Dear readers!

As you know, solving the housing problem is one of the main tasks facing any society. It requires huge financial and time expenditures, as well as the ability of a large number of people to unite their efforts to achieve the goal.

In Russia, the housing problem has been and remains quite acute. This is largely due to the climate of the country, where only capital buildings with powerful thermal insulation are possible, and due to this, the cost of housing is high. The rapid urbanization of the country in the early 20th century, the resettlement of a huge number of people from rural to urban areas led to a housing deficit of such a scale that it took almost the entire last century to combat it.

One of the most important characteristics of housing provision is the presence of dilapidated and emergency housing stock. During the Soviet period, the state, being the main owner of the housing stock, did not provide a proper system of its maintenance and renovation. This situation deteriorated even more during the reform years.

Now 3.5 million people (about 2.5% of the Russian population) live in dilapidated and emergency houses that are not adapted for permanent residence. The number of families living in such houses is 18% of the number of families on the waiting list for better housing conditions.

 A significant proportion of citizens with low incomes are still unable to purchase housing. At the same time, we need to increase the mobility of the labour force, students, to make housing affordable for living in every city and town.

Acquisition of housing, apartments, rooms in ownership should be the most important, but not the only way to solve this problem, we should encourage the construction and actual use of rental housing, social rent apartments. We should provide housing to the residents of the liberated territories of Kherson, Zaporizhzhya regions, Donetsk and Luhansk republics.

The development of the institute of hired houses is now one of the main issues both for the residents of Donbas and for all residents of the Russian Federation in ensuring the housing rights of citizens.

These issues and the problem of the development of housing legislation in terms of the creation of social rental houses, as well as the mechanisms of realization of their construction and operation will be the subject of the National Conference, which will be held in November 2023 in Moscow on the basis of the National Research University of Moscow State University of Civil Engineering and Architecture.

Sincerely

Peter Grabovy,

Editor-in-Chief