No one in the country knows the amount of debts of Russians for housing and communal services

There is no way even to accurately determine the amount of the population's debt for housing and communal services (HCS).

Yekaterina Maksimova

According to recently announced data from Rosstat, the debts of Russians (individuals) for housing and communal services exceeded 804 billion rubles. Compared to last year, the debt increased by 7.5%. But a year earlier, the head of the Ministry of Construction, Irek Faizulin, stated that the debt of organizations and the population for utilities in 2021 amounted to about 1.5 trillion rubles.

Svetlana Razvorotneva , deputy chairman of the State Duma committee on construction and housing and communal services , claims that in Russia there is no system for accounting for the debts of Russians for housing and communal services and no one can confirm or refute the data from Rosstat.

“I honestly tried to figure out where Rosstat got such a figure from. The numbers do not beat at all, it is difficult to understand where they came from. Whether this debt is reconciled or not. And in different ways, everyone answers the question of what share in this amount is the direct debt of citizens, and how much is the debt of enterprises and organizations. Rosstat has some figures, the Ministry of Construction has others, ”Svetlana Razvorotneva explained to Novye Izvestia.

In her opinion, there are only versions. According to one of them: about 50% of the total debt was accumulated by individuals.

Alexander Tolmachev, chairman of the Committee of the Union of Lawyers of Moscow, members of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation for Entrepreneurship in the Housing and Utilities Sector , interprets the figures differently. “If we take a debt for the past year - about 1.5 trillion rubles, then out of this huge amount, but this is approximately 75-80%, these are the debts of enterprises to the housing system,” Tolmachev said on the air of the public news service.

Svetlana Razvorotneva adds that, according to the plan, transparent statistics should have appeared in the GIS housing and communal services system, but this did not happen. “In housing and communal services, everything is absolutely non-transparent. The GIS system has been transferred from one department to another in recent years and does not really work. It turns out that we do not have an up-to-date source of information,” the State Duma deputy summed up. She also added that the payment discipline for housing and communal services among Russians is at a high level (95%) and it has not decreased.

State Duma deputy, head of the commission on housing rights of citizens Galina Khovanskaya insists that the Russian Cabinet should join the problem of non-payments. To make the system of targeted protection of citizens who for various reasons become debtors workable is the task of state authorities.

One of the measures of assistance is the easing of the rules for granting subsidies to families who are in a difficult financial situation and cannot cope with utility bills. So, we are talking about reducing the maximum allowable share of total family income for utility bills.

Now the regions of the Russian Federation independently determine the threshold for housing and communal services costs, after which a citizen is entitled to a subsidy. In Moscow, a communal apartment is subsidized if it exceeds 10% of family income. In most regions, people are eligible for a subsidy only if their housing and communal services expenses amount to 22% of the family budget.

“In many areas of the country, local authorities do not lower this bar by their decision. In the vast majority of regions, as a rule, subsidized, there is no opportunity to provide such assistance. We came out with an initiative: let the threshold in the regions not be 10%, as in Moscow, but at least 15%. I told the president about this: the poorer the region, the greater the burden on citizens. An absurd situation. And the alignment of this budgetary security is the competence of the government. But the government answers us: the regions have the right to make such a decision themselves, - says Galina Khovanskaya. - This is a very hypocritical position: let the regions themselves get out with their poor. And this, I emphasize once again, is the duty of the government. The President instructed to ensure an equalization system so that residents of subsidized regions do not depend on the subject in which they live. Targeted protection should be the same throughout the country. And it must be effective. But the president's order has not been fulfilled for a year now,” explained Galina Khovanskaya.

Candidate of Economic Sciences, expert of the Coordinating Council of Non-Commercial Organizations of Russia Sergey Bazhenov believes that various measures of social support are needed for the population, but this will not help until the public utilities reduce their appetites. He believes that the profitability of market participants should be limited or at least regulated.

“When they tell us about the next increase in the cost of utilities, they explain this by the growth of the wage fund and so on. In fact, the salary of service personnel in the total cost is no more than 15%. Everything else is inflated profitability at all levels, from production to networks, which are everywhere low-productive and have large losses. This entire chain should be analyzed, not the amount of debt of the population,” Sergey Bazhenov believes.

In his opinion, if the state cannot influence the housing and communal services sector, in which there are many intermediaries and inefficient schemes, then it is time to take non-trivial measures.

“If we cannot influence business to be honest, including management companies, then let's nationalize this industry. Let's put it on such levels of economic and technical technologies that it would work. And then we will be able to lease this working system to businesses”, - says economist Bazhenov.