Galina Khovanskaya, Chairman of the Committee on Housing Policy and Utilities of the RF State Duma held a press-conference on the results of the deputies’ work in the end of 2016.
According to Galina Khovanskaya, during the autumn Duma session, two amendments were introduced to the Housing Code. The first one regarded the terms of abandoning the “common pool” for capital repair, which were reduced from two years to one year. As a result, the residents of such houses who have decided to open their special account may leave the “common pool” program earlier.
The ways concerning how to use the repair money have also been updated. Presently, the money collected for capital repair may be directed to the reconstruction of houses in emergency regions or to a largescale reconstruction.
The other novelty regards the standards for supplying utilities. A strict control is known to have been established for utilities’ tariffs growth. However, the changes of the standards are not controlled by anybody. Meanwhile, there are a lot of flats without public utilities’ calculators, and the residents pay according to the standard.
Regional authorities are known to establish the standards for such houses, but they often set it voluntarily, and it is too high. The amendments to the Housing Code will provide an opportunity to cope with the problem.
As an aside, presently a housing supervisor is authorised with the control function, but his solutions are constrained due to the influence of the municipal and regional authorities. Galina Khovanskaya suggested introducing an additional amendment whereby fixing the utilities’ consumption supervision would be the responsibility of the antimonopoly service. Unfortunately, this amendment was not adopted.
One more problem the deputies had to deal with in 2016 is the utilities informational system (GIS). It is no secret that managing companies are not ready to deliver the necessary volumes of information to the website.
As such, the deadline of its implementation was postponed until the middle of 2017, and regarding some points even until 2020.
And, finally, another important issue the deputies dealt with in 2016 was the appearance of apartments on the market. This type of residential housing has increased two-fold lately.
“Residents are actually deceived when they buy apartments as housing,” the deputy thinks. The thing is that the sets of documents for the construction of residential and non-residential objects differ greatly. According to Galina Khovanskaya, the requirements for apartments are much lower and because there is no social infrastructure, an object may be erected in a former industrial zone, etc.
Consequently, the residents of such apartments fall into a discriminatory position. Besides, it is practically impossible to get registration in the apartments.
“Such details should be made clear for people,” Khovanskaya stressed, “And choosing housing in a civilised manner should be explained. And as far as a developer is concerned. this is just fraudulent.”
Elena MATSEIKO