Translated material
Samostroy
Moscow wants to revive housing cooperatives
The Moscow authorities are developing a mechanism for financing the construction of social housing by those on the waiting list themselves. Apparently, officials fear that next year a lack of budget funds will not allow the city to fulfill its obligations to improve housing conditions for all categories of people on the waiting list. And yesterday, at a meeting of the capital’s government, the head of the Moscow Department of Housing Policy and Housing Fund, Pyotr Saprykin, proposed, for example, to attract funds from citizens who are ready to buy housing from the city at cost (for example, on the terms of a social mortgage), even at the excavation stage.According to Mr. Saprykin, attracting citizens' funds to housing construction, by analogy with the system of housing construction cooperatives, will allow increasing the volume of social construction without large budget expenditures. Officials claim that the city is ready to provide waiting list associations formed like housing cooperatives with land plots intended for social construction, and issue permits and design documentation. Citizens, in this way, according to Mr. Saprykin, will be able to purchase housing at the actual cost of construction, and the city, in turn, will solve some of the social problems and make a profit. “The shareholders’ money will go to the budget,” Pyotr Saprykin assured his colleagues.
The department notes that this form of housing construction should apply exclusively to Muscovites standing in line to improve their living conditions, while the contractor will be selected through a competition. Mr. Saprykin promises to present a specific mechanism for attracting funds from those on the waiting list and providing them with city guarantees of safety and “targeted use” of the money no later than the first half of 2010.
Next year, the Department of Housing Policy and Housing Fund will obviously have a significant shortage of square meters to implement all social programs, deputy head of the department Nikolai Fedoseev admitted yesterday. According to him, officials can guarantee the same pace of providing housing only to veterans of the Great Patriotic War, graduates of orphanages and residents of dilapidated houses. “We will provide everyone else with housing upon receipt of housing,” he warned. As Mr. Fedoseev recalled, the draft budget for 2010 provides for financing the construction of only about 1 million square meters. m of social housing. Before the crisis, approximately 2-2.5 million square meters were allocated for the needs of those on the waiting list (and today about 140 thousand families in Moscow are recognized as needing improved housing conditions). m. Thus, according to Mr. Fedoseev, the number of people on the waiting list who will improve their living conditions in 2010, compared to 2009 alone, may be reduced by 2-2.5 times (this year approximately 15 thousand will receive new apartments . families).
In addition, the deadlines for completing demolition and reconstruction programs for five-story building areas, as well as houses of non-destructible series, will be significantly delayed. If earlier the capital’s authorities hoped to demolish the last “Khrushchev” at the end of 2010, now, according to amendments to administrative documents presented yesterday, these monuments of the first industrial housing construction will stand at least until 2012, and even until 2014.
Andrei Krasnov, General Director of the Moscow Mortgage Agency Bank, also stated that the demand for city programs for preferential housing purchases is already much greater than the supply. According to Mr. Krasnov, those on the waiting list have gotten a taste for it and are quite actively using social mortgages. Over two years (from 2006 to 2008), the number of housing loans issued by Muscovites increased approximately fivefold. Even in conditions of financial instability, according to him, thanks to fairly lenient lending conditions, the number of participants in the social credit program is growing. According to the forecasts of the Moscow Mortgage Agency, by the end of 2009 at least 4.5 thousand mortgage loans will be issued. The rate on a city mortgage loan is 11.7% per annum, the installment period is up to 30 years, the down payment is from 10% of the cost of the apartment.
In addition, according to the Department of Housing Policy and Housing Fund, those on the waiting list purchase apartments from the city at cost and taking into account reduction factors that depend on the length of time they wait in line. Thus, the price of one social square meter can fluctuate downwards from 30-35 thousand rubles. up to 6--8 thousand rubles. During the operation of the city mortgage program, according to Mr. Krasnov, 10 thousand families took advantage of the loan, and the city budget, in turn, received 5.5 billion rubles. And judging by his words, attracting funds from citizens at the initial stage of construction projects can significantly increase the number of mortgage agency clients.
However, the Moscow City Duma doubted that the current norms of federal land and housing legislation would make it possible to revive the cooperative principle of social housing construction. In particular, the chairman of the commission on urban management and housing policy of the capital's parliament, Stepan Orlov, said that federal legislation provides for the allocation of land exclusively on a competitive basis. The Housing Code, he said, provides for the allocation of plots to those on the waiting list for housing construction only on an individual basis and in rural areas. “We can’t afford this in Moscow,” the deputy complained.
As Natalia Rogozhina, an expert at the Institute of Urban Economics Foundation, told Vremya Novostei, the impossibility of allocating plots for social needs without an auction is indeed an obstacle to the development of alternative forms of solving the housing problems of Russians today. “Land auctions lead to higher construction costs,” says Ms. Rogozhina, who believes that when it comes to non-commercial construction, the rules for allocating plots should be somewhat different.
According to her, the project proposed by the capital’s mayor’s office is far from the only one, and many regions have been trying to revive cooperative construction for a long time. For example, the Rostov region is working on mechanisms for the participation of people on the waiting list in housing construction. According to Ms. Rogozhina, the relevant amendments to housing and land legislation have already even passed the first reading in the State Duma, and the expert community and regional authorities are looking forward to their final approval. “The stage has come when it is not worth concentrating on one form of housing provision, as we did, for example, with mortgage lending, it is necessary to develop different forms of housing provision for citizens,” say the Institute of Urban Economics.