Continued renovation

The State Duma has begun editing the Housing Code

Despite the opposition of United Russia, which claims a monopoly right to protect the interests of voters, at yesterday's State Duma meeting, amendments to the Housing Code introduced by Yabloko member Galina Khovanskaya and Rodina representative Oleg Shein were adopted in the first reading. The authors of the document propose to remove the most painful restrictions on the privatization of housing. Let us recall that the law on the implementation of the housing complex prescribes the completion of privatization by 2007, and also prohibits the privatization of social housing received by those on the waiting list after March 1, 2005. The latter provision infringed on the rights of a huge number of Russians who had been standing in line for decades, and was recently overturned by the Constitutional Court. According to the Khovanskaya-Shein bill, only those on the waiting list who entered the housing register after the entry into force of the housing complex will not be able to privatize the received apartments. Thus, the end of privatization will be postponed not by three to five years, as proposed by the United Russia Duma, who recently moved the “deadline” to March 2010, but by 15-20 years, until the state fulfills all its obligations to the “old” people on the waiting list. .

In accordance with the new Housing Code, only low-income Russians can apply for free municipal housing, but federal legislation does not decipher this concept. The bill reviewed yesterday proposes to establish strict criteria for “poor income.” According to the authors of the document, citizens whose total family income minus the subsistence level does not allow them to purchase housing according to approved federal standards should be considered low-income.

Another significant innovation of the bill, aimed at restoring the violated rights of citizens, was the provision for including unperformed capital repairs in the redemption price of demolished housing. According to the logic of the authors, this will guarantee that municipalities fulfill their obligations even in relation to privatized housing, and will also prevent houses from being deliberately brought into disrepair for the purpose of demolishing them for new development. True, in a conversation with a Vremya Novostey correspondent, Ms. Khovanskaya suggested that it would be unlikely to defend this provision, since it was quite sharply opposed by government representatives who did not want to burden the federal budget with additional spending obligations.

Nevertheless, the adoption of the bill in the first reading, according to the deputy, is already a huge step forward. Recalling that the amendments had been in the Duma since March last year, and then their consideration was postponed four times, Ms. Khovanskaya emphasized that she managed to bring the matter to the plenary session only thanks to a coincidence of circumstances. “Many interests coincided here. The Ministry of Defense supported our project, as it solves the problems of homeless officers: it allows them to privatize the housing they receive, and also solves the problems of residents of military camps. The decision of the Constitutional Court also helped. Finally, the speaker of the Federation Council, Sergei Mironov, spoke in support of the bill,” said the deputy, according to whom, without this “heavy artillery,” she would hardly have been able to bring her proposals to the first reading.

Alexander GUDKOV