School of overhaul

The Moscow construction complex is provided with work for seven years

The Moscow City Duma yesterday adopted two laws that are most important for city residents, essentially determining under what conditions and in what condition they will receive residential buildings and the land underneath them under their own management. Deputies not only approved in the first reading the bills passed down from the mayor's office "On land use in the city of Moscow" and "On the city target program for the overhaul of apartment buildings "For responsible owners - a renovated house" for 2008-2014", but also promised during their further consideration, fill the documents with their own ideas about proper repairs and fair distribution of land.

It is noteworthy that some of the parliamentarians’ ideas clearly ran counter to the “important political decision” of the mayor’s office to fully bear the cost of major housing repairs and allocate 490 billion rubles for these purposes over seven years. The unprecedented amount, even exceeding the volume of the federal housing reconstruction fund being created, seemed to legislators to be too generous a gift to ordinary citizens. In particular, the chairman of the commission on regulations, rules and procedures, United Russia member Alexander Krutov, believes that the so-called “responsible owner” should directly participate in the reconstruction of the housing stock. “We need to think about the owners’ share in major repairs,” he said. “Not ruble for ruble, of course, that would be too optimistic, but those who are ready to invest in repairs should be given priority in the queue.” In addition, the deputy invited his colleagues to think about a mechanism for reimbursing the treasury for such significant costs in the future. “It is necessary to prepare a regulatory act on changing the assessed value of housing for tax purposes, because its market value after major repairs will increase significantly,” Mr. Krutov said, looking far ahead.

Let us recall that the seven-year capital repair program approved by the Moscow government last October included only high-rise buildings built before 1991. Of the 27.5 thousand houses located in the city’s “area of ​​responsibility,” complete repairs are provided for only 1.5 thousand high-rise buildings. Selective work on updating facades, roofs, and engineering should be carried out in another 12 thousand condominiums. The houses that are not included in this program, according to the head of the city’s municipal services complex, Pyotr Biryukov, will be included in other projects for the reconstruction or demolition of dilapidated and outdated housing.

By allocating significant funds for repairs, the authorities set a condition - before it begins, a homeowners' association must be created in the house, which will then take the property on balance and under management. At the same time, however, HOAs turn out to be powerless observers who can neither evaluate the quality of repairs nor participate in decision-making on the volume of repairs. It is this moment that confuses the opposition in the Moscow City Duma. “The orderer and controller of the implementation of the program is the executive branch,” said Sergei Mitrokhin, leader of the Yabloko-United Democrats faction. “The HOA does not have any rights, and in the absence of any uniform standards of repair, it is difficult to talk about its quality in relation to all houses.” Representatives of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation consider this drawback to be the notorious “fly in the ointment” in the generous overhaul program.

United Russia was confused by a slightly different aspect - the chairman of the commission on long-term development and urban planning of the Moscow City Duma, Mikhail Moskvin-Tarkhanov, doubted that with such a significant increase in the volume of overhauls, the authorities would be able to find the required number of qualified painters and plasterers. According to the deputy, he fears not so much that the result will be a “Belarusian-Tajik version” of repairs, but rather that the Moscow construction complex “will open its mouth, but will not be able to swallow the volumes.”

However, the promise to allocate almost half a trillion rubles outweighed all doubts - the vote on the law on major repairs was unanimous. The same cannot be said based on the results of the discussion of the land use law, which, according to the first deputy head of the land resources department Oleg Ryzhkov, assigns to the Moscow government the right to make decisions on the development of already built-up areas. The opposition refused to support the bill, criticizing it for “bureaucratic subjectivism,” indulging corruption and provoking conflict situations in the city. In particular, Mr. Mitrokhin believes that the wording defining the size of condominium land plots is too vague, since they promise citizens only a certain “necessary minimum.” “It is unclear who will determine this need and by what criteria,” he was indignant. In addition, one of the most “painful” procedures - the seizure of land for state needs - in the new version of the law does not provide for public hearings or any coordination with the public. “The tragedy of the situation in the complex development of territories, when, regardless of the age of houses, their location and the opinions of residents, entire neighborhoods will be demolished in the interests of the investor, and people will be forcibly resettled, can be an order of magnitude higher than the drama of infill development,” said the leader of the United democrats."

United Russia members chose to ignore this opinion, since they themselves believe that it is much more tragic for city residents to “live in apartments with fungus on the walls.” According to Mikhail Moskvin-Tarkhanov, mass resettlement within the framework of city reconstruction and renovation programs will compensate forced migrants for the psychologically unpleasant procedures of changing their place of residence with new apartments. In addition, as the deputy told Vremya Novostei, the size of the land that residents of Moscow high-rise buildings will receive as shared ownership will subsequently be specified by amendments. “We will only give them the area under the perimeter of the house,” he said. “In the end, I don’t want residents of the center of the capital, where houses are closely adjacent to each other, to find themselves in unequal conditions with the periphery.”

Yulia KHOMCHENKO