Center for Civil Society International (ccsi@u.washington.edu)
Fri, 13 Jan 1995 12:11:02 -0800 (PST)
Urban Institute Assists Russian Housing Reform
In a talk given last fall in Washington, DC, Raymond Struyk, resident
director of the Urban Institute's Technical Cooperative Program in Moscow,
declared that housing reform in Russia has made important progress,
especially in the rental sector.
1) rents, which have represented about 1% of family income, are being
raised gradually across the country;
2) housing allowance programs are being established for the indigent
(financed by the higher rental income of municipalities); and
3) the quality of maintenance services are being improved.
Two-thirds of all jurisdictions in the Russian Federation have now raised
rents and established housing allowance programs.
Additionally, over 30% of all eligible housing units have been privatized
in Russia, and new housing production is showing its first increase in
seven years.
The major obstacle to further reform is now the lack of comprehensive
laws on housing.
Assisting Russia in the difficult task of reforming this critical
economic sector is the Urban Institute, a nonprofit policy research and
educational organization established in Washington, DC, in 1968. With
funding from USAID, the Urban Institute began work in Moscow in mid-1992,
assembling a project team in which, today, Russian professionals
outnumber Americans.
The principal activities of the program are:
--advising the Russian government on housing reform legislation, e.g.,
the Law on Fundamentals of Housing Policy, a Moscow regulation on
condominium, and a forthcoming Law on Mortgage
--carrying out a series of demonstration projects, e.g., placing
thousands of municipal rental units in Moscow and Nizhni Novgorod oblast
under the management of several independent private maintenance firms,
and evaluating the experience
--development of detailed procedures and supporting materials for
implementing simultaneously broad-scale rent increases and programs of
housing allowances (subsidies)
--training and advising personnel in eight cities, mostly in Central
Russia, in the development of condominiums
--working initially with Mosbusinessbank and more recently with ten
additional Russian commercial banks to provide training and assist staff
in strengthening all phases of long-term mortgage lending: documentation,
loan servicing, risk management, etc.
The materials developed under the last program are being made available
to other banks through the production of the Mortgage Handbook series,
being published by the Center for Mortgage Business.
For further information, contact the Institute's offices in Moscow:
12/1 Furkasovsky Pereulok
Moscow 101819
Phone: (095) 926-3191 or Phone/fax: 924-7963
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