Debtors will be evicted from apartments

After many years of an unequal struggle with rent defaulters, representatives of public utility services finally received the right to legally evict unscrupulous tenants. Last Friday, parliamentarians adopted an amendment submitted by the government to the law “On the Fundamentals of Federal Housing Policy.” The new amendment applies to those who have not paid rent for housing for six months. True, State Duma deputies protected the rights of defaulters, guaranteeing them the provision of other housing that “meets sanitary and technical requirements according to hostel standards.”

248 deputies voted for the adoption of this amendment, with the required 226 votes. Representatives of the left factions, as usual, did not agree with tough measures against defaulters, casting 201 votes against. The position of the communists and farmers can hardly be called meaningful, since, as government representative in the State Duma Andrei Loginov recalled before the vote, the Civil and Housing Codes of the Russian Federation still provide for the eviction of defaulters without providing them with housing. Let us recall that three years ago, State Duma deputies received only 115 votes in support of the government amendment to the Housing Code of the RSFSR, which proposed relocating persistent defaulters into dormitories.

However, until now in Russia people have not been evicted en masse onto the streets for debt. Although regional authorities periodically tried to influence debtors through demonstrative evictions. The most high-profile case involving the punishment of malicious defaulters occurred on January 23 of this year in Saratov. The case, which was heard in the Leninsky District Court of Saratov, concerned the Lapshin family of tenants, whose debts for rent and utilities reached an impressive amount by provincial standards of 17 thousand 314 rubles. The court decided to provide a family of four with a two-room municipal apartment in the same area, evicting them from an unpaid four-room apartment. At the same time, local authorities hastened to declare that we are not talking about a campaign to evict defaulters, of whom there are quite a few in the region. Officials hoped that the high-profile court case would force other unscrupulous tenants to regularly pay for their housing.

Until recently, housing and communal services workers were practically helpless in collecting debts from defaulters and often resorted to desperate measures. For example, a year and a half ago in Blagoveshchensk, where by that time debts to the city utilities exceeded 100 million rubles, they began to turn off electricity and water to debtors. And in apartments where particularly malicious defaulters lived, they even began to cut off central heating radiators.

The legislative innovation allows residents of municipal apartments to feel relatively calm, but those who purchase an apartment on credit and cannot pay for it on time will have a noticeably worse time. Existing legislation guarantees their temporary resettlement in the municipal reserve fund, but resettlers will be limited in their right to privatize such housing and exchange it.

Kirill MIKHAILOV