"We directed the water to the balcony": new buildings of the renovation project could not stand the rain

The water in apartments flowed along the walls, trickled out from the windows, the residents did not know where to hide from this flood, their property was destroyed right in front of their eyes...

Lyudmila Butuzova

Home chats are full of tears and curses.

Lyudmila B.: “Cardboard Paradise”, where we were forcibly relocated, is terrible. Only today we looked at these terrible leaks, everything is spoiled, you can’t live... People are piling up statements. I don’t know what’s next... Everything cheap, flimsy, wretched, hoses, chandeliers - it's scary to watch. In a year, everything will begin to crumble, mold is already everywhere, there is no ventilation. The damage to health is colossal. Six months have not passed - the children cough, suffocate, the elderly have pneumonia, shortness of breath. We lived in a renovated apartment, with a well-established life, and now because of the fact that someone needed land, run around with statements to eliminate the shortcomings. One window dressing is only a problem for people”.

Vasily N.: “These houses are unsuitable for living! People who got apartments there are now groaning and don't know what to do. Elevators break down every day, there is no light on the stairwells and ventilation does not work, intercoms do not work, people cannot get into their apartment. Resin acts on the wooden frames of the double-glazed windows, and the double-glazed windows themselves are depressurized. Water in the basement, mold and drips on the walls in the rooms, rust on chandeliers, water flows on balconies, etc. And why should we go from our warm dwelling, where we have been living for more than 20 years, and where nothing leaks from us, here in such emergency housing ??? Where does the prosecutor's office look ??? Why do we need a renovated emergency housing???"

Renovation in the Northern region did not come immediately. At the beginning of this year, Novye Izvestia said that about 100 families flatly refused to move to new apartments, because the promised housing was neither bigger nor better than the one Muscovites had. Recall: in the North there was a frank, conscious deception in order to lure people into the program. At the beginning of the renovation, officials literally took the residents into the “good” house by the hand and showed them what wonderful apartments they had to live in. The excitement was such that two nine-story buildings entered the program for a company with five-story buildings. In total, four houses turned out for resettlement, and all of them, according to officials, fit perfectly in luxury new buildings on Dolgoprudnaya Alley, 15, Bldg. 2 and 3. The first five-story building was actually relocated to spacious apartments (the area against the Khrushchevs was increased by almost 30%), in which it was not necessary to make repairs and change plumbing. But the inhabitants of the second wave of resettlement suddenly began to be driven into another house located next door, on the same Dolgoprudnaya alla (building 14, building 2), and very similar to the “vertical Khrushchev” with stupid layouts, flying out windows, shattered door frames, swelling laminate.

The most shocking thing for people was that good apartments were put up for sale right before everyone’s eyes, and small-sized illiquid assets began to be slipped to “legal immigrants”. The authorities, as it were, laughed at people. “The city is already the 49th house where the participants of the renovation program are relocating, people get apartments of a larger area and with repair of business class,” personally, on the Moscow.ru website, noted the new building on Dolgoprudnaya 14, building 2 Sergey Levkin, and without saying a word that she had already become a stumbling block and horror for the settlers. The increase in the area of apartments by 30 cm (!!!), given out by Levkin as an achievement, apparently suggests that people lived even worse, and they should not have questions.

Unlucky new settlers turned for help to an independent working group (WG) to monitor the progress of renovation at the Communist Party faction in the Moscow City Duma. All previous instances — the renovation fund, the government, the city hall — were either silent or threatened to relocate in court all those who were not happy with the happiness that had fallen on them.

“We went to sort things out”, says Klim Likhachev, human rights activist and lawyer of the Working Group. - The first thing that caught my eye was an absolutely unprepared infrastructure: the quarter was built "in the field", there is no public transport, there is no social infrastructure - the school is not completed, there are no clinics, there are no parking lots. That is, even having the opportunity to take a walk, placing a whole block on free land, officials and builders decided to compact the area with housing as much as possible. The rest, they say, will come over time. But only when this time comes is unknown. So far, in order to buy a loaf of bread, people are forced to take a taxi and go to Dolgoprudny or climb through the overpass on the Moscow Ring Road.

For most families moving to this new ghetto, living conditions have worsened, so what! - became just a disaster. For 20-30 years of the past life we’ve gotten used to something completely different - the store is within walking distance, bank, pharmacy, transport, park ... For residents, the main problem was that they were deceived with the area of apartments. They told us directly at the camera: if it weren’t for this bait, to increase apartments by a third, no one would have looked towards renovation. We walked with the tenants around the apartments. The corridors are narrow, you can’t put a closet, clothes can only be hung on a carnation. The bathrooms are tiny, kitchens 7-8 m, rooms 14 m each. The windows are small, low located, as in a village hut. Comparison with the old fund did not climb into any gate - it is warm, light, comfortable, here, in the proposed apartment, the mother of many children could not imagine how to place cribs in the children's room, where there are two balconies and two batteries on the walls - at least hang the cradle to the ceiling. There were many such stories. People — about a hundred of them — spoke in detail about castling with apartments. Inspection orders before the New Year they just threw them in the mailboxes, there was no information from the board. They all ran to the headquarters for resettlement in an all-encompassing way, but there they had their own order - they brought one into the office one by one and processed each one personally, psychologically forcing them to take what they give or evicted from the old apartments in court. Can you imagine the mood in which people entered a new life? After our video shooting, most of the residents united in a group, and expressed a desire to collectively defend their rights.

Mostly, the residents of the yet unoccupied house were buzzing, having written to the city hall in writing that they categorically refuse to move into a new building, which has already ruined the lives of their neighbors. But the neighbors did not lag behind - they wrote to all authorities that the renovation turned out to be a complete deception for them.

The following answers came from the Department of City Property:

“Based on the resource of“ start-up ”new buildings for resettlement, defined and transferred by the above-mentioned specialized Departments, residents of apartment buildings No. 3, 7, 9 on 9th Severnaya Line Street for resettlement are offered apartments that meet the requirements of the legislation: they consist of the same number of rooms, that the apartments to be vacated, more in total area, no less in living space, are located in the same district of the Northern city of Moscow”.

Briefly: this is the mixing apples and oranges. The government acted in the same spirit. The head of the Severny district council invited the residents to a meeting and recommended not complaining anywhere, she herself would complain to the prefect and he, if necessary, would reach Sobyanin himself. By the way, you should not expect anything other than promises from the head of the council and the prefect: they do not have the authority to issue warrants for equivalent apartments, they are not allowed to make decisions on determining the sequence and order of resettlement of renovation participants, but they did not inform residents about this - the main thing is to give out promises.

Nevertheless, the hype raised by the residents and the mass rejection of the apartments proposed for renovation did their job - the officials had to postpone the issuance of warrants for the fourth house. In the house itself, work is underway to exit the renovation program. There is a chance until at least one owner gives consent to the move. Residents know what they did to their neighbors and do not want to move to the “vertical Khrushchevs”, which are located 100 meters from the Moscow region. Officials know that residents know about houses with good and bad apartments for renovation and puzzle over what residents of the last building should do with armed information. The Communist Party faction in the Moscow City Duma sided with the residents, the Moscow Mayor was sent inquiries about the situation in the Northern region.

The coronavirus pandemic dampened the protest, a more important agenda came to the fore. But nature intervened. Torrential rains that flooded new buildings from top to bottom made us look at renovation not only as a scam with a meter for immigrants, but also as a serious construction scam - houses in the North were literally blinded “out of shit and sticks”. Moreover, everything, including two more recently desired buildings with spacious apartments. They were washed away just like a wretched house for immigrants of the “second grade”. “We swim, mud throughout the apartment, there are not enough basins and buckets, the door cannot be opened, we drive water to the balcony, scoop out and pour down. Damn the day I moved to this cardboard house”- a typical SOS sinal from a sinking ship.

The government - you will not believe it - keeps abreast of the pulse, they respond to the “drowned” with lightning speed: The government of the Northern NEAD area “Thank you for the signal, on the issue of leaks in new buildings, we are conducting claims work under warranty. We kindly request that you address all your questions to your management company to record these facts at each address. Have a nice day".

It’s interesting, and who was so quick-witted in Severny that the houses “sailed” 4 months after being settled? New buildings were erected in 2018 by the famous largest developer - Treasury Enterprise of the Civil Construction Department of the Moscow City Hall. You can say - Stakhanovite renovation, grabbed a platform throughout the capital and, frankly, is not the first time shitting it. This does not cancel Sergey Sobyanin’s personal disposition to the General Director of the State-owned enterprise of the city of Moscow Department of Civil Engineering Damir Gazizov, who was awarded many thanks to the mayor.

And that’s why, according to the affected residents, the contractor will evade responsibility, and people will be forced to stay in emergency homes .. But if earlier the authorities who refused to relocate were only irritants to the authorities, now citizens who agreed to move in winter want to return to your old houses, you wouldn’t stay in defective housing. The head of the council and the prefect are trying to put out the fire on their own. On June 9, a workshop was held in the North-East Administrative District prefecture together with builders to determine a roadmap for overcoming this situation. An initiative group of residents waited for the minutes of the meeting until late in the evening. He never showed up. Apparently, people do not want to upset before the upcoming holidays.

“They will hide the protocol”, Klim Likhachev is sure. “But he is needed to understand the officials' approach to the identification of marriage in a commissioned and partially populated house.” It is one thing if they decide to appoint a construction examination, and it is quite another if they make the decision "to simply eliminate leaks". If everything is limited to leaks, they will force the management campaign to “glue, replace, renew, dry” - and that’s it, live on until the next rainstorm. If a construction examination is ordered and the matter reaches the court, the contractor of the KP UGS will be obliged to replace each window unit that does not comply with technical and town-planning regulations, and bear responsibility for all other deficiencies and “simplifications”.

-What to do to the affected residents right now? After all, their property was seriously damaged.

- I would advise you to control the actions of officials, it is good that there was a public outcry, but you should not completely rely on officials, in the end they were the ones who allowed the acceptance and commissioning of defective housing. A prosecutor’s check is needed. In my opinion, during the construction of renovation houses in the Northern region, corruption-related crimes could take place. Installing explicitly defective window blocks confirms this version. It is necessary to fix violations and seek construction expertise.

In case the management company and officials refuse to finance expert research, it is necessary to conduct it at the expense of residents. This is unpleasant, costly, etc. But, I repeat, only an expert can establish the problem obvious to the residents, whose conclusion can then lie in the evidence base during the trial.

- And is it possible that residents are generally evicted from unfit for housing new buildings?

- This would be an important precedent in the history of renovation. We often receive complaints from program participants in the Working Group, although authorities on all their resources claim that they successfully implemented the first stages of the program, ”says Klim Likhachev“. I can’t say that there was any an exceptional case, unfortunately, it is typical. The main problems were and remain the uncontrollability and opacity of the program. It is still unclear how the choice of the launching pad is made, how decisions are made, which concrete participants of the renovation move to which house. Another point: the emergence of more and more myths justifying super-dense buildings under the renovation program. One of them: dense development is needed for the payback of the program. The moment itself is very controversial - the renovation program was initially declared as non-profit and implemented at the expense of the budget of the city of Moscow. Yes, and the developer for the renovation program is a non-profit Fund... But renovation apartments are sold left and right, without revealing the available resources for relocation. The opacity of decisions always creates corruption and creates social tension”. The result is obvious: if before there was a large percentage of opponents of renovation, now it has become even greater due to the Muscovites who voted for the program in 2017. They saw that their neighbors were deceived, even deceived by the faithful “henchmen,” as soon as they were no longer needed.