“can’t find apartments except at inflated prices if at all.”
Could be describing the U.S. in the not to distant future.
It is the US. Ever try to rent an efficiency in Manhattan? Same high price, but with a never-ending sh!t show in the streets below; crime, filth, nudity, drug use, crazy people. That, I daresay, is worse than being a Belgorod refugee in Moscow or Petrograd, which at least are clean, relatively safe and sheltered from war.