Time to read: 24 minutes(s)

"We're stuck here."

Putin has promised to "pull Russians out of the slums" at least eight times. He hasn't done it yet. 

In Russia, more than a million people live in emergency housing. counting According to the Investigative Committee, 70 buildings are in a state of disrepair—and these are only those whose residents have successfully secured official resettlement orders. As Investigative Committee Chairman Alexander Bastrykin notes, a third of the residents of these dilapidated buildings "have been living in substandard conditions for over five years." Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has been fighting slums for three decades. "A country with such reserves, obtained through oil and gas revenues, cannot tolerate the fact that millions of its citizens live in slums. I consider the state's inattention to these problems immoral," Putin said in 2007. "People need to be evicted from the slums, as I have already pointed out to my colleagues," he said in November 2022. calculated Journalists say that over the past 17 years, the head of state has promised to "pull Russians out of the slums" at least eight times.

At the same time, many live in buildings that are practically unfit for habitation, but have no emergency status—and therefore no hope of resettlement. How explain Experts believe that the decision to declare a building unsafe is made by municipal authorities, who simply lack the funds. NeMoskva examined this issue using Engels, the second-largest city in the Saratov region, as an example. 

Building on Stroiteley 41a: Why fix anything if you're going to be torn down?

Stroiteley Avenue is on the outskirts of Engels. Here, the city street imperceptibly transforms into a highway to Kazakhstan. Trucks line the shoulders, overgrown plantings, factory buildings behind concrete fences, and cemetery gates. Beyond the lattice fence, the steppe wind blows the tricolor flags on the freshly buried soldiers.

In the courtyard of building No. 41a, a faded sign announces that in 2019, 3,2 million rubles were spent on improvements as part of the priority project "Creating a Comfortable Urban Environment." Asphalt was laid, trash cans, benches, and streetlights were installed.

All that remains of the luxury described on the poster are shabby benches and an LED lamp above the entrance.

"This light stopped working this summer. The management company couldn't replace it for three weeks. They said they didn't have a boom lift, even though you could reach it with a stepladder. Ever since we were declared unsafe, the utility companies have completely ignored us," says local resident Natalia Ivanova.  

According to residents, the management company was already slow to respond to inquiries, and now it's even slower to respond to sewer and water main failures, and its work is half-hearted. As workers tell residents, "Why bother if you're going to be demolished anyway?"

It took several months for residents of building No. 41a to obtain emergency status. In December 2023, they called Putin's hotline and wrote to the leadership of the Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor General's Office. Only after appealing to senior officials did the district administration initiate the process of declaring the building unsafe. In March, an expert was dispatched. Ivanova recalls that "she spent five or six hours here," and in early April, the residents were summoned to an interdepartmental commission and issued a report declaring the building unsafe.

"Look here," Natalya says, sliding a two-meter board through the gap between the wall of the house and the remains of the concrete pavement. The board sinks completely under the building and moves freely in all directions, meeting no resistance. "There's no foundation anywhere under the house," she explains, explaining the essence of the experiment. 

How to Specified According to the MinZhKH.RU portal, the building's foundation must be— bandedBut in reality, judging by everything, little remains of it. It seems as if the five-story building simply sits on the ground, like a toy house.

"This corner of the house hasn't collapsed yet because it's supported by an extension. It's now a service station, but it used to be the factory cafe," says Natalia's father, Vitaly Alexandrovich, pointing to the right corner of the building. 

Vitaly received a room here in 1980, when he graduated from vocational school and got a job at a factory that made assembly products. The five-story building, built for the factory workers in 1973, was called a "temporary building." For 30 years, all the workers were promised separate apartments. 

"Our factory was building its own community in the city center. In the late 1980s, the last small-family apartment and ten-story building were completed," the man sighs. - And we're stuck here.

The sewer system in the building clogs every two to three days. Residents say the "management company is just slacking off on cleaning the pipes and never finishing the job." The basement where the heating pipes are located (there's no proper basement, as is common in multi-story buildings) is flooded with sewage. Residents fear that, like last winter, "the shit will start boiling" during the heating season.

"We've had this thing coming in for a month and a half," says Galina Baryshnikova, a resident of the first floor, trying to imitate a fountain with her gestures. 

The drain was clogged in the first of the five rooms in the "wing" (the local name for the residential section consisting of a common hallway, kitchen, and bedrooms). The neighbors realized it was there by the smell. Entering the room and clearing the drain proved impossible—"the owner was out drinking somewhere." It took several weeks to persuade the local police officer to break down the door and the management company to fix the problem. The woman recalls that she couldn't get through to the management company by phone and went there as if it were her job—to get the director, plumbers, and a police officer to come and see her at the same time and place.

The door to the ill-fated room is now unlocked. There's no furniture here. In the left corner stands an unenclosed bathtub. In the right corner is a toilet. In the middle is a pile of boards and plywood sheets. Everything is covered in a layer of dried feces.

"Actually, it's nice here in our wing. I wash, clean, and whiten everything myself. We try to live like normal people," Galina reassures. 

She's lived in the five-story building on Stroiteley Avenue for 33 years—ever since she moved to the city from the countryside and got a job as a trolleybus driver. She raised three children here. Now Galina has eight grandchildren. Each one needs "something to buy, a little money to give." She makes it work: she works two jobs, earning a salary of about 50 rubles. That's less than Secondary In the Saratov region (55,2 rubles), but the woman she was interviewing smiled, "It's fine." She's worked at the same trolleybus depot her entire life. Galina's trolleybus is old—Soviet-era, without air conditioning. In recent years, the fleet has been gradually replacing it with modern electric buses, but she can't operate them—she needs a Category D license, and she sees no point in taking the difficult exam at 60.

In the neighboring building, the ceiling is black with soot. In 2012, Natalya says, there was a fire on the first floor due to a short circuit. It could easily happen again: coils of wires, twisted with electrical tape, hang from the walls. A wide board lies on the landing, covering a hole in the reinforced concrete slab. The walls of the building are almost bare of plaster. Natalya rubs the grout between the bricks, and sand trickles between her fingers. 

The roof hatch is open. From above, the yard resembles a green abyss. Enormous poplars and elms, towering higher than the house, sway. Heavy old branches scrape against the roofing felt. In the center of the roof are brick vent caps. They can be dismantled without the slightest effort.

It's unknown when residents will be resettled from building No. 41a. The decision declaring the building unsafe doesn't specify a timeframe. 

"The administration says: come back in the fall, we'll think about which program to place you in," Natalia shrugs.

Building on Stroiteley-45: "New Age" and the Old Sewer System

Mallows and petunias are blooming in the courtyard of building No. 45 on Stroiteley Avenue. Black-ripe berries are falling from the old cherry tree. The front garden is fenced with brightly painted tires. But no matter how hard the locals try to landscape the area, there's no place to sit on a bench: the basement, flooded with sewage, reeks of a foul stench.

"My neighbor and I chipped in, bought some mosquito netting, and stuck it on the basement windows. Otherwise, it's impossible to sleep at night—swarms of mosquitoes fly out of the basement," says Neli, a resident of the building. Standing on the stairs, she estimates the size of the basement "pool": "It's definitely deeper than knee-deep." 

She throws a piece of brick inside. It sinks with a loud splash. The second basement staircase on the other side of the house is flooded with black liquid up to the bottom steps.

Neli arrived in Engels in 2000 from Kyrgyzstan. Her father's family, a Volga German, was deported to the Maily-Sai Gorge in 1941. Uranium mining had been going on there since 1946, and her father worked in the mine. Then mining stopped, coal mining began, and a light bulb factory was built, producing light bulbs for the entire Soviet Union. Neli herself worked there. But in the 1990s, according to her interviewee's recollections, "Russians began to be oppressed""I was scared for my sons. We decided to leave."

At that time, the Saratov region was a transit point for many Germans traveling from Central Asia to their "Fatherland"—there was a German consulate there. Neli's two brothers obtained documents and left for Germany. She, her husband, and their children decided to remain in Russia. assistance programs Russian Germans received the money to buy a home—delivered directly to a bank account. This was unusual for the provincial real estate market of the time. "In 2000, everyone wanted cash," explains the interviewee. Cashless payments were only suitable for worthless properties, whose owners had no chance of selling them any other way. "So we didn't have much choice. We bought an apartment here," Neli concludes. 

She and her husband repaid the debt until 2010, first in marks, then in euros. Although the loan was interest-free, they "overpaid significantly" due to exchange rate fluctuations.

Building No. 45 was originally a construction battalion barracks. It was converted into residential use in the mid-1990s. 

"The basement used to be dry. They say the soldiers even stored vegetables there," the woman says wistfully.

The basement started flooding in the late 2010s, when a new development was built nearby. First, there were problems. were only in spring During the flood, Stroiteley Avenue, like the rest of Engels, has no storm drains; meltwater flows into the regular sewer system. The old system, overwhelmed by runoff from the new ten-story buildings, was no longer able to cope. In 2021, another new residential complex was built in the neighborhood. Since then, water has stood in the basement of building No. 45 year-round.

Over the winter, several brickwork collapsed on the top floor of building No. 45. Since then, the corner has been wrapped in warning tape. Residents say the management company (the building is maintained by the same Housing Company LLC) put it up. They explain that repairing the wall would cost 150 rubles, but they don't have the money.

In the Zheludkovs' apartment, the wall above the kitchen window is crumbling. 

"Just don't touch the slope! There's a gap behind it that leads to the street. Even wasps can fly through it," warns the apartment's owner, Valentina.

There's no wallpaper in the apartment either; the ceilings are just reinforced concrete slabs, not even whitewashed. The whitewash peeled off, the wallpaper peeled off the walls in the winter, and during the thaw, the roof of the five-story building leaked. The wiring shorted out then. The residents immediately cut off the power. They say it's a good thing they're always home: "I'm a pensioner, my husband is disabled." The Zheludkovs' neighbor is 75 years old. When the elderly woman saw water pouring from the chandelier, she became ill, and an ambulance arrived. Valentina used her phone's flashlight to help the doctors give her an injection. 

_{There is no wallpaper or ceiling in the Zheludkovs' apartment after the flood.}

"No one's come to visit us since then. We live like homeless people. My pension is 16 rubles. I can't risk doing repairs if we could get flooded again at any minute. The administration said the building was put on the waiting list for a new roof. But they didn't say..." for what year, - Valentina sighs. 

Five-liter jugs of water stand in rows in the Zheludkov family's bathroom and kitchen. They say they're "used to stocking up" because the water can be turned off at the most unexpected moment. As soon as it's turned on, they fill every container in the apartment. As they tell this, the woman turns on the faucet. There's a whistling sound in the pipe, but no water flows.

21 years ago, when her youngest daughter was born, Valentina took drastic measures. 

"I took her, still a baby, and asked a neighbor to take us to the city administration. I went to the head of the housing and utilities department, laid her on the table, and said: here's the baby, here are the diapers, here's the bottle. Either wash her bottom yourself, or give us some water." 

The ultimatum worked—they gave us water. But not for long.

The family was relocated to the former barracks in the mid-1990s. Before that, they lived in two-story barracks in the metalworking plant's settlement. They were declared unsafe, but the couple recalls they were happy there. They only moved in after the roof was removed. 

"It was freezing—25 degrees below zero. My son was little, four years old. We came in here, and there wasn't even linoleum," recalls Alexey Zheludkov. He did the renovations himself, "until he had a stroke."

The residents also do their own renovations in the entrance hall. They painted the walls themselves, bought new switches and light bulbs, and mopped the floors themselves, Valentina counts on her fingers. Meanwhile, the residents pay for maintenance—roughly two thousand rubles per apartment. One day, Zheludkova tried to figure out where this money was going. 

"I went to the 8th block, where the management company dispatchers are. They said, 'The documents are in the office, go downtown.' I got there. The secretary was there—and no one else. She said, 'I only receive correspondence, I'm not responsible for work on site, go back to the dispatchers.' I'm 60 years old. I don't have the energy to search for the truth," Valentina dismisses.

Residents can pay for the assessment themselves to have their building declared unsafe, but, according to Zheludkova, the administration told them, "We guarantee you'll waste your money; your building won't be declared unsafe." By law, the commission's refusal can be challenged in court. But pensioners, who make up the majority of the residents, aren't prepared to fight.

"It's good you came to us. At least we got to pour out our hearts," Neli said as they parted. They said no one in charge ever popped into the outskirts to listen to the people: "We haven't seen any deputies here for fifteen years. We don't even know their names."

The house on Molodezhnaya-43: but they weave nets here

"I moved here eight years ago. My son stood up for a classmate, and it backfired. To keep him out of jail, I sold the house and paid a lawyer. I used the remaining money to buy a room here," says Elena, a resident of 43 Molodezhnaya Street. 

Her eleven-meter room contains a kitchenette with an electric stove, a sofa, a wardrobe, a TV, a washing machine, and a shower.

Elena works in a sausage factory. She needs a mortgage, the rates for which begin from 19 percent, and she doesn’t even dream of moving.

There's no shower in the three-story dorm. Elena used to wash in the communal kitchen. She'd heat water in a basin and negotiate with her roommate: one would guard the entrance, the other would pour water from a ladle. Then they'd swap. Then the roommate had a third child, and her husband ran a line from the kitchen water pipe into the living rooms—for himself and two other roommates, who paid for it.

"When I moved here, there was a line for the restroom in the mornings. In Russian, you'd have time to do your business in your underwear while you wait," says local resident Slava, a large man in shorts with palm trees. He works as a gas station attendant and has lived here since 2007. He says he doesn't have enough money for better housing.

There's only one toilet in the entire building—a nook in the basement. A concrete pedestal higher than knee-high, into which a toilet is built. Genoa bowlThere's no lighting, no sink, no faucet. The toilet is now impossible to use. The basement is flooded with sewage up to the stairs.

"Someone in the room goes to the toilet and then dumps it in the trash. We chipped in, installed a pipe, and installed our own toilet on the third floor," the residents proudly open the door to the storage room where their porcelain treasure is hidden. They ask that it not be removed, "otherwise the management will say we're living too well and order us to dismantle it."

The three-story building on Molodezhnaya Street currently has no management company. Not a single bidder participated in the competition to select a management company for the building, and the building was transferred to so-called "direct management by the owners." This means that residents pay for electricity, gas, and water directly to the suppliers, and perform all routine maintenance themselves.

The electrical panel on the floor was replaced by a group effort. Almost three years have passed since then. Residents don't know who to contact if something breaks—the trusted electrician who installed the panel was among the first to be mobilized; his wife was pregnant with their second child at the time, Elena says.

They pooled their money for a new window for the shared kitchen. Now they're thinking about chipping in for a new door for the entrance hall. The old iron door disappeared one afternoon when most of the residents were at work. They think scrap hunters cut it down and took it to the nearest recycling center. I ask if there's a local police officer. 

"The local police officer?" the other two ask, puzzled. "What will he do? I can't even get through to him..."

They don't believe the state should provide services and protection to citizens. "We don't have a state," Elena dismisses.

In December, residents called Putin's hotline. They hoped the administration would then conduct an inspection of the building's condition (the dorm residents lacked the funds for this). But the municipal authorities did nothing.

The municipal library operates on the ground floor of the dilapidated building. A librarian in a white dress with small flowers leads us to the windows of the book depository. From here, a view opens onto two clogged sewer manholes and a puddle of shit in the weeds. 

"We have children coming to visit, and then this happens," she says, wincing. "I installed a fan. I wash the floors every two hours to keep them fresh."

The wall in the library entryway is damp to the touch. The woman I'm interviewing thinks fecal fumes from the basement are to blame: "When it leaks out from under the house, I dig trenches to keep the porch from flooding."

The librarian explains that the unpleasant smell bothers not only those who come here to borrow books but also those who weave camouflage nets for the front. The room to the left of the library entrance, which used to be a cloakroom, is now called the "net-weaving station." The librarian explains that, at the initiative of municipal authorities, such stations have opened throughout the district. In the center are wooden frames with squares of fishing line stretched across them. On the wall is a poster of a young man with a machine gun and wearing a balaclava. 

"There aren't many people around right now, they're all in the gardens," the librarian shrugs. "But we wove 73 nets this winter!"

"Houses are being declared unsafe for the sake of money"

"Dilapidated buildings are mostly inhabited by the less affluent segment of society—pensioners, people approaching retirement age, and the disabled. The expert assessment required to register a building as unsafe is expensive, and the results are unpredictable. People are afraid to get involved. Most residents don't know where to look for expert firms, and the elderly don't even have internet access. Therefore, when it comes to contacting the interdepartmental commission, people generally agree to the experts suggested by the administration or management company," Yana Korneeva, an activist in the Engels public movement, told NeMoskva. "These are our homes!".

As the interviewee suggests, municipal authorities are reluctant to recognize emergency buildings as such because the city may not have enough maneuvering fund and money to buy new apartments.

"Recognizing a building as unsafe means the municipality incurs obligations it is unable to fulfill. That's why buildings are now being classified as unsafe using funds allocated by the Territorial Development Fund, formerly the Housing and Utilities Fund. Once the funds are exhausted, the buildings are no longer classified as unsafe," believes Irina Gentzler, Director of the Urban Economy Department at the Institute for Urban Economics.

Other experts share this opinion. "Deeming a building unfit for habitation places serious obligations on local governments, and failure to fulfill these obligations becomes subject to prosecutorial oversight. Local officials are reluctant to declare buildings unfit for habitation if there is no money in the budget," says Pavel Sklyanchuk, expert of the ONF thematic platform "Housing and Urban Environment".

"Regions can resettle only as many houses as they have the money for," explains Konstantin Krokhin, Chairman of the Union of Housing Organizations of Moscow, said: "Therefore, interdepartmental commissions do not grant status to buildings that are not in immediate danger of collapse." 

"The house is dilapidated, old, and crumbling. In terms of its consumer properties, it's the same as a building in disrepair. But it hasn't yet tilted, and the roof isn't collapsing. The commission estimates that it could still stand without collapsing anytime soon," the expert comments.

Often, the court is almost the only way out of a situation when a house, despite its condition, is not recognized as unsafe, считает Vladimir Fursin, an ONF expert in the Tomsk region and a lawyer specializing in housing and communal services, however, judging by the words According to Galina Khovanskaya, Chair of the State Duma Committee on Citizens' Housing Rights, the court option doesn't always work. As the deputy notes, in some regions, even court orders for immediate resettlement, issued when lives are at risk, are not implemented: "The regions don't have the resources."

On counting According to the Territorial Development Fund, 2,5 million square meters of housing (3,5 percent of the country's residential space) are declared unsafe each year in Russia. The Investigative Committee suspected that official statistics do not reflect the real picture. In April 2024, it instructed "All heads of investigative departments in the country must ensure comprehensive monitoring of the information space to identify information about citizens living in emergency housing."

Will Putin pull us out of the slums again?

Almost half The country's dilapidated housing stock consists of two-story buildings built between the 1950s and 1970s. "Their emergence was driven by industrialization, when people from villages moved to cities and went to work in factories. Back then, the houses they built weren't designed for long-term use," explains Ilshat Shagiakhmetov, CEO of the Territorial Development Fund. He estimates that slums are particularly numerous in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Karelia, Komi, Perm Krai, the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, and the Arkhangelsk, Irkutsk, Kemerovo, and Moscow regions.

Resettlement of unsafe housing is not solely funded by the federal budget. Regions that can afford it contribute their own funds. The Federal Republic of Tatarstan (FRT) is among the leaders in terms of the number of people resettled. calls According to the agency's estimates, more than 186 people have moved from dilapidated housing in the Khanty-Mansiysk and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrugs since 2019 thanks to regional resettlement programs. "That's more than a quarter of the total," Shagiakhmetov explained.

Resettlement under integrated territorial development projects (ITD) has begun in 17 regions. This mechanism allows for the use of investor funds. According to Shagiakhmetov, 111 residential development projects using the IDT principle are planned to be completed by 2030. This includes resettlement of approximately 1 million square meters of dilapidated housing.

Read more: "We are being sold like serfs"
How and why Krasnoyarsk's "royal district" is rebelling against the integrated territorial development program (ITD), designed to improve citizens' living conditions. 
Federal programs for resettling residents from dilapidated housing were launched in the 2000s. According to estimates by the Territorial Development Fund, since 2008, 1,65 million residents of dilapidated housing have received new housing (including 701,2 people in the last five years), which is "comparable to the population of cities such as Novosibirsk or Yekaterinburg," the Fund emphasizes. By 2024, according to words Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin, it is planned to resettle 98,6 thousand citizens, 39,6 thousand people got keys from the beginning of the year.
In the Saratov region, as Specified According to the FRT website, 762 houses were resettled in 2013-2018, and since 2019, another 337 housesThis is almost 90 percent of the planned amount. 15,5 billion rubles were spent on new housing. Judging by information The emergency workers waited from a year to a year and a half for the fund to move into the house.
Houses that received the status before 2017, are resettled With funding from the Housing and Utilities Reform Fund, 38 regions have already completed this task and are rebuilding buildings deemed unsafe between 2017 and 2022. This program is financed by the Territorial Development Fund. Under this program, new apartments will be built. must move 663 thousand people. 
How to noted on the FRT websiteSince 2019, 605,6 billion rubles have been transferred to the regions for the purchase of new housing for those in emergency housing. In 2025-2026, the program, which includes buildings deemed unsafe in 2017-2022, will be completed. will be allocated another 50 billion rubles. 
What will happen to buildings that received the status after 2022 is still unknown. In his February address to the Federal Assembly, Putin instructed The government is required to develop a new slum resettlement program by October 1. Currently, there is very little information about the project available in open sources. Vladimir Koshelev, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Construction and Housing and Utilities, говорил He told journalists that the new program would establish a mandatory three-month resettlement deadline. "Officials will be subject to penalties, including criminal liability, for violating these rules," the deputy stated.
There was no information on the cost of the new program. Putin stated that 4,5 trillion rubles are planned for housing and utilities modernization by 2030 (how much of this money will go toward slum resettlement was not specified). This seems like a large figure. But for comparison, military spending in 2024 was highlighted approximately 10,3 trillion rubles. For the first time in modern history, this item became the largest in the budget. note Experts estimate that military spending has increased by 70 percent compared to 2023 (three times compared to 2021) and accounts for more than a third of the Russian budget.