In favor of the applicant
Spouses Vladimir and Yesenia are preparing for a housewarming party: in a week or two they move into a kopeck piece in the district center. Very satisfied with their housing! Although the day before they expected that their home would be a four-room apartment in the agricultural town of Timonovo, which was allocated by the district executive committee as a rental apartment. Thanks to the benefits provided to Yesenia, she was transferred to social status. But it turned out to be impossible to live there without repairs, and the Kovalevs had no funds for this. The intervention of the Mogilev Regional Executive Committee helped to solve the problem.
SAID
— Belarus has established itself as a social state. A solid, uninterrupted mechanism for helping and caring for people, mutual support, and ensuring social justice has been created in the country. This is what society is built on. ( President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko in his Address to the Belarusian people and the National Assembly, January 28, 2022).
With social overtones
Vladimir Kovalev is not a specialist in construction, but simple work is quite up to him. And he already put a man's hand to the arrangement of the new apartment: he put a shelf in the hall, screwed the cornices. Little things, but they affect the weather in the house. The couple are very happy that they got a cozy, freshly renovated apartment.
“This is already your own corner, which you can equip for yourself, ” Vladimir is looking forward to the move.
Echoes his wife and Yesenia:
- Come in, as they say, and live. Ordered food, should be delivered in a few days. We still need to invest in the arrangement - to buy furniture, but no one is chasing us here.
Local Kovalyovs: Vladimir from the agricultural town of Timonovo, works as a sound engineer in a centralized club system, Yesenia is from Vysokoye, now on maternity leave. The guys got married five years ago. At first they lived with their parents, and when the eldest son Vladislav appeared, they received a family-type hostel in the district center. Three years later Katya was born.
- The hostel is good, you can’t say anything, we lived in it for five years. But still I wanted separate housing, because there are four of us. We saw ads on the website of the district executive committee about rental apartments that require repair. One of them is in Timonovo. Large in size - four rooms, a garden nearby, besides, he himself is from there, - the head of the family explains his choice in favor of housing in the agro-town.
Back in 2010, Yesenia was registered as an orphan in need of better housing conditions and applied for a social apartment. The family agreed to a rented four-room apartment in Timonovo with the possibility of transferring it to a social one. However, the received housing absolutely did not correspond to consumer qualities, as evidenced by the photographs with which Vladimir turned to the chairman of the Mogilev regional executive committee Anatoly Isachenko at a reception of citizens in November last year: the terrible state of plumbing, broken floors, terrible walls. How could a young family with children, where the wife is from the category of socially unprotected, be able to distinguish such unsightly meters? For an answer, they went to the Klimovichi district executive committee.
Repair for a pretty penny
The district executive committee explained that in resolving the housing issue of the Kovalevs, they were guided by the current legislation. At the time when the family received an apartment in Timonovo, there was simply no free social housing.
“The family was registered in need of better housing conditions and was on the list of the 70th, ” Alexander Shapkin , deputy chairman of the Klimovichi district executive committee, returns to the events of last year . - No new social housing has been built in the area recently. Last year, we managed to repair three apartments, and people on the waiting list were settled in them. In total, there are 187 people on the list, 120 of them are orphans.
There were also no suitable rental apartments. There are about 160 de jure uninhabited premises in the area, de facto - all were in need of serious repairs. The way out of the situation was Decree No. 112 “On the peculiarities of rental housing”, which entered into force in March last year. Its essence is as follows: if the repair is done at their own expense, no rent is charged for using the apartment.
- Considering that funding for the repair of secondary rental housing is limited, for example, last year only four such apartments were able to be repaired, they began to work according to a decree that allows them to provide housing in the current state - the citizen undertakes to repair it within six months. A preliminary estimate is drawn up, on its basis the amount of repairs is included in the rental price, - Alexander Vladimirovich explains.
Two people wanted to solve the housing problem under such conditions. In the village of Khoten, the tenant took a four-room apartment, made repairs in it, and now, according to preliminary calculations, he will not have to pay rent for about ten years. And the Kovalyovs became interested in housing in Timonovo, they just went the other way, Alexander Shapkin clarifies:
- The procedure is standard: they wrote a statement - we began to work with them. In free access on the site of the district executive committee, in the regional newspaper there is a list of secondary apartments in need of repair. Moreover, you can see them. The Kovalevs themselves chose the option in Timonovo, they saw the condition of the housing. Repair of structural elements is carried out by the state, everything else is at the expense of the employer, which is regulated by the contract. A month later, the family exercised the right to transfer the occupied rental housing to social housing. We made a request to the Mogilev Regional Executive Committee, where they clearly explained that we cannot refuse the transfer. After that, a problem arose: the spouses began to ask to renovate the apartment, since it is social and must meet consumer qualities.
Important in the current situation is that repairs in a rental apartment under Decree No. 112 must be done within six months. The balance holder draws up a defective act and, on its basis, an estimate. Even by minimum consumer standards, housing in Timonovo requires an investment of 20,000 rubles, and not everyone will have such an amount in a short time. These financial moments have become a stumbling block. Replacing windows, floors, leveling walls, plumbing - major repairs were needed, says Vladimir Kovalev:
“Even if I had to spend 10 thousand rubles, and I did the work myself, I still wouldn’t have pulled on my salary. Yes, somewhere we do not understand the law. But we counted on help - after all, we are supposed to have social meters. Therefore, they asked to find a way out of the situation.
Equation solution
As a result, the young family was offered a social apartment of a smaller area, and the Kovalevs from two renovated uninhabited premises in Klimovichi settled on a kopeck piece:
— The apartment has been well-repaired — wallpaper has been re-glued, walls and ceilings have been painted, skirting boards and plumbing have been replaced. The rooms are very warm, even children can walk barefoot. We do not intend to leave Klimovichi, we want to live here further. And when there is an apartment, there is confidence in the future.
The situation is extraordinary: both the district executive committee was guided by the law, and the family legally claimed social meters corresponding to certain consumer qualities.
But local authorities should not be limited to the ability to close the question with only the right answer - they must find a way to help people in each specific situation.
Especially when it comes to young families, preferential categories. Legislative acts in such cases are not obstacles, but help. And before referring to the objective circumstances of the lack of budgetary funds or lack of resources, one must ask more than once whether everything has been analyzed, whether all options have been considered in order to make a decision in favor of those who applied.
TO THE POINT
It is planned to build 300,000 square meters of housing in the Mogilev region this year. More than 500 large families will be provided with housing. About 17 million rubles are planned to be allocated from the local budget for the construction of social housing for orphans - 180 apartments, which is almost five times more than in 2022. Twice as much will be erected and rental housing.
