"Hybrid" renovation: a Muscovite's family was relocated so that people remained without any housing at all

Lyudmila Butuzova

Recently, the mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin, once again said that he was receiving positive feedback on the new housing from the renovation migrants. “I have not met a single person who spoke with regret about the abandoned five-story building”, - he said. It is clear that an official of such a high rank has his own sources of information, from which he receives information about the very “positive responses”. But if the mayor looked deeper into social networks, where people share their soreness or attended sessions of district courts, which, on behalf of the city, use truncheons and bailiffs to push Muscovites into an unsuitable or disliked apartment, then it would be possible to more than fill the gap in terms of negative opinions about the program. and see the trend with which the renovation is carried out. This is an imperious onslaught, lack of compromise, disregard for people and unwillingness to delve into their problems. - Our Stalinist five-story building on Nizhegorodskaya street, 104, bldg. 3 was demolished under two programs at the same time - both for renovation and for withdrawal for state needs - for the construction of a crossing over the railway tracks of the Small Ring of the Moscow Railway. When the house was being renovated, we did not know about the state needs. Later it turned out that the government decree "On Approval of the Planning Project for the Territory of the Linear Object" was adopted back in 2016, the decree on the seizure of housing appeared in March 2019.

How this happens, the Muscovite Pavel Dylevsky told Novy Izvestia on the example of his family.

- It even played into the hands of the residents of our house - it is still not known how much to wait for the renovation, there were no starting houses on Nizhegorodskaya Street, only foundation pits were outlined.

Why did so many want to move early? In the house, there are mainly communal apartments, some - in the property - a few, including a three-room apartment in our family. At one time, we also lived in a communal apartment, my wife grew up there when we started a family 14 years ago, huddled in one room, in another mother-in-law with her family, then a son was born, mother-in-law moved to an apartment to improve, she was next in line since the days of the USSR ... The rooms were municipal, as the mother-in-law moved out, registered ownership of the wife and child, and when the neighbors moved out, we bought their room from the city, and the apartment became completely ours! For us, it was happiness and a solution to so many life problems. We have a son with peculiarities of speech development, we as best we could create conditions for him to adapt to life. It's a great luck that we also have a school nearby - 10 minutes walk. These circumstances are decisive when the family and guardianship have to consider the issue of changing the place of residence for a minor child.

But we also understood our neighbors - and when they voted unanimously for renovation in the hope of getting separate housing, we understood when the opportunity arose to settle early "for state needs".

In principle, there is nothing wrong with the law on expropriation for state needs, on the contrary, residents receive much more preferences from the state than for renovation - the choice of a place of residence, a house, an apartment at their own discretion or monetary compensation, taking into account the cost of the land, which covers those delivered by the state inconvenience. So, ideally, in a normal state where human rights are respected. Relying on our state, many, due to hybrid resettlement, found themselves in much worse conditions than before. People began to be resettled not at will, but wherever they had to - to hell on little kulichi, in another district, in another area, in apartments of a smaller area and a depressing state. The question arose: what, the city authorities, knowing about the need to resettle residents from 2016, did not take care of the resettlement fund? And why, if the city is full of illiquid assets, and the fears and real fears of being left with nothing from Muscovites are so great that you can force people to take what they give. Some of the residents of our house agreed with this.

Imagine the surprise when it turned out that they had signed... an exchange agreement for the renovation. That is, they voluntarily agreed to worse conditions. Scandals and massive refusals of offers began. The City Property Department (DGI) did not have the opportunity to evict the remaining intractable Muscovites through the courts precisely because the apartments were unequal and did not meet the requirements of the renovation program. But, judging by the fact that the mayor's office does not intend to stand on ceremony with "property confiscated for state needs," and, if necessary, "corrects" federal laws by its own orders, the hybrid method of resettlement was simply insolent at the expense of those who waited, but did not wait their renovated apartments. And the most amazing thing is at the expense of our children too. Officials violate the property rights of underage owners with the same ease with which they talk about protecting the rights of motherhood and childhood.

“What's wrong?” The prosecutor in the Lefortovo court announced the forced eviction of two owners from the apartment on Nizhegorodskaya - my wife and my minor son. - No violation, - we have a simple question - the mother will move out of the apartment, and the son will follow her.

The lawsuit was filed by the department of city property in February this year, without having achieved our consent to voluntarily leave, "where they will be sent." Our condition was known - to stay in our area, close to school, work, family. In principle, they did not contain anything unnatural. Both under the law on renovation and under the law on the seizure of residential premises for state needs, resettlement should be carried out in the interests of citizens, taking into account all the circumstances that can improve or worsen their living conditions. Two years of close communication with the City Property Department convinced that the department exists solely to solve only one problem - at any cost to free the house slated for demolition from tenants. School, work, child are irrelevant lyrics. We will hear the same from judge E.V. Boronina. in the Lefortovo court. Any of our petitions - to provide an equivalent apartment in one of the commercial buildings on Nizhegorodskaya (they named specific addresses and apartments that could be redeemed "for state needs"), to give the opportunity to wait for the delivery of a normal renovated house on Nizhegorodskaya (the frames are already standing) to pay adequate compensation for the old an apartment to buy a suitable home for us - were rejected as irrelevant.

It was also irrelevant that the family had been living at a construction site for two years - the flyover was being erected two steps from the house. Builders work day and night, and more actively at night. During the operation of drilling rigs and heavy construction equipment, dishes jump in cabinets and paintings fall from the walls. If it were not a Soviet high-quality house, but a Sobyanin remake, I'm afraid it would have overwhelmed us a long time ago. There is often no light and all day long, there is a brown substance in the tap instead of water, thank you for at least the last month without blackouts.

There is no lighting on the street at all, in the evening you walk with a flashlight. After the onslaught of the department, the neighbor felt bad, she was dragged from the entrance on a blanket to the ambulance, it was simply impossible to get through with a stretcher. "Zhilischnik" removed everything that is possible and impossible from the settled apartments and in the entrances - windows, doors, including heating radiators, in winter it was 16 degrees Celsius. They did not admit to stealing the radiators until they showed photographs of how they - employees of Zhilishchnik - turn out the taps and put the radiators into the car. The entrance was last cleaned in March 2020; the snow has not been cleaned even once this winter. It’s dangerous to go out into the yard, we don’t let the child out alone, you don’t know about the car if it will live until morning. The house, according to rumors, should have been demolished in the New Year.

Head of the Nizhny Novgorod District Council V.A. Ivanchenko issues the necessary orders to their services, they send employees, break down the door to any apartment they like, make a mess there, take pictures and write an act - homeless people sneaked in, ay-ay-ay, shit, everything in the house is rotting and dripping... The house is actually after a major renovation literally a couple of years before he was sentenced to demolition. Why arrange all this "entertainment"? In order to curry favor and send a "document" to the City Property Department demanding to evict people before the court decision entered into force. For the past six months, our house has been periodically lost from Yandex cards. For a long time we could not get Putin's 10,000 rubles for our son, since the house is no longer on the list.

The most unbearable thing is that my family, as follows from the lawsuit and the rhetoric of the representatives of the City Property Department present at the trial, “deliberately prevents resettlement, refuses all the proposed options and introduces the city into unnecessary expenses for maintaining a house on Nizhegorodskaya”. The proposed options, I must say, were deliberately mocking. In August 2019, a letter from the City Property Department was handed over to see the apartment on Butlerov Street. Geographically, this is two districts from our area, which is not allowed by any of the laws according to which they are trying to resettle us. In addition, upon examination, the apartment turned out to be smaller. City Property Department only mentions the address. All other information - upon consent to the inspection and signing of the necessary documents. This is such a trap for migrants - to get a signature that he looked at the proposed version, refused... The rest of the proposals were made by phone. On Molodezhnaya, in a renovated building, a living area of 43 sq. meters, on Kaluzhskaya - 46 meters. We have living space - 54 meters. We knew very well that we would refuse, and the guardianship would not agree to infringement of the living conditions for the child, and there was no correctional school. But we were deliberately put on trial for refusals and, as I understand now, they wanted to punish us for pumping rights in a dispute with the state.

In the Lefortovo court they succeeded. On May 12, 2021, the judge ruled to deprive the son and wife of the ownership of the apartment and forcibly relocate to Frezer highway 7/2. I will never forget the reaction of the representatives of the City Property Department - they were happy as if they had received a kilogram of sweets for free.

We filed an appeal, and in August the Moscow City Court returned the case for a new consideration to the first instance. There were hopes for justice...

The first renovated house on the Fraser highway was completed six months ago. In fact, this is an industrial zone, opposite the MCC sump - a 19-lane railway, leaving by car only through Aviamotornaya, this is an hour and a half in the morning by any transport. We were not the only ones who shuddered, because taking the child to school and then picking it up is an almost insoluble problem for a working family. You can't let go of one of these too. Someone will have to give up work for the sake of teaching a child, but what to live on? That is, the option is the same mocking as the previous ones.

Our neighbors, who had lived all their lives in a comfortable neighborhood and had not imagined renovation at all, began to refuse to move: the apartments were in a much worse condition than their previous ones, and the house itself did not inspire confidence.

Even "Zasnotsy Moskvy" wrote to us on VKontakte: "If anyone reads from this house - refuse! This is deliberate rubbish! The house itself, structurally, does not meet the renovation standards. Let the administrators live in such houses, and the mayor's ones".

In response, court orders for forced evictions flew at the speed of sound. The bailiffs came before people had time to file an appeal. On Sunday, my neighbors arrived from the dacha - the door was broken open on the spot, but the hint is so transparent that you will run to move to move.

We were forced to look at the apartment in which we were ordered to move in. I am a builder by profession, at first glance I realized that this is a hellish illiquid product, the apartment is miserable and battered, a million is not enough to just put on makeup. You can think whatever you like, but I am sure that this is a despicable revenge of the department for standing and standing across their road.

But we defend the constitutional rights to housing and education of a minor child, and they, having arrogated to themselves the right to act on behalf of the state, what do they defend? Own ambitions. Although it is presented as protection of the interests of renovation and what else is there? - Resolutions of the Moscow government on the confiscation of housing for state needs, the implementation of which can only be reported at the cost of infringing on the basic rights of a minor citizen and by ruining all members of his family. And it seems that something is incorrect not only in the City Property Department.

I ordered the construction expertise of the apartment imposed on us. According to the results of the study, it turned out that everything is crooked inside, falls off and requires replacement, the living area is less than ours, that is, the documents indicate fake parameters. It is not possible to recognize it as livable and equivalent, meeting the renovation standards.

The Lefortovo court found the examination irrelevant. The aunt from the department yelled at the judge so much that she just stood at attention and automatically rejected everything that was dictated to her. One more kilo of sweets for defeating us.

Recently, a new demand from the City Property Department to the court arrived in time - in view of the accident rate of the house and the danger of living in it, the decision to evict the Dylevsky family must be brought to immediate execution.

Court tomorrow. There is no doubt what decision will be made and how it will turn out for us - we will be left without housing at all. I don’t know anymore to whom to turn my desperate request - help! I tried to reach out to the mayor, to the ombudsman for the rights of the child, to deputies, to parties, politicians - no one cares ... This is the most terrible experience that I received and my son gets at the beginning of his life. I would not want it to be useful to Muscovites. But let them know what is going on in the corridors of the renovation and what to prepare for when some other benefit appears from Moscow officials.

From the editorial board of "Novye Izvestia"

Today, the great Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov could be corrected, because the “housing problem has spoiled” not so much Muscovites as Moscow officials, who for the most part have never been Muscovites.

Nevertheless, Sobyanin and his team knew that it was possible to resettle Muscovites without any new laws - all resettlement laws had been invented a long time ago. But, according to the "old laws", every Muscovite must be given 18 square meters of living space per person, when you move, you must pay compensation, and no neighbors can decide whether to live in your apartment or go where the neighbors want.

Agree? No, you need to fight for your rights and your property, despite the tough legislative procedures and psychological pressure from the authorities, who do their best to convince the population that the policy of property deprivation of citizens they have chosen is correct and approved by the majority of the population.

This is not true. Confirmation of this is the growth dynamics of litigation involving migrants and the city property department.

If in November 2019, officials announced isolated cases of going to court, then by the end of last year the figures increased to 15-20% - people are increasingly challenging forced resettlement. And this is already happening.

In social networks, there is a growing number of testimonies from the renovation participants themselves about how they managed to get rid of low-grade apartments, achieve normal compensation for missing meters, more and more questions about how to get out of the program and eager discussion of examples when they succeeded. There is no doubt that with the growth of the demolition of the old fund and the commissioning of new housing, the flight from forced renovation will also intensify. The courts, even by order, will not be able to defend the rapidly deteriorating reputation of the city program.

The very fact of forced eviction and deprivation of property, which violated the constitutional rights of citizens, will be needed for further trial at the ECHR and receiving compensation, which will clearly depress your ill-wishers. We do not argue: the road ahead is long and painful. People want to live, not drown in bureaucratic intrigues and unhurried courts. But the reality is now that there is almost no choice: either to fight for their rights to the end, or to humbly give them up to be torn apart by corrupt officials.