Operation “renovation”: from the property owners to the people without homes

Residents of Izmailovo in Moscow, who are waiting for their houses to be renovated, are worried. Many owners of one-room apartments on 3rd Pryadilnaya and Nikitinskaya streets have been forgotten by the mayor’s office and the local council led by Mikhail Dovbnya, according to The Moscow Post.

The local council is considered to be a mere figurehead, supposedly appointed to approve the decisions needed by the mayor’s office and oversee the work of large development and service companies in the area.

The problem came to light because residents reached out to deputy Tatyana Tsarenko of the Izmailovo district council. Two, three, four, and five-room apartment owners are being resettled, but not the owners of one-room apartments.

They have been informed from various sources that there is not enough housing to resettle this particular group of residents. In other words, they could end up almost homeless, and there is no real information being provided.

A total of 58 houses in the Izmailovo district are set to be demolished. The streets most affected will be Lilac Boulevard (32) and Nikitinskaya Street (29), along with a significant portion of 3rd Spinning Street. You can find the complete list of houses here.

You can also access a schedule detailing specific resettlement timelines. Unfortunately, the schedule does not prioritize apartments based on the number of rooms. Deputy Tsarenko requested this specific timeframe for apartment resettlement from the general director of Mosfond of Renovation, Anatoly Konstantinov.

Photo: https://t.me/izizmaylovo/1675

Ms. Tsarenko addressed her concerns about the owners of one-room apartments to Anatoly Konstantinov. A response was received from the deputy head of the Moscow Department of Construction, Dmitry Kovanev, who is aligned with mayor Sergei Sobyanin.

In addition to bureaucratic procedures and evasive answers, Kovanev’s response includes an interesting statement: “Currently, there is no available living space to resettle citizens living in one-room apartments.”

Photo: https://t.me/izizmaylovo/1675

In other words – will some people be relocated while others are left to live as they please? Then the question arises – how could the renovation of these houses begin if it is unclear where the residents will be relocated? Was big business influencing officials behind the scenes?

The government is corrupt from the top down

Furthermore, upon reviewing the financial information about the Renovation Fund, it is evident that by the end of 2021, it incurred a loss of 4.6 billion rubles despite generating a revenue of 12 billion rubles. Anatoly Konstantinov and the Fund serve as intermediaries between the authorities, major developers, and significant budgets.

It is unclear why the authorities are not taking any action to address the problem or providing people with information about the situation. Residents fear living in partially occupied buildings for years – many of the windows in the five-story building are already covered with plywood, and the infrastructure around the half-empty buildings is not developing.

The behavior of the Izmailovo Council is surprising – there are no meetings with residents or written explanations. Many people do not take the head of the council, Mikhail Dovbnya, seriously, as they believe all the work is done by his deputies. Among them, Svetlana Mikhailovna Smirnova stands out.

Mrs. Smirnova has been working in the civil service in East Izmailovo since the age of 23, so she clearly has influence. She obtained her first higher education in Social Work from the Russian State Social University at 37, and received a law degree at 44.

Is Svetlana Mikhailovna Smirnova the main representative of the Izmailovo officials? Photo: izmaylowo.mos.ru

According to the authors of the Moskovskaya Narodnaya Gazeta website, it is claimed that Ms. Smirnova is not friendly in communication with ordinary citizens or municipal deputies. This includes Tatyana Tsarenko, who dares to ask officials questions that concern voters.

The published correspondence on the social network Facebook (owned by Meta, recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation territory) clearly shows Smirnova’s attitude towards the people’s deputies.

The correspondence between Deputy Head of the Administration Smirnova and deputies seems strange. Photo: http://narodnaya.org/2020/05/22/1-79/.

By the way, according to the authors of the Moskovskaya Narodnaya Gazeta website, it is alleged that the head of the council, Mikhail Dovbna, also does not like to communicate very much. In a conversation with Tsarenko, he noted that he would not discuss his work until she shared information about the sources of her income.

It's a peculiar position, especially given the deputies' authority to make inquiries about the work of certain authorities. Is this attitude towards people and their representatives instilled in the Izmailovo officials by the Moscow mayor’s office under the leadership of Sergei Sobyanin?

“Support Developers”

Let's remember the current stage of Moscow's renovation. First, it involves a large amount of money. In the first few months of 2021, the capital's authorities awarded substantial contracts totaling 154 billion rubles for the construction of 1.9 million square meters of housing under the renovation program, including in the Izmailovsky district.

Most of these contracts were divided among FSK Vladimir Voronin, MIC Andrey Ryabinsky, “Krost” Alexei Dobashin, “Regionzhilstroy,” and other major players. Developers stand to earn over 15 billion rubles on these contracts.

At the same time, the regulatory framework continues to be brought under the process. And this directly concerns the situation with the resettlement of residents of one-room apartments.

Not later than in March 2022, the State Duma adopted in the first reading a bill that tripled (!) Reduces the period during which a migrant under the renovation program in Moscow must conclude an agreement on new housing. Previously, this was 90 days.

The authors explain the amendment by the need to “optimize the timing of the resettlement of citizens” and the desire to support developers “in the face of sanctions pressure.”

Let’s note expression – “to support developers”. Who would doubt that! And the fact that vacationers, seriously ill and business travelers may not have time to make a decision in 30 days, who will then go to court and slow down the resettlement of the house, apparently does not give a damn to the capital’s deputies and their patrons in big business.

But in the context of our Russian swaggering bungling and corruption, the question arises – what will happen to those who did not have time, or those for whom housing stock has not yet been allocated at all? As in the case of the residents of the 3rd Pryadilnaya and Nikitinskaya streets of the Moscow Region of Izmailovo? Apparently, according to officials, they will be killed …