[Index]
[Russian]
Russian Federation’s
social cohesion threatened by deteriorating
housing
Geneva, 21 September 2004
- The cohesion of Russian
society and the future well-being of the
Russian population depend to a large extent
on how the country’s current housing
problems are resolved. If challenges relating
to the housing stock are not tackled,
many Russians will soon live in substandard
conditions. This is one of the main findings
of the Country Profile on the Russian
Federation, which has just been published
by the United Nations Economic Commission
for Europe (UNECE)1.
The transition to a market
system has thrown Russian housing and
public utilities into turmoil. The sector
is characterized by the drastic changes
of the early 1990s, the resulting mixture
of old and new systems, as well as long-term
neglect:
-
Neglect in maintenance
and repair has resulted in 11% of
homes needing urgent renovation and
repair while 9% should be demolished
and rebuilt. The annual need for renovation
is roughly equal to 4 - 5% of the
total housing stock, however, it currently
stands at only 0.3%.
-
Two million people
live in housing that is officially
classified as dilapidated. Without
adequate maintenance and repair this
number will rise sharply in the near
future.
-
New housing construction
has plummeted; in 2001 it was about
40% of the volume in 1990.
-
Due to mass privatization
(mostly “free of charge”)
in the early 1990s, homeownership
has increased from 33% in 1990 to
approximately 70% today.
-
Only about 1%
of the multi-unit stock is run by
formally registered homeowners’
associations.
-
Households currently
pay only 20-40% of their housing costs
(maintenance, public utilities). The
rest is covered by the municipalities.
However, municipalities can ill afford
this burden and at least 20% of the
housing sector costs go unpaid. This
leads to increasing debts, worsening
services and collapsing properties.
-
The utility infrastructure
is deteriorating rapidly. Between
50 and 60% of the heating and sewage
pipes require major repair, the rest
needs to be replaced immediately.
The deteriorating infrastructure affects
service quality: in January 2003 alone,
350,000 residents in 4,000 apartments
blocks were left without heating.
-
Despite considerable
tariff increases for housing and public
utilities, the Russian Federation
still has the lowest level of cost
recovery (60-70% on average, not including
charges for capital repairs) in Eastern
Europe.
These figures show that
the condition of the housing stock will
inevitably reach crisis point in the years
to come unless the problems within it
are solved quickly. At the heart of the
problem of the continuous decay of the
stock are the dysfunctional ownership,
management and maintenance structures
in the multi-unit stock. Privatization
was not accompanied by the creation of
adequate framework conditions for the
new situation where a large part of the
stock is in private hands.
The underlying assumption
was that the new private owners would
be willing and able to take on full organizational,
economic and financial responsibility
for their homes without any external assistance.
This was not realistic. Few people were
aware of the rights and responsibilities
or the financial implications of privatization.
Consequently, few new homeowners are in
a position to pay recurrent management
and maintenance costs let alone invest
in repair.
The fact that traditional
social support systems were scrapped and
not replaced has made matters worse. For
instance, there is no explicit policy
in place in the Russian Federation to
address the housing needs of those households
that are not able to solve their housing
problems themselves. Municipalities are,
by and large, not able to help. They do
not have either the money or the staff.
The international expert
team that prepared the Country Profile
made recommendations aimed at assisting
the Government to address these and other
challenges in the Russian housing sector.
In particular:
-
Make housing a
political priority, given the scale
of the problem and the social and
economic significance of the housing
sector.
-
Abolish the current
fragmentation of responsibilities.
For housing policies to be effective,
responsibilities need to be consolidated
in one institution with enough political
clout.
-
Urgently consolidate
the legal framework and, in particular,
eliminate contradictions between different
laws.
Impose a moratorium on the privatization
of housing free of charge.
-
Address the current
management vacuum with regard to multi-unit
buildings.
-
Make municipalities
effectively responsible for the publicly
owned housing stock and give them
the resources they need.
-
Introduce and
promote competition in the housing
maintenance, management and utility
markets.
-
Introduce an efficient
and needs-based housing support system
for socially disadvantaged households.
1 See http://www.unece.org/env/hs/cph/russia/welcome.htm
For further information, please contact:
Sylta Paysen
Environment and Human Settlements
Division
United Nations Economic Commission
for Europe
Palais des Nations, office 311
CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Tel: +41 (0)22 917 26 82
Fax: +41 (0)22 917 0107
E-mail: [email protected]
Ref: ECE/ENV/04/P15