Specifics and issues of formation of a new system for capital repairs of apartment houses in Russian regions

Key challenges that need to be addressed according to the May decrees of 2012 signed by the President of Russia are as follows: elimination of dilapidated housing and reduction in the amount of rundown housing in the short term; improvement of housing conditions of citizens. All this is possible to achieve only if there is an effective system for capital repairs of apartment buildings, allowing not only to stop further degradation of the housing stock, which was pointed out over the past few decades, but also to complete its renovation. The article presents analytical materials that characterize the scale and severity of these problems in the housing sector and the main directions of governmental policy aimed to solve them in 2008-2012, which, unfortunately, did not help resolve the current crisis. In this regard, in 2013, the country began to form a new system involving compulsory monthly fees for capital repairs that apartment owners are to pay. However, implementation of these reforms currently faces many organizational, institutional and ϔinancial problems, such as incompleteness of the regulatory framework in certain regions of the country, insufficient interaction between the authorities, business structures and owners in this ϔield, low financial security of capital repairs due to the scale of the problems accumulated, etc. On the basis of a critical study of foreign experience, the author substantiates the necessity to enhance the role of federal and regional authorities in upgrading the housing stock by assuming part of the burden of financial costs, using the tools to facilitate the attraction of loans and other extra-budgetary resources in the sector (through the creation of specialized guarantee agencies, etc.), to improve the collection of payments, promote timely technical inspection of houses, etc. Thus, in the current conditions, it is only the consolidation of resources of the public and private sectors that will contribute to the elimination of huge “gaps in capital repairs” of the housing stock and enhancement of the comfort of living in it.