Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich!
In the Moscow Helsinki Group are received desperate requests for help from fami-lies with children who do not have housing and residence registration or who are threat-ened legal eviction from their only housing. The Constitution guarantees Russian citizens the right to housing and basic social rights and does not connect realization of these rights with the registration.
Laws, on the basis of which the courts of Moscow and other regions make deci-sions about eviction "to nowhere" of the 6-children family, of family with 4 children wait-ing for the birth of the 5-th one, of the single mother with small child, etc. are clearly un-constitutional.
We ask you to initiate amendments to the legislation prohibiting evictions without alternative housing, as well as eliminating unconstitutional social discrimi-nation because of the absence of registration of the place of residency.
But this is - for the future, and our fellow citizens are left without a roof over their head, live in unbearable dwelling conditions right now, and they need help immediately.
What to do?
The paradox is that the housing problems in Russia can be resolved quickly and with little or even without any budget allocations. Modern technologies allow to build res-idential buildings for months or even weeks. And in Russia there are plenty of building companies that are not chasing super-incomes and are ready to build for the people much, good, fast and cheap. Institutional mechanisms to attract these investments and this huge now unclaimed potential are developed at the present time by the Council for Human Rights under the President of the Russian Federation in the framework of activities of the Joint Council and the Ministry of Construction of Russia Working Group on the Right of Citizens for Affordable Housing.
And the savagery of the present situation is that the whole dramatic people’s hous-ing problems unfold against the background of a giant commercial construction, which brings super-incomes to the narrow groups of monopolists, developers, which monopoly 2 is ‘under the roof’ of the corrupted state officials. The selfish motives of the Govern-ment’s sabotage of your ‘housing’ instructions are evident.
We ask you to order to elaborate New Housing Policy in the Russian Federa-tion on the basis of proposals from the Human Rights Council. And we ask you to dismiss due to non-compliance of service vice-premiers Dmitri Kozak and Igor Shu-valov, who for many years were responsible for the realization of federal programs of affordable housing and who totally flubbed these programs.
Main Russian disease during centuries is corruption, because of which in the largest and most resource-rich country in the world children have nowhere to live, and millions of parents are enforced to solve the everyday problem to feed their children. The search for external or internal ‘enemies’ in the face of the United States, West, NGOs – ‘foreign agents’ – it is just a way to divert attention from the treatment of decease of corruption and to continue to appropriate national wealth. Unfortunately, to overcome corruption with the use of only national remedies is practically impossible, as impossible e.g. to pull himself out of the swamp by one’s own hair. There is great need in the external fulcrums which may become the international obligations of the Russian Federation, as well as of any other country - member of the relevant international agreements and conventions.
In the 1975 famous Helsinki Declaration was signed, which "Third, humanitarian, Basket" became the basis of modern more secure and more humane world order.
We urge you and other world leaders to initiate the development of a new "Fourth Basket" of international instruments to overcome the corruption, poverty and ensuring observation of social rights for millions.
Adoption of this package of international measures is necessary not only to Russia and for its people, it is strongly needed for people of many countries suffering now from corruption, lack of control and unaccountability of the ruling bureaucracies.
Lyudmila Alexeeva,
Chairperson of the Moscow Helsinki Group
Boris Altshuler,
A member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, chairman of the "Right of the Child", a
member of the Working Group on the Right of Citizens to Affordable Housing formed by
the Council on Human Rights under President of the Russian Federation and the Ministry
of Construction of Russia.
It is clear that these emergencies – are just a drop in the ocean of the well known to you huge housing problem in Russia. It is clear that a deficit of housings is necessary to overcome as quick as possible – this is the aim of your Decree of May 7, 2012 № 600, which basic instructions are not fulfilled by the Government during 3 years: favorable conditions for private investment in housing constructions are not created, the mecha-nisms preventing monopolistic activities and unfair competition in this area are not devel-oped, rental housings affordable for people with low income are not formed at all.