04/03/2016

In the Constitutional Court the public authorities spoke in favour of the funds collection for capital repair.

The head of Real Estate and Construction Practice, the lawyer Konstantin Savin commented on the "repairs case" which had been discussed in the Constitutional Court of the RF, for RBC

The deputies splitted down the middle on the dispute about housing maintenance and utilities tariffs in the Constitutional Court: some took a stand in favor of cancellation of funds collection for capital repair in the "common pot", while others, like the members of the executive , insisted in that there is no alternative to this collection.

In the Constitutional Court on Thursday there was a stormy debate on weather the compartment owners of multicompartment buildings should transfer money for capital repair and weather the funds of occupants of one house can be used for repair of the other house. It was caused by two inquiries of the State Duma deputies - Chairman of the State Duma Committee on housing policy, eser Galina Hovanskaya, and Chief Lawyer of CPRF Vadim Solovyev. Earlier Hovanskaya introduced a number of bills as amended into the housing law in the State Duma, but no further action were taken on many of them. ​

In the court Hovanskaya remembered that at the end of 2012 amendments were made in Housing Code according to which owners of private compartments had to pay for capital repair on monthly bases independently on the condition of the building. At present, rates for capital repair are established by local authorities and the total amount is calculated based on the compartment total area. So that, in Moscow compartment owners pay 15 roubles per 1 sq.m., but in Saint Petersburg the rate is from 2 up to 3 roubles. Housing Code specifies two variants of the funds collection.

As Konstantin Savin, a lawyer of Pavlova&Partners law firm, puts it the government is not able to finance the houses repair on its own. But the owners shall also have right to control their money: how much and for what they pay. The lawyer considers that property inventory shall be taken, approximate cost and time of the repair shall be determined and based on this data the payment amount shall be calculated for each region​​

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Ирина Кошечкина

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