Housing office dreams

Home management can and should be trusted to private companies

Imagine a plumber from the housing office, whom you call on your mobile phone at any time of the day in case of an emergency, and he comes within 10-15 minutes. Moreover, he appears not in the same dirty and greasy overalls in which he was just poking around in the basement or sewer, but in a clean, neat uniform. You smile sadly: “This doesn’t happen.” In fact, there are such examples. For example, in the city of Domodedovo near Moscow, where a private management company created three years ago has been servicing public utilities for three years. Four more houses from neighboring houses are seeking the right to be serviced by a “private owner”.

For more than a year now, the country has been transitioning to a new system for managing housing and communal services. Now homeowners can choose the appropriate way to manage their housing and communal services.

The majority of the population does not expect anything good from these transformations. Moreover, people are convinced that it will only get worse - because, apparently, they will have to pay more and more money over time, tariffs will rise, and the quality of services will remain the same, unsatisfactory. This has been the case for many years, and, naturally, it is difficult to believe in the possibility of qualitative changes.

Many are afraid that if the company is private, it means that it has to pay money for “management of housing and communal services” as a private company - much more than to the municipal housing office. This is wrong. Tariffs for the provision of housing and communal services are the same for all enterprises operating in the market, both state and commercial. So the services of new management companies cost exactly the same as in municipal REUs and DEZs.

The next argument of skeptics is the suspicion that since the price is the same, it means that a private company, unlike a state company, will not be responsible for anything at all. If you can at least send a complaint to the municipal housing office, then everything with a commercial housing office will have to be resolved through the court. And the courts are known to be difficult to win and how long they take...

But let's remember how most municipal housing offices work now. What quality of service do they provide and with what efficiency? Work in the current municipal REUs and DEZs is more than thankless, poorly paid and does not promise practically any social benefits. The attitude towards this work is appropriate - no one is eager to work there. And those who do come treat work as a necessary evil and perform it as a hateful duty. At the same time, naturally, any complaints and litigation between residents and municipal housing offices will be hopelessly bogged down in the passivity of local authorities.

However, it is amazing how the situation will change as soon as a resident complains about the work of a private housing department. After all, commercial management companies in recent years have become serious competitors of state-owned ones in the housing and communal services sector. But unlike the former, they are not included in the structure of municipal government. Those. when a complaint is received against an independent management company, it is for local authorities not to complain about one of their own departments, to which they must respond by taking measures within their own structure, recognizing their own negligence or failure. This is a complaint against a competing structure. So government agencies will respond to it with much more enthusiasm. Therefore, a private housing office has a direct reason to establish good relationships with residents, carefully listening to the aspirations and wishes of its own clients.

At the same time, residents who, when served by municipal housing offices, had long ago lost hope, bitterly gave up on all complaints and generally stopped participating in the “communal” life of their own houses, limiting themselves to monthly rent and hoping for something, when working with a private management company, they begin feel able to influence the situation. They begin to understand that the management company is their agent for providing services. And its competitive advantages and business success depend on the fullest compliance with the obligations of a commercial housing department to residents.

Then residents begin to more carefully and actively participate in the management of the housing and communal services of their home, and take an active position as customers. Instead of the dreary interaction of complete indifference with impunity that existed before the reform, on the one hand, and hopeless sadness with a useless struggle, on the other, a constructive dialogue between two parties, equally interested in a good result, is beginning to develop.

With this approach, a partnership and trust relationship are established between residents and the company, and it begins to perform some additional functions - providing registration and design services, acting as a landscaping agent (telephone installation, installation of iron doors, intercoms, etc.). The fact that the vast majority of residents willingly use such services gives reason to believe that they are convenient and in demand. And the money earned from them can be spent on improving the quality of service, higher staff salaries and social packages for employees. Additional commercial activity allows employees of private management companies to be paid more than in municipal housing offices. Therefore, housing departments work conscientiously, hold on to their jobs, and have the opportunity to recruit the best personnel.

All this is reality. And it’s not at all as fantastic as it might seem at first glance. You just need to believe in it and start acting. The housing and communal services reform carried out in our country provides great opportunities and a huge field for activity for ordinary citizens. And what housing offices will become in the future is up to us to decide.

Alexey KOZHEVNIKOV, Chairman of the Development and Construction Commission of Opora Rossii