sense that something is really wrong here. Everyday people know that their housing costs are out of control. Rents are going up. Maybe three or four years ago, it was possible, but for people who want to buy a house there’s no longer an opportunity.
People on the ground know it’s happening. What’s been baffling to me is that regulators and the media have been slower to take a look at what’s going on here.
In the last couple of weeks, conversation about inflation has started to forefront housing more than it has. But mostly it has been about groceries and gas, without the attention that the cost of buying a house has been out of reach, when that’s a bigger driver of household budgets than gas or groceries.
I’m happy to see that starting to change, though [they may be] too late to the game.
MarketWatch: Will you talk a bit more about the tech piece of this? How is tech exacerbating the problem?
Bracy: The emerging proptech sector includes startups going up around residential housing, and also commercial real estate. This is a continuation of a much longer historical thread that even predates the recession. A lot of it is born out of the recession.
Now VC and entrepreneurs are seeing business opportunities based on what private equity has created. Potential homeowners are desperate; renters are behind the eight ball.
Venture capital is seeing opportunities to capitalize on that. We see business models taking advantage of the desperation around housing. People creating tools that help corporate landlords optimize their ability to buy property. It culminates in tech and VC seeing an opportunity.
An example on the homeownership side that we’re concerned about is rent-to-own models. Of course, rent-to-own has been around a long time. But innovative companies are putting a new sheen on that and targeting people who want to be homeowners. They’re new leasing models that promise to convert into homeownership, but are really predatory.
One of the most telling anecdotes in the report is a quote from a real-estate investor from 10 to 15 years ago, saying he didn’t see it as feasible to manage thousands of single-family properties at a time. [“How can you operate and create scale in that situation … I don’t know how anybody can monitor thousands of houses.”]
Now tech comes to the fore, creates the tools to automate management across thousands of properties. Now this guy is bullish on investing in single-family homes as rental properties. The technology has enabled private-equity investors to take over a larger share of single-family homes.
It’s not just that interest rates were low, or that HUD [the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development] created the programs. Tech provided the tools.
“‘Both regulators and companies themselves need to be looking at what they need to do. There could be potential harms they can’t anticipate or name today.’”
MarketWatch: How does all this affect communities of color?
Bracy: Private equity has targeted communities of color. Maybe not on purpose, but the ones with the most upside/potential for them are those communities that tend to be disproportionately Black and brown. They are putting homeownership further out of reach than 40 to 50 years ago. That’s really sobering.
We just had a panel looking at this issue in Atlanta. The Atlanta Regional Commission showed a slide that showed a one-to-one overlay between corporate ownership and individual ownership in the area.
This is harming Black families. It’s really scary to think about how we close the racial wealth gap without solving this problem of homeownership and role of corporate actors in exacerbating the pain.
MarketWatch: How did the Great Recession make way for all of this?
Bracy: There were programs coming out of HUD at the time. They were well-meaning, well-intentioned. The government wanted to get somebody to purchase these foreclosed properties and get someone in there so neighborhoods didn’t fall into blight. So government turned to private equity and created programs.
That was really the catalyst for private equity to enter this market. Obviously since then, other things have happened that made that a more enticing market for them.
It’s not clear to me that they would’ve turned to single-family ownership if the government didn’t create this program coming out of the recession. I don’t know that it would’ve been better for the government not to do this, though. It’s important to understand the historical context.
MarketWatch: It sounds like the government and tech have that in common: unintended consequences.
Bracy: That’s a really important point. What we have coming out of the Great Recession is the benefit of learning lessons. We know that tech, left to its own devices, doesn’t usually just benefit society if we aren’t vigilant about it. We have to be conscious about potential harms.
Both regulators and companies themselves need to be looking at what they need to do. There could be potential harms they can’t anticipate or name today. I’m almost certain that in 10 years we’ll be looking back and saying all this was avoidable.
MarketWatch: What are possible solutions? Who’s responsible? And is anyone working on solutions right now?
Bracy: On the corporate-ownership side, we really need to put some constraints on what’s possible there. I don’t know what the best financial lever is to make these single-family homes less attractive as an asset class.
How do you balance it all? How can individual families compete? Maybe helping them with down-payment assistance. Another part might be constraining the corporate and private-equity investors.
The racial wealth gap piece is a subcategory of this: How are we thinking about policies that make up for historical disparities? How do we pump wealth into Black communities?
The second piece, around tech, is about transparency and accountability. There’s a set of literature about how we regulate algorithms that can be applicable to the housing space.
If you’re a RTO company, is the data about how many people are converting from lease to ownership there? Are you tracking that, and how does that break down along racial lines?
They have to be conscious about what they’re doing, track it, make it public. Shining a light on it could create a more self-regulatory effect than we’ve seen so far.
Have these conversations internally. Create a consciousness. You’d be shocked at how many people who work at these proptech companies don’t know what redlining is. Maybe employees at those companies should speak up and say, “We should test this first.”
There’s not enough people sounding the alarm. The truth is we need a lot more people paying attention to this.
MarketWatch: The report mentions Atlanta as particularly affected by this issue. What other places around the nation are feeling the effects?
Bracy: It’s happening in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York — the coastal cities.
The thing we had going for us, though, in those places was a political environment that was open to creating solutions for people who would be most impacted. In California, there are housing bills that are trying to address these issues.
But other cities are in places where the political environment is hostile to renters in particular, like Phoenix and Austin. I worry about what that means for homelessness and safety in general.
In some places tech companies are starting to grow, it could be an issue. Some employees are leaving the Bay Area and going to places where they won’t protect people who will be driven out of their homes by the tech spike.
I don’t know how people think homelessness happens, but it’s going to start to look a lot worse.
Read more: Who can afford a home? Roughly 60% of the U.S. could be frozen out of starter homes, warns S&P
Don't let the cheap French property dream fool you – it's a lot harder than it seems
And just in case you do find the house of your dreams in an estate agent’s window or online, it’s likely that you can’t find where it actually is. “A village with all facilities”, “a pretty hamlet, a short distance from…”, replace not just street names, but the name of the actual place. This is because houses are often represented by multiple agencies and each one wants you to sign up with them before divulging where this house might be, so they don’t have to share the spoils with others. They also don’t want you making a private deal with the seller.
Buying somewhere here is a bigger commitment than in many parts of the UK. If you buy somewhere on a whim, do lots of work on it, and then think you can flip it at a profit because the area doesn’t quite suit or your circumstances change, you may come a cropper. Property prices are usually worked out per square metre and unless the house is exceptional, or in an exceptional location, the price won’t go up because you spent a fortune on pretty wallpaper or a new kitchen.
And bear in mind when we lose our hearts to a wreck, a fixer-upper, a bargain, few of us have the skills to “do it up on a shoestring”, however many episodes of Escape to the Château we’ve watched. Work costs money, and lots of it. Just as in the UK, Covid has increased the price of materials. Good artisans get booked up far in advance, and are worth waiting for. We’ve found the quality of the work on our house to be excellent. Don’t be tempted to cut corners. Works on gas and electrics, even having your chimneys swept each year, requires a certificate for your insurance, and you need to keep them for when you might want to sell.
But the heart wants what it wants, doesn’t it? I don’t regret for a single second embarking on this adventure, and if this summer you go from looking in estate agents’ windows to stepping inside their doors, I wish you the very best of luck.
Read last week’s column: French children don’t sit with screens at the table – and they don’t throw tantrums either
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