Translated material
Repair with privileges
The Housing and Utilities Reform Assistance Fund will allocate additional funds to the most active regions
State assistance to regions in carrying out major repairs and relocating citizens from dilapidated housing is exclusively educational in nature. At the very least, representatives of the state corporation “Fund for Assistance to the Reform of Housing and Communal Services” emphasize that the main goal of investment in the reconstruction of the housing stock was to stimulate the development of market mechanisms in the public utilities sector and increase the responsibility of the owners themselves. And it’s not about putting all the old housing in Russia in order. “It’s impossible to do more with this money,” said the fund’s general director, Konstantin Tsitsin, at the end of last week, summing up the results of the state corporation’s two-year work.Mr. Tsitsin considers the main, that is, stimulating, task completed. According to him, over the two years of operation of the state corporation, “in the housing and communal services sector, the process of deploying actually working market structures has significantly accelerated.” “All key quantitative indicators of industry reform have increased significantly,” noted Mr. Tsitsin. If in 2007 homeowners' associations (HOAs) were created in only 2.3% of all apartment buildings in the country, now this figure has risen to 7%. “Today in Russia, private management companies service 33.2% of houses. At the end of 2007, this figure was 8.8%. On average, there are 64.4% of private organizations in the public utilities sector in the country. When the fund began its work, the share of such organizations was only 20%,” Mr. Tsitsin reported, emphasizing that “there is no return to the past,” and the reform of the utility sector will continue.
The head of the fund recalled that over two years, 233 billion rubles were allocated to municipalities in 81 constituent entities of the federation for the repair and resettlement of citizens from dilapidated and dilapidated housing, taking into account co-financing from regional budgets. By the end of this year, the number of renovated apartment buildings in Russia should reach 80 thousand, and 165 thousand people will receive new housing. But at the same time, Konstantin Tsitsin was forced to admit that this was only a drop in the bucket. According to him, the funds of the fund are designed only for the overhaul of about 12% of housing and the liquidation of 30% of dilapidated and dilapidated housing stock. As of January 1, 2007, the volume of dilapidated housing in the country exceeded 93 million square meters. m, and about 11 million sq. m needed repairs. m of housing.
However, the head of the fund, apparently, considers the main merit that the employees of the state corporation managed to convince municipalities and ordinary Russians that without active participation in the self-management of the housing stock they will not be able to prevent its further aging. “Housing owners have become such not in name, but in essence,” said Mr. Tsitsin, noting that the active participation of regions in the fund’s programs is ensured primarily by the initiative of citizens. According to him, in many cities of the country “residents remembered the skills of people’s control” when they approved the acceptance certificates for the repairs carried out. Moreover, according to Mr. Tsitsin, it is the further involvement of owners in housing self-government that will rid the industry of fictitious HOAs and ineffective management companies. “Fake homeowners’ associations began to form back in 2005, and it is not the fund’s task to fight them, but these shortcomings will die out along the way,” emphasized the head of the Fund for Assistance in Housing and Utilities Reform.
Konstantin Tsitsin also noted the emergence of new experience among builders and municipal leadership. “We acquired the skills of real major repairs, which did not boil down to patching holes, but to radically improve the quality of housing,” he said, clarifying that the repairs improved the living conditions of almost 12 million Russians.
It is noteworthy that although the limit of the 240 billion fund has almost been chosen, this year programs to promote reform of housing management will be expanded through an additional property contribution from the federal budget in the amount of 10 billion rubles. The corresponding decree was recently signed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. And also due to 7.5 billion rubles. income that the fund received from the placement of temporarily free funds. Mr. Tsitsin noted that those of the 18 regions that have already exhausted their limits and that “better implement programs and reform in general” can count on additional allocations. The incentive is provided, in particular, for Bashkortostan, Mari El, Mordovia, Sakha (Yakutia) and Tatarstan, as well as the Altai and Trans-Baikal territories, Belgorod, Kemerovo, Lipetsk, Penza, Ryazan, Saratov, Sverdlovsk, Tambov and Yaroslavl regions.
At the same time, representatives of the fund have not yet compiled a rating of the regions, and Mr. Tsitsin did not dare to name the frankly lagging territories. However, the fund’s managers do not hide the fact that during the operation of the state corporation there were also “blatant facts” of inefficient spending of funds. In particular, according to Konstantin Tsitsin, 12 regions, when constructing new housing to resettle residents of dilapidated buildings, exceeded the established price threshold of 30 thousand rubles. per sq. m. Eight of them have already returned the funds received, the rest have undertaken to reimburse the overpayment. In four cities - Nizhny Novgorod, Arkhangelsk, Novorossiysk and Dagestan Lights - the construction deadlines for resettlement houses were missed. “The funds will be returned to the fund - this is good, but the citizens were left without housing. Therefore, at a meeting of the Russian government, these entities were instructed to build houses and resettle citizens at their own expense,” said Mr. Tsitsin. By the way, this year, when allocating funds for resettlement from the emergency fund, according to the head of the fund, preference will be given to programs aimed at solving the problem through low-rise construction.
“The fund’s funds are a carrot, they are given for good behavior, for correct housing policy,” Dmitry Gordeev, an expert at the Institute of Urban Economics Foundation, told Vremya Novostey. According to Mr. Gordeev, the results of the fund's work are fully consistent with its original goal. “If the goal was to repair all dilapidated housing, this would require trillions, and the fund’s program would include all regions without exception, and not individual territories under certain conditions,” says Mr. Gordeev. In his opinion, in general, the funds of the fund really launched in the country a mechanism for decision-making in the housing administration directly by the owners. And compared to other Russian territories, Moscow, which did not participate in the fund’s programs and where residential buildings are still managed by city authorities, in his opinion, is the worst example. “There is no such stagnation in any region,” Mr. Gordeev complained.