Privatized apartments will allow the state to return

A bill was submitted to the State Duma on the procedure for the return of privatized housing to the state. Such real estate will become social, but tenants will lose the right to lease it under the threat of deprivation, RBC reports.

Amendments to the Housing Code with a description of the deprivatization procedure were submitted to the State Duma, First Deputy Chairman of the Housing Committee of the Housing and Public Utilities, Unicorn Elena Nikolaeva.

On March 1, 2015, free privatization of residential premises, begun in 1991, stopped. The provisions of the bill are aimed at correcting the situation in which the owners of residential real estate were poor citizens who are not able to independently bear the burden of the maintenance of their property.

People who are recognized or those who are recognized as poor "taking into account the income of the family and the value of property owned by family members and to be taxed" will be able to return the privatized housing to the state. It can be both its owners and their heirs.

To return real estate, the written consent of all its owners will be required. Former owners will receive the right to conclude a social rental contract for returned real estate, the bill said. It is offered to introduce a document into the action of Nikolaev on March 1 of this year.

But social housing can be forbidden to lease: the current practice in which social housing or part is handed over under free use agreements, and in fact, for the sake of earnings, it “perverts the appointment of residential premises of the Social use fund” says in an explanatory note to the bill.

Nikolaev does not offer administrative sanctions for violation of the ban, the termination of the violators of the social rental contract (that is, reward housing) will become punishment.