for utility debts

Yesterday, at a meeting of the Higher Administrative Committee of the Irkutsk Administration, the mayor of the city, Vladimir Yakubovsky, proposed evicting those who do not pay for utilities from their apartments. From his words it followed that the first defaulters could lose their housing as early as September of this year. Yesterday at the administrative committee at the mayor's office, information was heard that the population's rent debts to municipal enterprises amounted to about 252 million rubles. The mayor of the city, Vladimir Yakubovsky, said that the heads of districts have stopped fighting “with non-payments of the population.”
“Today we even have the right to evict debtors from their housing,” said the head of the city administration. “Prepare premises in the exchange fund, sue and evict defaulters - such experience already exists in Russia.”
He invited representatives of the urban development committee and housing enterprises to prepare documents to evict the first persistent defaulters into housing with a smaller area by mid-September.
In this, the mayor’s office is supported by the chairman of the housing policy committee of the Anagar region administration, Pyotr Voronin, who previously stated in an interview with Kommersant that “the most important thing now is to change the psychology of the population, to make people understand: if you didn’t pay for the apartment, it means you stole.” Mr. Voronin also proposes to use compulsory methods of collecting debts from the population, including litigation and alienation of property.
The mayor's office also considered other ways to deal with debtor citizens. For example, the idea was once again voiced that defaulters could work off their debt by improving the city. But officials agreed that many debtors are not poor people and will not sweep the streets.

ANASTASIA BAYDA

Kommersant (Irkutsk) No. 143 dated 08/13/2003

The mayor of Irkutsk proposed to evict citizens