People live without sewerage in the historical center of St. Petersburg

Only three apartments remained residential in the houses, there is no sewerage, hot water, interruptions in cold water, electricity barely works, and communications are falling apart before our eyes.

Alexander Dybin, St. Petersburg

Two small houses, not far from the Malookhtinsky bridge, may be known to Petersburgers for their graffiti. The larger one depicts a French courtyard, the smaller one shows the Eiffel Tower. On the other side of the Neva is Smolny, where the governor's residence is located. But behind the beautiful picture is an unsightly life in abandoned houses, which were recognized as uninhabitable even in Soviet times.

Dmitry lives in one of these houses all his life. Until recently, four of us lived here: he, his mother and two sons. While everyone went to the country. But with the cold will have to come back. Two pensioners live in the second troubled house; the situation in their apartments is no better.

“These houses were at the LMZ plant, now they are Power Machines,” says Dmitry, “then, together with the residents of the house, they were somehow transferred to the balance sheet of the Leninets commercial enterprise. They made offices in free apartments. Some of the tenants died, they took the apartments for themselves. And then the director of this company died and everything was empty. For more than 20 years, residents have been fighting to transfer the houses either to the district, or to the city, or to privatize. Each new head of the district says: I will decide everything, but nothing happens, a new one comes and everything starts anew. Every time a commission comes and says: how do you live here? But nothing is being done."

According to the man, back in 1987, several houses in the area, including the “French courtyard”, were declared unfit for habitation. In theory, the houses were supposed to be resettled, but this document played a cruel joke on people. Because of the accident rate, they were forbidden to privatize apartments. But they did not begin to resettle, the officials lost their copy of this decision.

“Several years ago there was a court and there the administration officials said that they did not have any documents about the accident rate,” Dmitry says, “and ours do not count. We were offered to conduct our own examination, but, firstly, it is very expensive, and secondly, it is not a fact that it will be accepted.

Now people not only survive in the communal hell, but also hold the defense against marauders. Empty apartments were opened several times, everything more or less valuable was taken out. Now we have to lock the front doors so that no one else settles in the house.

Now the municipal deputy Manefa Koroleva is dealing with the problem of these buildings. The houses drew attention because of the graffiti. The activists offered to update the murals, they found artists, but they said that the walls needed to be repaired. So we got to know the residents and found out that repairing the walls here is not the biggest problem.

“These are real ghost houses,” the deputy says, “it is clear that they are not serviced, there are gaps in the sewer pipes, there is no hot water in principle, people go to the city bathhouse. At the same time, people receive receipts for paying utility bills. From whom - it is not clear, there is no data, contact numbers on the receipts. People pay for maintenance, but the service is not provided, no one saw the repairmen there. Now we are working to bring the houses back into accidents. In fact, they are what they are. I think there is an opportunity to resolve this issue on an extraordinary basis, a child is registered in one of the apartments, and two people with disabilities are among the residents. I am now forming requests to the government of the city and district. Now we need to figure out what the status of the houses is, from this to build a further strategy. It is possible that an appeal will be written to the prosecutor's office against the inaction of officials.”

Residents of the houses tried to attract the attention of the authorities on social networks, Dmitry wrote on the page of the governor Alexander Beglov . In response, he received reproaches from the townspeople: how could the houses be brought to such a state.

“They write on the Internet, can’t I change the pipe,” says Dmitry, “no, I can’t, if I touch it, it will fall down, everything is so rotten. And even the weakest boiler cannot be installed, because the power of the network is not enough. Light bulbs flicker from simple appliances. So every winter I clean the snow myself, beat off 4-meter icicles that break the wires, I restore them myself, although the house is not mine, it is a social lease that was not allowed to be privatized. As for the state of the house as a whole, how could I do something in other people's apartments. We looked there only after they were opened. We've been in correspondence since the 90s. Recently, my mother took two bags with documents to the dacha so that they would not be lost, but it was all to no avail.

According to residents, there were proposals to demolish these houses in order to build new ones. But the company that offered it went bankrupt and did not implement the project.

“Houses hold on only because they have meter-high walls, and they would have collapsed long ago. Indeed, it is better to demolish them and build something new,” Dmitry concludes.