"As long as we can bear it, we will bear it."
A report from Arkhangelsk, Russia's capital of dilapidated housing
"Boards, longing, cod" is perhaps the most famous saying about Arkhangelsk. While you'll have to search for the cod in stores, the boards and longing are immediately apparent. Wooden houses are Arkhangelsk's trademark, but also, as locals say, its curse. Only carved houses tourists admireIn others, residents are literally surviving. A NeMoskva journalist toured Arkhangelsk's most famous "wooden" district—the Northern District, or, as Arkhangelsk residents call it after the plant, Sulfat.
There are about three and a half thousand wooden houses in Arkhangelsk. Of these, official statistics According to the Arkhangelsk administration, as of January 1, 2023, 1400 housing units are in emergency condition. 33,048 people are registered in these units, which is approximately 10% of Arkhangelsk's total population. Website: Dom.MinZhKH gives similar figures1428 emergency buildings constitute 32% of the total number of residential buildings in Arkhangelsk, comprising 9247 apartments. Official statistics do not fully reflect the real picture—some buildings clearly deserve emergency status, but have not yet been recognized as such.
Sulfat was once a thriving area that grew up around the sulfate paper mill, the Solombala Mill. There was even a own amusement park With a Ferris wheel, it closed in the 90s. Many of the buildings were once clearly beautiful: almost every building has a pattern of planks. Some have snowflakes, some a sun, and still others elements of the Arkhangelsk region's ornamental patterns.
According to the 2021 census, Sulfate currently has a population of approximately 16,5—eight thousand fewer than in 2010 and ten thousand fewer than in 1997. Almost all the houses here are wooden. During Soviet times, the buildings were maintained by a factory. After the collapse of the USSR, the area began to decline, and the factory went bankrupt and closed in 2012. Things got so bad that blogger Ilya Varlamov, who had visited the area twice, included Sulfate is among the top 10 most terrifying places he's visited, placing the Arkhangelsk region alongside the heroin dens of Afghanistan and the slums of Buenos Aires.
Sulfat is considered the outskirts of the city, located approximately nine kilometers from the center of Arkhangelsk. Visitors are greeted by a sign reading "Residential Area of the First Five-Year Plans" with some of the letters peeling off (by the time of publication, the Arkhangelsk administration had repaired the sign). The first thing you see upon exiting the bus is a new stone church, built in 2010, and old wooden houses nearby. Several abandoned houses stand in a row. In some, paths have been worn through the snow; homeless people live there. Access to the buildings is unrestricted.
We write and write, but we keep getting replies: wait, wait.
A residential building has also tucked itself among the abandoned buildings. Although you wouldn't know it right away. The building has sunk so far underground that the doorway is now about five feet high. Wooden pallets are piled inside the entrance. In the spring, residents use them to gain access to their apartments, as the entrance is flooded.
It's not just the entrance that's flooded. Tatyana lives in the apartment on the ground floor. The first thing you see when you open the door to her apartment is a 30-centimeter step, insulated with blankets. In 2003, the pilings under part of the apartment were replaced; it remained at the same level, while the rest of the building, including most of the apartment, sank. Previously, according to the owner, the ceilings were about three meters high. Now, standing in the unsettled part of the apartment, you can touch the ceiling with your hand.
Because part of the apartment remained at the same level while the other part sank, a gap formed between the rooms. Water leaks into the apartment through this gap. So, all the furniture sits on wooden blocks, and in the spring, people have to stack their things on the sofa and walk around the apartment in rubber boots.
You step on the floor and see a damp mark left by your shoes (fiberboard absorbs moisture well).
"When we first flooded in 2013, [the floors in all the rooms were at the same level, so] the whole apartment was flooded! I opened the door, and water was coming in from the entrance hall.
I have to keep the heater on constantly: a cold wind blows through the cracks, and the central heating can't keep up. Consequently, the utility bills are hefty—over 10 rubles.
"We don't have a heat meter, so we pay about 12 rubles from September to May. There's no hot water, so we have a water heater. Plus, we have electric stoves," said Zoya, the neighbor upstairs.
All the interior doors in Tatyana's apartment had to be removed; they simply wouldn't open. The windows can't be opened either. She's even afraid the glass will collapse one day due to subsidence; one has already cracked. To keep the heat in, she hangs blankets in the doorways. The bathroom floor is tilted, and the toilet is at a steep angle.
Between the two ground-floor apartments is a boiler room. Access is easy: just slide the door to the side. It was removed from its hinges; otherwise, it wouldn't open due to the building's tilt. The plaster inside has peeled off, and water from burst pipes is leaking under the building. Tatyana believes this is why the corner of her bathroom, located behind the boiler room, is collapsing.
The building was declared unsafe in 2018. Previously, only individual apartments had been deemed unfit for habitation—not enough to qualify for inclusion in the current resettlement program. However, in 2021, the building was included in the "129 Homes" program, which resettled two owners and paid them monetary compensation of approximately 90 rubles per square meter.
"We're included in the '129 Homes' program, which hasn't received any funding for two years now. We're not budgeted for it. We've been writing and writing, even going to the president's office, but all we get is: 'Wait, wait, wait,'" Tatyana said. "We've had a court ruling since 2012 granting priority housing. They offered us a dormitory at a rate of six square meters per person. My apartment here is 74,4 square meters. Three of us are registered here. And from this apartment, we were supposed to move into a room of 18 square meters..."
According to Tatyana, her house is 193rd in line for the enforcement of court decisions.
"You have to swallow pills if you live here."
We pass a sagging, sagging house on Krasnyh Marshalov Street. Outside, two men are hauling out an old refrigerator—they say it's broken, so they had to buy a new one. They invite us to look at the boiler room on the first floor: like in the previous building, the plaster has peeled off and the pipes are leaking.
According to Oleg, whose mother lives in the building, leaks like these are repaired—if you contact them. However, the management company's office is located more than ten kilometers away, so if they don't answer the phone (which happens all the time), getting there is quite difficult.
"Usually a pipe bursts or something freezes. They'll come and thaw it out. Typical sulfate conditions. And you get what you earn," Oleg reasons, attributing the house's condition to its age. "This house was built in 1936, under Stalin!"
According to him, cars used to crash into the house almost every week – there was a cross-shaped intersection on the corner.
"Cars keep rushing, boom-boom, constantly hitting the house, like a pool table. That's probably why it's warped. They've put up signs now, they don't break. But before, it was every week, damn it! Anyway, our house is still livable," Oleg suddenly concludes and continues, "I lived here in December and January. It's gloomy, of course. But it's gloomy not because the house is like that. It's because of the way of life itself. Nobody walks, nobody drives. In the winter, it was freezing, quiet, no one was around. This neighborhood is depressing. I talk optimistically, but in reality, if you live here, you have to take pills sometimes, some antidepressants."
"We're not flooded in the apartment, and that's good."
Another building we visited was flooded inside, despite the temperature being below freezing. The ground-floor apartments were uninhabited, with padlocks on the doors. The residents had laid planks across the floors themselves. A new pipe was running from one apartment along the hallway floor. It turned out this was the way they'd fixed the heating system—a pipe had burst in an uninhabited apartment. This pipe keeps the water warm and prevents it from freezing.
The microclimate in the entryway is unique. Every surface is damp. You pull the doorknob, and your hand is wet and you have to wipe it. Even in winter, mosquitoes fly around here, and every corner is covered in cobwebs.
Alexander Anatolyevich, who lives in the last apartment in this building (we didn't look into the second building, but it appears no one lives down there either, the windows are boarded up), said that people on the first floor were wading knee-deep in water in their own home. The two-story building flooded several years ago, after it was declared unsafe in 2017. They're scheduled to relocate the residents in 2028.
"We won't be evicted until the house slides off its foundations. Our apartment is in the middle of the building, so it's okay. Yes, the wallpaper is cracking. The roof is leaking. When it rains, we get streaks on the ceiling," says Alexander's wife, Natalya Vladimirovna, and then continues unexpectedly: "Everything is fine in our apartment. If the house hadn't started sliding, I wouldn't have moved out at all! It's a wooden house. The rooms are big, everything's fine. It's 55 square meters, everything was fine. But if the house slides off, I don't know... For now, it's bearable—we're tolerating it."
Alexander has difficulty leaving his apartment building: he suffered a stroke and has to balance on boards in the water to get out. The family also has a bedridden disabled son who was in an accident.
"When the apartment below us was flooded, the water pumping station came and pumped out the neighbor's water. She walked around the apartment in boots. But now they won't come just for us. Our apartment isn't flooded, so that's good."
When asked if it's scary to live in a house that could fall off its foundations at any moment, Natalya admits that even if they wanted to, they wouldn't be able to move:
— What should we do? Our son is bedridden after an accident; he's been there for eight years. We have nowhere else to go. Where are we going to take him? To a private [rented] apartment? We'll have to pay for this apartment and the private one.
In Arkhangelsk, not only individual houses but entire neighborhoods are flooded. In 2022, the Hydrolysis Plant settlement went under water. In some buildings, water stood right in the apartments. Getting inside was impossible—you had to climb through the attic or crawl along the basement. Residents built their own bridges, throwing in whatever they could find: pallets, boards, doors.
The village, 12 kilometers from the city center, floods every year, but in 2022, the situation became critical: more snow fell than usual, and in addition to meltwater, the village was inundated with sewage. Deputy District Head Andrei Doronin explained the incident. explained "The improper operation of the sewage pumping station," which is privately owned: "The owner stopped the pumping station at his own discretion, which caused the flooding." In 2024, the village once again flooded: water rose into apartments.
How the authorities are solving the problem
Several years ago, a team of enthusiasts brought to interactive map The age of all the buildings in Arkhangelsk. It clearly shows that most of the buildings on Sulfate were built between 1920 and 1970. Only in the late 1960s and 1970s did several dozen panel houses appear here.
Currently, dilapidated housing is being resettled under a program designed for 2019-2025. During this time, 352 buildings (accommodating approximately 9,4 people) designated as unsafe prior to 2017 are planned for resettlement.
It's unknown whether the program will be extended beyond 2025. "We're waiting for the current phase and the entire program to be completed, and only then will we know whether it will be extended beyond 2025. However, city authorities are working through the entire process to ensure we have everything prepared for a possible extension. We're counting on it," рассказал Director of the Department of Urban Economy Alexey Ganushchenko.
Arkhangelsk is built on a swamp. In the USSR, wooden houses were built as temporary housing, so they have wooden foundations. It's no surprise that now Every year several buildings at once are coming off the piles и lie down on the ground: in 2001 in The media wrote, that this has been happening for the third summer in a row, that is, since 1998.
For buildings that have already collapsed or are potentially at risk of collapse, there's the "129 Homes" program. It includes dilapidated housing that wasn't included in the main resettlement program—that is, those deemed unsafe after 2017. When the program was adopted in 2021, 119 of the 129 buildings were at risk of collapse.
This is not the only program that resettles houses: there are also program for the development of built-up areas, is the predecessor of the integrated territorial development program. It was adopted in 2011. According to it, 44 buildings are to be relocated between 2020 and 2025 at the developers' expense. Residents aren't always satisfied with the price offered: for example, residents of wooden houses in central Arkhangelsk are currently being offered 62-64 rubles per square meter, while certain According to the Arkhangelsk Region government, the average price per square meter in Arkhangelsk is 139 thousand rubles.
In 2022, Arkhangelsk also launched a comprehensive territorial development program (CTD). The principle is the same: the developers pay for the relocation of buildings, but on larger plots. In 2023, when the developers were selected, the program immediately sparked protests, again due to the price per square meter—60 rubles. (NeMoskva also reported on why people are against the KRT in publications "Destroy Cities and Lives").
Two months after residents began expressing their outrage, the local branch of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation organized a rally in their support. The communists wanted to stage the protest in the central square, but the administration approved a site seven kilometers away. The protest took place on December 9. Despite temperatures below -22 degrees Celsius, about 50 people attended.
The protesters demanded changes to the Housing Code so that the cost per square meter would be assessed not at the time of the decision on renovation, as now, and at the time of the property purchase agreement with the developer. The regional government suddenly supported them and appealed to the Russian Ministry of Construction: some amendments were adopted, others pending review at the spring session of the State Duma.
Another event also took place on the day of the rally: the Arkhangelsk administration organized a meeting with residents enrolled in the KRT program. This event was announced three days before the rally. Representatives of the developer, government officials, and the mayor, Dmitry Morev, attended the meeting. meeting The administration defended the developer and the integrated territorial development program. The conversation was emotional: some residents stood up and left the room, shouting from their seats. A lawyer invited by the administration told residents that 60 rubles was a reasonable price, and that the court would award even less compensation. The mayor also voiced a similar opinion.
"Whether 60 rubles is a lot or a little is a rhetorical question. For some, even 200 isn't enough. Most people have large spaces in wooden houses. As practice has shown, everyone who comes to me has 70 or 80 square meters. The largest payments reach five million rubles! For a house that—as unfortunately happened in real life—was burned down!" said Elena Gunder, a representative of the developer, at the meeting.
Residents of Vodnikov Lane were the ones most outraged by the KRT program. They were the ones who attended the protest, recorded a letter to the president, and demanded legislative changes. Their lives weren't exactly prosperous—in the spring, their homes were flooded, floors in the hallways were being removed because the apartment doors wouldn't open, the walls were cracking, and the floors were warping. And yet, the locals refused to agree to a price of 60 rubles per square meter.
Vodnikov Lane, a small alley with about 20 buildings, is located in the city center, but a few years ago, even native Arkhangelsk residents couldn't find it on a map. Then it became a regional hotspot, with repeated attempts to burn down buildings there. In September and October 2021 alone, five fires occurred on the alley. Some buildings were toppled. In June 2020, police arrested Yevgeny Nesterov, who confessed to six arsons. As reported in decision Alexander Tolstov, who had his own firm that dug pits, ordered Nesterov to quickly free up land for housing construction. Tolstov admitted his guilt, but never received a verdict: he went off to war and died in March 2023.
In 2021, the alley became known throughout the country - after reportage "Rot and Ashes," which aired on the Current Time TV channel. The worst-looking apartment in the report was that of Artem Arkhipov, a second-degree disabled person (he was hit by a car as a child and his hands are almost completely paralyzed): a wall in his apartment had collapsed, and due to the tilt, the bathtub had fallen through the hole into the kitchen, the toilet had partially sunk into the floor, the stove had collapsed, and dead rats lay on the floor (though they weren't particularly noticeable due to pieces of the ceiling and walls falling off). In the winter, ice had built up in the shower. Following the report, concerned Russians raised over 2 million rubles in just a few days, and Artem bought a new apartment.
At the rate According to Arkhangelsk Region Governor Alexander Tsybulsky, all dilapidated buildings in the region will be resettled by 2030-2032.
Social housing for those relocated from dilapidated housing is currently being built on the very outskirts of the city, near the cemetery and pretrial detention center. It's 12 kilometers from the city center.
The quality of housing here also leaves much to be desired: residents complain of mold, which grows in apartments, high humidity, non-functioning ventilation, and cracks in the walls. The roofs of these buildings have repeatedly leaked. In 2018, another building all floors were flooded, from tenth to first. With the same situation collided residents of another social housing. In 2022, in one house four floors were floodedIn another, water was pouring through a light bulb. Some of the houses were built by a company called Lero. The company went bankrupt, and its director was tried for fraud and tax evasion. The head of the group of companies that includes Lero was tried for bribery.
Several houses were built by the Chuvash company "SUOR". They have similar problems: the entrances are repeatedly floodedThe walls were cracking, and the apartments were cold. In 2016, the company received three contracts to build houses in Arkhangelsk for a total of over a billion rubles; all contracts were subsequently terminated after partial fulfillment. SUOR failed to fulfill its obligations—for example, it was 682 days late on landscaping the surrounding area (the warranty period has now expired, and the regional government suing with "SUOR" due to ignoring the terms of the settlement agreement, according to which the defects were supposed to be corrected). From 2019 to 2022, bankruptcy proceedings were opened against "SUOR", in 2019 Sberbank said about 2,2 billion rubles in debt. In 2021, SUOR employees claimedthat they had not been paid their salaries for three months.
Four social housing developments on Dokovskaya Street will never see occupancy—they were used as material evidence in a criminal case, making them uninhabitable. While empty, the buildings fell into disrepair and became unfit for habitation. Now, the Arkhangelsk administration is trying to sell them, along with the land plots. More than 123 million rubles were invested in the construction of the buildings. The contractor, Impera Nova LLC, never completed the projects, and several city administration officials became defendants in criminal cases. Only the case of Mikhail Petukhov, accused of unjustified payments of 43 million rubles to the contractor, went to trial. He was amnestied in honor of the 70th anniversary of Victory Day.