The onset of the bitter chill of winter has focused attention on Russia’s ailing housing and utilities sector.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned of a “catastrophe” during a recent government meeting, unless funding for the modernization of housing and utilities is secured from private investors.
“Today, more than 4.5 million citizens live in run-down homes,” Medvedev said.
A lack of capital investment from the late 1980s until around 2005 left Russia with decrepit housing stock. More than 60 percent of Russia’s heating and sewage pipes require major repair.
“We’ve been trying to get the local council to fix up our building for the last ten years. They send committee after committee, but nothing ever gets done,” pensioner Tamara Zhirkova from the central Russian city of Voronezh said.
“The roof is in dire need of renovation and poses a real hazard. I’m afraid it’s going to come down on my head one day!” she added.
Five years ago, a new housing code came into force, making homeowners fully responsible for the management and maintenance of their own property. Homeowners can choose from one of three alternative forms of management, including administration through a homeowners’ association known as Tovarishchestvo Sobstvennikov Zhil’ia (TSZh).
According to the Housing Code, all homeowners must become members of the association at the moment it is registered, but few do.
“People are still used to the state taking care of everything,” said Roman Vasenko, an expert on issues of housing and energy at the Enizan energy consulting company in Moscow. “They don’t understand that if the elevator stops working, it’s every resident’s problem, not just the problem of one homeowner.”
In 2007, 240 billion rubles ($7.65 billion) confiscated from the now defunct Yukos oil company was channeled into a fund to carry out repairs on housing across Russia. The fund, which was embroiled in a corruption scandal last year when a probe by the Prosecutor General’s office revealed its top managers were receiving excessively high salaries, will get additional financing this year, Medvedev said.
He added that the fund would be used to improve housing until private investors step in, although he did not mention how the fund intended to attract private and foreign capital.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in 2009 that 10 million people have already benefited from the housing and utilities fund.
Not everyone is convinced, though.
“The fund is supposed to be for repairs, but just like a lot of things in this country, there is no transparency,” said Vasenko. “The government is just now starting to talk about the ‘crisis,’ but just like five years ago, nothing has changed.”
A state-run poll by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, showed that 34 percent of Russians believed the public housing sector remained one of the country’s core problems, raising stakes for the 2012 presidential poll in which both Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have hinted they may run.
By: Diana Markosian
